What freedom is born with time spent in nature - how do the visitors of the rouge feel temporary relief from day to days performativity - the experience of feeling watched remains, yet now is replaced by the non human.
How does the way one interacts with a work of public art in the rouge - differ from the experience of engaging with it in the gallery? Galleries are stiff - stagnant -one tends to feel perpetually observed be the gallerist or other visitors. Often one is more focused on how one should act or appear in a gallery than focused on the works at hand.
This is liberated in the beauty of creating a work which exists in a public space, which paradoxically feels more private and intimate than a gallery setting might.
how can teachings and learning occur within systems unknown to us (humans) and how may these naturalized or adaptive conditions and ways of being for the non-human be models and methods for producing more sustainable ways of being for the human? socially? environmentally?
Yan: I like this research inquiry of yours: 'In contrast, how does one build on the historical narratives and mythologies of the species which inhabit the Rouge, growing its web rather than breaking it?' I wonder if you have encountered any historical narratives and mythologies of the species that inhabit the Rouge. Is it worth delving into this a bit further? This could include the species you encountered on our recent walk.[a note on this note]
"Animal is a word that men have given themselves the right to give. These humans are found giving it to themselves, this word, but as if they had received it as an inheritance. They have given themselves the word in order to corral a large number of living beings within a single concept: ‘‘The Animal,’’ they say."
Derrida, The Animal that Therefore I Am pp. 32
[a note on this note]This led me to think about precedents of artist which created sound based instillation works, to interact with the non human. The difficulty with sound based work, is just like another medium or material it has an extremely deep impact on the ecology of the park.
can we "represent" the non-living; the animal, the spiritual, the always present but perhaps the unseen?
how may the non-human be re-presented or presented (made visible) to (a) public(s)?
Mapping the movements of the non-human directs the reader of these documents to orient themselves to and alongside paths otherwise confusing, foreign and unfamiliar the to human eye, designated paths and understandings of place.
Even minor shifts in the ground beneath us deteriorates, shifts and changes the paths of designations, the wild and the artificial.
mapping is a time based medium. Can we unfix time from the geographies of mapping? Can we create guides for a place that acknowledges the movement of the map's users as much as it acknowledges the movement of the land in which it represents?
Do the publics of the park create their own autonomous archive by simply visiting the park and - either consciously or subconsciously - thinking with/through this research?
Does an archive necessarily need to appear as a database? How do we avoid/circumvent problematic categorization systems e.g. Linnaean?
The archons are first of all the documents' guardians. They do not only ensure the physical security of what is deposited and of the substrate. They are also accorded the hermeneutic right and competence. They have the power to interpret the archives. Entrusted to such archons, these documents in effect speak the law: they recall the law and call on or impose the law. To be guarded thus, in the jurisdiction of this speaking the law, they needed at once a guardian and a localization. Even in their guardianship or their hermeneutic tradition, the archives could do neither without substrate nor without residence. (Archive Fever)
[a note on this note]
Catherine: Have you come across artist precedents that look at creating habitat beyond structures for species to live in? Also, I came across this study on built barn swallow habitat and liked the idea of creating social cues: https://www.beco-birds.org/portfolio-item/barn-swallows-and-social-cues/[a note on this note]
Host / Hosted Relations within the Rouge
Are there ways to call to attention an authorship of the land that is not that of the visitors within the site of the public artworks but rather the silent and unseen labour that is maintained when we are not looking?
How do the mushrooms contribute to the soil beneath us?
What are the capacities to generate an alongside relation rather than one that pushes against existing grain.
can we "represent" the non-living; the animal, the spiritual, the always present but perhaps the unseen?
how may the non-human be re-presented or presented (made visible) to (a) public(s)?