Visiting, attending and receiving: Making kin with local woods

Abstract

In an endeavour to build intimacy with a section of woods as can only be done through visceral and embodied experience, an ongoing drawing project was embarked upon with the forest as co-author. In a practice of sympoesis with the earth, small drawings of selected niches in an unprotected section of established forest bordering a suburban neighbourhood were done on regular and frequent walks through changing seasons. Upon completion, each drawing was hidden or buried at the site, to be retrieved on a subsequent visit. The aim is to inhabit and bond with this particular wild place through art-based dialogue, and through finding and returning to very specific places via animistic sensing and with tacit knowledge rather than the customary reliance on human-made indexical technologies. In this regard, the trees and plants play an active and sometimes storied role as participants in the creative exchange.