Trust your gut : fleshing out an embodied encounter with Nicola Grobler’s The Visitor Centre

Abstract

In various disciplines concerned with the perception of images the embodied nature of image encounters is increasingly receiving attention. A common premise in such investigations is that people’s embodied responses to images ought to be critically investigated owing to their previous neglect in academic discourses. The under-theorised and developing field of ecological art is uniquely suited to analysis from this perspective. By way of a body- centred interpretative paradigm, this article analyses Nicola Grobler’s The Visitor Centre (2015) in order to show how this ecological artwork “works” on viewers at a somatic level. This approach reveals how the video awakens awareness of human interventions in nature leading viewers to recognise their ethical responsibility to the environment by appealing to their “gut feelings.”