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humedia is a term coined by Ian Russell in 2007* to describe a call to transcend the evidential dominance of egoistic and individualistic obsessions with human existential exceptionalism. As a neo-logism, humedia is composed of the prefix hu- and the suffix -media. Hu- references familiar senses of humanity and humanism, but also urges humility in the placement of these senses within the ecologies of our shared world. Media suggests an undercutting of the singular concept of human 'being', which can place 'humans' as the focal point of all meaning, agency and significance in the world, by engaging the world as entangled media of which we are merely a few fortunate coalescences.
Through a critical re-engagement of the enmeshment of humanity in the world , humedia suggests that we can both transcend ‘being’ and ‘man’ and enable equal sharing in the diverse and discrete mediations of our world.
At humedia’s core is a transcendence of both ‘human’ as ‘man’ and ‘being’. Movements beyond discourses of ‘being’ acknowledges the steps taken within contemporary arts, sciences and spiritual traditions to leave behind the opposed pulpits of Western Christian human exceptionalism and Darwinian materialism. Movements beyond ‘man’ expand the bounds for understandings and expressions of mediated lifeworlds allowing for a non-gender, non-sex, non-species specific conception and practice of mediation.
This articulation of mediation may seem as if it gives primacy to ‘practical’ experience over the significance of sentiment in the world. Rather, though what Project Humedia emphasises is the normalising potential of sentiment as awareness of continually present, non-exclusive acts of sharing. Thus, humedia as transcendence is both effectual and affectual through a humble acceptance of placement and responsibility of flows of media as enmeshed information, materials and sentiments.
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