ecologies of practice, place and body
Slow, immanent, seeping permeation of relation with place and each other (whisper, ripple, shimmer, rumble); nourished by deep listening and field work.
[I confide in your texture]
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ecologies of practice, place and body
Slow, immanent, seeping permeation of relation with place and each other (whisper, ripple, shimmer, rumble); nourished by deep listening and field work.
[I confide in your texture]
Soundcloud
Vimeo
SHARED IDEAS / THEMES ~
developed as a collective, through our experiences of Ecologies: Collective Flows field work, with Saskia Schut and Geoff Robinson, 2024
developed as a collective, through our experiences of Ecologies: Collective Flows field work, with Saskia Schut and Geoff Robinson, 2024
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. See AM Kanngeiser. ‘To tend for, to care with: three pieces on listening as method,’ Part 2: ‘being-with’.
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.
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 - to share the experience, it is challenging, but also quite transformative. How the honest presence and respect for everything, the soul of everything, changes us (on a cellular level, in our bodies and systems as well, the way that we change each other by being around each other - not just people but places, beings, objects, things). The validation & importance of doing this in a large group, physically, connecting with a place/earth/entity/Country.
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. (See: ‘Matters of Care’ Puig De La Bellacasa)
Grief, sorrow. It is hard to face this. It is so easy to visit the ‘pristine’ waterways, forests, ecological wonders and feel replenished, inspired. To see their beauty. But to visit urban ecosystems - like the waterways beneath the roads, the polluted and redirected, not ‘pretty’ necessarily - are equal as ecologies, deserve just as much respect as the more ‘beautiful’ places/waterways. (What is a reference / word for this grief?): ‘Solastalgia’ or ‘shadowtime’? From ‘Fossils in the City’ by Saskia Beudel. And ‘The river ends as the ocean’, Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grosvenor, Clare Britton, Astrida Neimanis.
When in a group, you feel less helpless perhaps? Because there are more of us witnessing, in person, tending, noticing? Energy, hope, not getting too sad/stuck/frozen?
Interdependency. The false (modern? Western?) notion of singularity of the human being - how we are made up of many ecologies, how we are interdependent. With all. Finding respect & admiration for the earth, for places, and also - for ourselves? Not judging ourselves for our ugly/unwell/unpristine places? How to do this. Body as a system, a whole made of many. Caring for others/the ‘other’ can sometimes be easier than caring for yourself. How can you do both? Does caring for an other help you care for yourself. Maybe it is teaching us. To care for the other as yourself. Because it is.