Why do people care for trees?
What might trees tell us about their relationship to people?
From 2020 to 2022, the Upfield Train Line from Moreland Station to Coburg Station was raised to remove four train level crossings. Many trees were lost in the construction phase.
The proposed Skyrail project will raise the train line through the remainder of Brunswick and risks the loss of urban forests planted and tended by members of the local community. What will be the impact of this development upon the the relationship of people to these urban forests?
We will immerse ourselves in these spaces, observing, listening, drawing.
Our tasks is to understand the relationship of the community to these spaces and as reflexive researchers also understand our own relationship to place and ecology.
Through our creative documentation and exploration we will learn about and creatively respond to and communicate the stories of community urban gardening of the Upfield Train Line.
This studio is an introduction to different types of creative ethnographic research methods drawing upon on multi-species ethnography, sensory ethnography and auto ethnography. We will explore a range of practices to engage with observation and documentation, as well as reflect upon our own relationship with place and nature. Please note that we are not here to solve problems or pursuade an audience of any particular position. This is not a studio about advertising campaigns or persuasion. Instead our role is to document and communicate the rich and complex stories of people, nature, and their relationship to each other, through creative practice.
It is essential to maintain rich complexity of the stories of this context.
The primary outcomes from your work will be visual story telling using media and materials of your choice. You might want to propose a mural or series of murals, comics, or pieces that are installed along the train line.
With your permission, your work might be included in a book that documents the visual explorations and stories of the urban forests.
As immersed researchers, our studio is embedded in the context of research: the urban forest of the upfield train line centring in Brunswick and a small part of of Coburg.
We will spend the majority of our time in field work.
Please be prepared to travel light, with a travelling artists kit.
We will meet locals at the planting sites.
We will sit and draw and talk.
Be prepared for sunshine and rain and lots of walking.
This is an opportunity to slow down and tend to our senses.
There are four assessment tasks for this studio, the briefs are made up of a range of milestone deliverables that are interconnected and build upon each other.
Brief 01: SKO
Brief 02: Mapping relationships to place (psychogeographic mapping)
Brief 03: Developing your project and proposal
Brief 04: Completing and presenting your final project
Speaking of Nature: Finding language that affirms our kinship with the natural world, Robin Kimmerer, 2017.
https://orionmagazine.org/article/speaking-of-nature/
TBC