SHARED IDEAS / THEMES

developed as a collective, through our experiences of Ecologies: Collective Flows field work, with Saskia Schut and Geoff Robinson & Moonee Ponds Creek, 2024

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18.4.24
Bunurong Beek (VCA/Southbank)

A LETTER / POEM

to the stone and the water, to the Moonee Ponds Creek

...

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8.4.24
Wurundjeri Biik
(Brunswick East)

ON WALKING

Does the creek want to rest, to move a little and slow and steep in ponds and swamps? The salt marsh memories, shimmer stain on the bike path bitumen

...layers of memory in our bodies, in our ancestry, in the plants, land, water. Shadowtime, the superimposed...

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18.3.24
Wurundjeri / Bunurong Biik
(Macaulay Station to Docklands)

LISTENING

Deeply listening, paying attention. How this sensibility has changed since doing this field work. The subtle, subconscious, slow permeation of ideas and ways of being/sensing/listening/attending (attuning - AM Kanngeiser. ‘To tend for, to care with: three pieces on listening as method,’ Part 2: ‘being-with’)...

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25.3.24
Wurundjeri Biik (Royal Park)

THE SACRED BODY(S) OF WATER

Exchanging bodies of water; ‘hydrocommons’ (Astrida Neimanis); a watery proposition. Spitting into the water as greeting. Bleeding into the water. Sweating into the stone into the water. Hello. It is us.

Body giving over its resources; the concrete terrain is open and coated in a layer of bacteria-rich silt. Channel / Canal. We want to get close to it, want to know - viscosity, tone, texture, composition. Leaping and bleeding, spitting into the water as greeting, as a way of saying hello this is us, here is our water, into your water, are we both...

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22.4.24
Wurundjeri Biik
(Near Flemington Bridge Station)

LETTER TO A SILVER PRINCESS GUM

Hello my darling,

How tall and slender you have grown... Reaching with all your might toward the sun –
away from that hypertrophic memory of trauma. I wonder if it hurt when they did that to you. Did you cry, and bleed, and mourn that thickening trunk that I am sure was once beautiful and strong?
...

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Bunurong Beek
(VCA/Southbank)

CARING

Caring for a place, and feeling agency, capacity. How this is generated by the act of walking, stopping, looking, the layers in the earth, history, time - how you feel it in a different way, not isolating or separating yourself from it. How this can open up the urge to help, to care for these ecologies...

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Multiple places; multiple times

BEING OPEN, BECOMING OPEN

Walking as a process / Being open, becoming open. Not just moving from A to B, but walking, listening, sensing, stopping, paying attention. Requires a sort of surrender, a vulnerability. Releasing of the higher mind and trying to let go, becoming open, presence.

...

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Multiple places; multiple times

BLOOD AND SAP

TONE AND TEXTURE

ON SPECULATION

Our language belittles the enormity and mystery of nature and stifles our ability to listen and let things be. We categorise things as a way of understanding the world, as if truly understanding it were possible. There is a cap to human perception...

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29.4.24
Wurundjeri Biik
(Oak Park)

HONEST PRESENCE

Respect, honest presence, animism. How it is to share the relationship, the intimacy and care of the world/nature/place/environment, while in a group of people - not just walking alone and relating closely with the world that way. It is a different process -

...

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Multiple places; multiple times

ON SITUATEDNESS

The objects I picked up on my roam were the fallen limbs of trees and shrubby plants. These objects remind me of a history much larger than myself, and the cycle of life, something I grapple with daily. It was a relaxing process, seeing nature, and existing within it. I found myself drifting off into thought outside of my usual headspace. I began to breathe more deeply and look up...

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4.3.24
Wurundjeri Biik (Woodlands Historic Park)

SUBTLE REMNANTS

a collaborative epilogue
...

read, listen, more

Multiple places; multiple times