Treading Consciously: Socially-Engaged Art for Mindful Place-Collaborations With Urban Non-human Occupants

Abstract

This practice-led, socially-engaged, art project develops an approach for acting in conscious reciprocal exchange with ecological sites in urban Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland. Reframing the use of tools and objects typically embedded in a ‘survival’ or ‘bushcraft’ context, this practice aims to be present in ‘meeting-with’ these ecosystems. Through a site-based, diagrammatic approach, and an expanded provisional walking methodology, methods such as wood whittling, graphite frottage (trunk-transfers), and printmaking (cambium-collaborations) have contributed to a shift in the project’s terms of engagement. The resulting research now understands the role of the artist as collaborator with the ‘more-than-human’ trees, rocks, plants, birds, and water occupying urban ecosystems in Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland.