The Ecocriticism Study Day

At the end of January four women gathered in a room at King's Manor in York.  They came from different disciplines and backgrounds, and travelled from across the country, from the Midlands and Cumbria, to meet in this room.

On the table they laid out books, texts, postcards, pamphlets, laptops, badges and biscuits. After pushing random buttons on a coffee machine, and discovering that it made no difference, the coffee came out the same anyway, the Ecocriticism Study Day began.

Each of the women had chosen a 'text' of differing sorts, and the other three were to read them before the day.  The aim of the day was an experiment:  if we bring together four people from very different disciplines to present and comment on each other's approaches to a subject, will they discover a new and shared methodology?

The subjects in question:  woodlands and walking.

The women:  
Dr Freya Sierhuis, lecturer in English literature and eco-criticism
Dr Lynda Dunlop, educator in science
Dr Suzi Richer, archaeologist and palynologist
Jo Dacombe, artist and creative walker

The discussion began with Lynda thinking about the pedagogy of philosophy, specifically pedagogy outside of the classroom.  What are the different motivations people have for engaging with philosophy? How does the space in which learning is happening change the way people learn? Could philosophy be taught through walking?

Freya introduced notions of Environmentalism, and the idea of "Slow Violence" as described by Rob Nixon. How does critical literature become activism when dealing with subjects such as "environmentalism of the poor"?  They also discussed the impact of colonialism, and how to measure impact; how measurements can be presented to back up any argument, depending on where one chooses to place the boundaries of how those measurements are made.

Freya went on to examine further the politics of landscape, vernacular landscape and the notion of vitalism, as discussed in John Wylie's book 'Landscape'.

Suzi made an excellent presentation on pollen diagrams, how they could be interpreted and some of the problems of presenting the information. She related this to an intriguing book of poems by Richard Skelton and Autumn Richardson, 'Of the Elm Decline',  which generated in-depth discussion on the use of the page in poetry and the visual arrangements of words, poetry referencing science and the effect of knowing or not knowing the meanings of technical words used in a poem.

Finally, Jo presented a work by artist John Newling called 'Dear Nature', a work that literally addresses nature through a short letter, but also concerns context, relationships, material, generosity and exchange and other ideas that were unpicked from this work located in a forest in Scotland.

Several themes seemed to reoccur throughout the discussions, enabling the group to identify common concerns.  The naming of things was discussed more than once, and the power in words to change the way we conceptualise the things we name. The effect of a sense of place was a common theme, and the use of words and images together to augment meaning.

All four women agreed that the day was useful and, if opportunity arose, a further Study Day could be held.

Following a full day in a room, the group went to St Nick's nature reserve and walked in the woods there. Plans began taking shape for workshops that they will hold in the woods for students of the University of York in the summer.  The Study Day certainly seemed to have tied together some of the common threads between their practices, and it will be exciting to see how this will support the Imagining Woodlands work with students later in the year.

Thanks to Freya for initiating and organising the Study Day.

Study Day Reading List:

Philosophy: A School of Freedom, (UNESCO: 2007) chapter 4.

Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, (Harvard University Press: 2011) Introduction.

John Wylie, Landscape (Routledge: 2007) chapter 6.

Richard Skelton and Autumn Richardson, Memorious Earth, (Corbel Stone Press: 2015) chapter v.

John Newling, ‘Dear Nature’

Everything is spinning

Today was sunny, that bright and crisp light that you get on a winter's day. The sun has no warmth but everything it touches seems to glow.  I held up one of the test tubes to the light and stared intently. Everything in it was colourless; a fluid globule of glycerol and water sitting in the bottom, underneath the fibre fluff which shone like it made its own light.

I have installed two pollen traps in the Meadows, changing them fortnightly for new test tubes so that we can track the change in pollen as the seasons move on. The test tubes are mysterious things. Pollen is microscopic, so you can't see it in the tube. Occasionally you see a few bits of dirt caught in the tube, but this sits on top of the polyester fibre and the pollen filters through, theoretically at least. You just have to trust the pollen is there, handle the test tube with care as if it contains a precious, invisible magic.

Everything spins with pollen collecting. The mixture in the test tube has to be spun centrifugally to try to mix each one evenly. Once the trap has been on site and (we hope) collected pollen, it can be spun again to help separate out whatever is in the tube.

The installation and changing of the pollen traps is a cycle. I repeat the activity once a week, alternating the sites, and recording the date and other observations each time. As I do this I'm aware that the whole process is measuring a larger cycle, an annual cycle of trees releasing pollen to begin the process of fertilisation to grow new trees. Once those new trees are grown, they will then become part of the cycle too.  And on it goes, endlessly cycling on this spinning planet of ours.

I wonder how I could represent these cycles of different scale and speed; the fast spinning of the centrifuge and the slow spinning of the life cycle of a tree. My original thought, when I started the microseasons project, was that the art work should be presented around all four walls of a gallery space in a circle. Somehow visitors would start in the centre of the room so that there is no start or end point of the sequence of works, just one continuous loop. If you know of a gallery that has a trap door entrance in the middle of the room, let me know.