Exploring kinship with the more-than-human world

Here are a couple of pictures I recently put into a local art exhibition. The whale pic got a commended award.

Ok so the peacock one is slightly strange. What are these about?

I am interested in the notions of regenerative cultures – what it means to work with earth, the forests, creatures, and other beings – rather than bringing power over through trying to fix things from a human-centric view. So some key questions might be –

What is it about humans that is worth sustaining?

How might we weird our relationship with other beings to explore the notion of kin-ship?

“Dancing with Whales.”

‘Dancing with whales’ represents for me that deep yearning I have for cross-species connection and magic, entering the spaces of the other. Imagery like this is already part of our visual/written culture. The joyful dance and song in this picture perhaps offers a reason why humans are worth sustaining. Relationship, creativity, ritual, gratitude, sharing stories, belonging to the land. We become the land’s humans.

“We need to talk.”

But the peacock image? Making the familiar strange or the strange familiar? The bed provides a space for intimacy. A setting to re-imagine what kinship might mean when we cross species. But she is still fully clothed. It is within her spaces, albeit made from the down of ducks, and the materials of earth.

I recently lay naked in the forest as a way of exploring what it might mean to make myself vulnerable to all that might traverse my skin. My senses came alive and perhaps that was a gift of whole body listening I offered the forest. And out of the listening relationship happens. Perhaps.

Styx Lament

We spend two days at this border of rainforest and clear-felled coupe. Wearing black. There is one giant living grandfather tree standing on the border. I sit in a small cave created by its trunk and close my eyes. I suddenly feel lop-sided. A whole side of me is cut off, paralysed, numb – there is a sense of loss of this tree’s community, its larger interconnected self.

I put my hand on the tree, feeling a welling up in me. I want to understand more. What it is like for this forest to be severed? I find a chain-sawed tree trunk in the clear-felled area and lie on it, curled up. I feel tears and loss and grief. All I can think of are the words “killing fields” and “dishonourable death.” On the living side there is a large old stump covered in moss and mushrooms, and I think how in “death” this old tree is providing life. Its knowledge is not lost to the forest. An honourable death.

Then Sara says to me she just had an electric shock. She was holding onto one fallen tree branch and touched another one. It was like a living current flowed through her. Although cut and lying on the ground in discarded heaps, these tree remnants still had life, a seeking for connection.

The last day there are 17 of us all sitting on the large stump at the top corner. Each of us speaks from the heart. We get such a strong sense of love from the tree, a presence. The spirit of the tree is here and I wonder whether we have created a pathway for the forest to keep it alive.

In creating this painting it was a prayer of strengthening the forest. I put in the interconnections, the roots, the mycelium, each day adding more complexity. On the devastated side I spilled tears, drew chalk lines, rubbed them off, layers and layers, each time a lament. I was doing it outside and leaves and twigs fell on the painting, sharing their grief and their hope.

Later I revisit the forest and sit under the severed tree. Looking up. Being small. A prayer of gratitude.

Please look at the beautiful haunting video created by the project leader Julia Adzuki – https://vimeo.com/403013595