Setting Limits/Direction

Setting limits is vital in any arts project – and certainly one of this potential scope. @ April 2024, I have elected to make the following choices to frame subsequent initial work.

The project's starting focus will predominantly be on:

1: Observing/'coming to terms' with the  plant, fungal and invertebrate life and the supporting atmospheres that are profoundly governing and directing the evolution of the biological life at the site. {i.e. the on-site/in range non-human intelligences}.

2: Investigating the multiple, entangled 'intelligences' perceivable on site: consistent with the driving concept that 'intelligence' (a notoriously difficult to define term) is just one among many ways of being in worlds; and that it is profoundly entangled - given that everything in the more than-human (and of human) world is hitched to everything else. Hence, intelligence 'in the field' should not be categorised or reduced to something that is necessarily 'like us'. 

3: Developing commonality with First Nations 'right ways' of knowing and understanding intelligence within Country.

4: Using learnings from 1 - 3 to frame direct and shape the imagined symbiotic art forms.

FAI will therefore attempt to avoid repeating theories/practices  that have often (reductively) chosen to categorise ‘intelligence’ within human terms, as a implicit pillar of humanity’s longstanding taxonomic and anthropocentric project.

FAI also recognises and values the unique values of Indigenous biocultural knowledge and practices, and intends that the project’s key questions should remain constant with ‘cross-cultural’, ‘two-way’ or ‘right-way’ knowledge making/re-reviving . (See this related interview on ethnobotany and biocultural knowledge with Dr. Gerry Turpin from my prior project Carbon_Dating).

These stated foci build on my past projects (like the native grasses themed project Carbon_Dating) to recognise plants in so many ways define our biocultural environments – and therefore our capacity to live and share worlds with them.

What’s in it For Us? vs. Rights to Be/Become

The FAI team are effectively therefore acting as ‘native plant (and other species) guardians’ – playing our small part in guaranteeing their capacity to flourish.

Plants are super-critical to our survival because they provide us with oxygen, sustenance, clothing, medicine and more. However, the flourishing of any of these non-humans should not simply be dependent on their utilitarian use. Plants, like all other non-human life, have their own rights to be and become, and on their own terms. (This idea is endemic to the mission statement of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance ‘rights of nature’)

Recognising the Rights of Nature in law, means that we reject the notion that nature is human property and we legally recognise the rights of the natural world to exist, thrive and evolve. Recognising that the natural world is just as entitled to exist and evolve as we are, necessarily changes the way humans act.

‘Rights of Nature’ is grounded in the recognition that humanity is just one member of the wider earth community, and that we have evolved with, and are dependent upon, a healthy, interconnected web of life on Earth. Rights of Nature laws create guidance for actions that respect this relationship.

This assertion doesn’t suggest that we shouldn’t harvest or eat plants or use them in other ways: However critically we should act respectfully towards them – and consider them  as much more than a back grounding to our human worlds (something  Wandersee and Schussler noted in 1999 that stems from our innate ‘plant blindness’). 

FAI’s aim therefore is that the site/artwork will evolve predominantly according to its own needs – and not ones that necessarily suit humankind. Its worth noting that science based management decisions, such as weed control or replanting, are also therefore understood and planned within that altruistic process.