Research Project: THE LAND
Project Founders: Tess Wehmeyer, Judith van den Boom
Research Collaboratory: CSM Material Futures students
This week Unidentified Facility was set in the fields of Sussex, joining the Welcome Expedition CSM MA Material Futures. We hosted the workshop ‘The Land’, emphasising the multitude of voices and stretching our ecological understanding of community.
The workshop was built on the principles of ecologist Aldo Leopold who developed 'land ethics', based on the principle of 'simply care' - caring for all living beings in the landscape, and include not only humans, but also soils, waters, plants, and animals. Practising the ability to relate is essential for a thriving ecosystem, supporting the wellbeing and flourishing of the whole through individual connectedness and reciprocity. Through the lens of ecocentric principles, design can explore methods and processes that further understanding of nonhuman and human living environments but not without developing a new lexicon, and understanding of vocabulary and analogies that help shift human thinking.
Students developed responses, readings, experiences by looking through different lenses resulting in - Being Land - together. Students developed responses by rethinking being part of living systems and give new insights on topics of empowerment, gratitude, reciprocity, engagement, community extending, giving voice to others, intimacy with nature, trust as currency, awareness through temporality.
“ We are ecosystems within ecosystems, looking at the human from the perspective of an inner ecosystems goes beyond a pure physiological aspect but also implies the different aspects of being and its diverse ways of knowing: the imaginative, the rational, the intuitive, critical thinking, sensing, feeling and thus introducing the ecosystems vocabulary into deeper understanding of the self, the body and its symbiosis." (Téari, E. S. 2021)
Thanks for the invitation Kieren and students for all talks, walks and good atmosphere!! Wish you a great start of this new year!