In the Forests of the Night (original) (raw)
Related papers
Creative Encounters with the Dark Forest
Ecopedagogies Symposium: Critical and Creative Approaches. Conference at the Firs Botanical Research Centre and Manchester Museum, 3 July, 2024
I propose a paper and a ‘sonified photograph’ sound installation, sharing my practice-based photography PhD research explored in partnership with Kielder Observatory, in Northumberland International Dark Sky Park. Through conversational and/or sensory engagements with human and more-than-human communities, I explored the dark-sky experience in Northern England through photography practice, distinct from conventional starry-sky ‘astrophotography.’ Creative co-learning was key, where photographic outputs catalysed conversations on the dark-sky experience with Observatory stakeholders, drawing attention to imaginative nocturnal experience. Kielder Observatory is an off-grid facility in Kielder Forest, in England’s largest human-made woodland. Through arts-based research, narrative inquiry and reflective practice, I encountered dark-sky communities, photographed at night and slept under the stars. Whilst a ‘built’ forest, Kielder’s vibrant species of birds, mosses and insects contributed to creative outputs in unexpected ways, marking outdoor exhibited images and enhancing a ‘sonified photograph’ sound trail. When disseminating work through public events and ‘art’ walking tours, I learned how creativity in the dark forest connects human and more-than-human communities through “knowing as you go” (Ingold, 2000, pp. 228-231), where wandering and dwelling enabled learning under dark skies. Ingold, T. (2000) The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. https://ecopedagogies.cargo.site/
On the Edge of the Sacred Forest
Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia, 2014
It is obvious to say that the relations between human beings and their nonhuman environment are complex, but it is important to draw attention to the way this complexity is modeled and which of the relevant actors and relationships are drawn upon for explanation-in particular when scholars, like the authors of these three volumes, intend to revise and reconceptualise humanenvironment relationships. These relationships are always formed under specific social and political conditions, which these studies aim to elucidate. The question is, which conditions are given more importance and which are less decisive in the models? Southeast Asia stands out for its great diversity of human-environment interactions, while at the same time its rapidly developing economies create an urgent need to reform and rethink them. These three important contributions to the study of political ecology centre on forests, their globalised and localised uses, the national and transnational claims made in regard to them, as well as the position of those who depend on and live in them. The three volumes do not shy away from the complexity of the situations they study, in terms of politics, local culture, ecology, history, and transnational
Nocturnal Ethnographies: Aesthetics and Imaginaries of the Night
Ethnologies, 2022
The idea of publishing a special issue of Ethnologies around the theme of “nocturnal ethnographies” came as a need to answer some of the questions that arose while we were undertaking ethnographic fieldwork on the nocturnal hours in Cuba (Boudreault-Fournier and Diamanti 2018; Diamanti and Boudreault-Fournier 2021). As we were engaging with the night through our bodies, sound recorder and camera, we came to ask ourselves a series of questions which are reflected in this issue: How do ethnographers conduct research at and on night? Are there specific sensibilities linked to the segment of the 24-hour cycle that emerge when night falls? What sort of imaginaries and aesthetics do the nocturnal hours invoke? The articulated and rich responses that we gathered around these questions in the current issue testify to the urgent need to address them, especially in a field – social sciences – that has been historically tied to diurnal practices and day-centered methods (such as observation and visual methods that are so deeply linked to light and clear vision, see Diamanti and Boudreault-Fournier 2021). Moreover, the focus on the aesthetics and imaginaries of the night aims to bridge the social sciences and the humanities gap, in an attempt to enrich the discussion around sensory, creative and interdisciplinary methods. The eleven contributions to this issue reflect on how the imaginaries and the aesthetics of the night affect the work and methods of ethnographers, their fieldwork experiences and their approaches, as well as humans and more-than-humans alike inhabiting the night. By adopting such a lens, we recognize the affective and performative dimension of the imaginaries of the night and the relational quality of its aesthetics.
Invisible forests and the ground beneath your feet
Canvas Magazine May/ June Issue, 2019
While musing about our theme of regional divides and seemingly invisible interconnections between the Gulf and South Asia, Yaminay Chaudhri shares the images brought forth, both in her work as an artist and those sparked by others. Here, she writes about the birth of a nation, the concept of territory, cultural history, architectural aspirations and empty plots. Time becomes a device through which a forgotten memory arises and, in a reverse chronology, she moves from 1958 to the evening, afternoon and then morning of the future - Nadine Khalil
Nordic Journal of Art and Research
Listening to the forest is a streamed video essay in which you are invited to pay attention to audiovisual relations between human, landscape and moving image. Moving images are explored through a camera-based field recording practice that emphasises them as part of an ecological materiality, inseparable from what they depict and how they are seen.
This article examines the dominant gender and environment discourse in India and argues that, so far, analyses of gender and environment have pursued a utilitarian and mechanistic understanding of the nature-society relationship. By focusing on gendered practices of livelihood, narrated memories, and oral accounts of embodied pain and pleasure in the forests of the Kumaon Himalayas, India, the author discusses the conceptual limitations that inform this discourse and argues for a culturally and geographically embedded understanding of nature-society relationships. It is argued that places of nature are not just biophysical entities, isolated from local, regional, and global relations of power, but are dialectically constituted by local politics of place, history, and ecology and are constitutive of social relations. In Kumaon, the identities of women are constituted through, always entwined with, everyday practices in the forest, and culturally speci c notions of proper behavior, 'good mothers,' and 'dutiful wives' are mapped in the overlapping domains of village and forests. Such a view of the nature-society dynamic, it is argued, is critical for a grounded and locally meaningful understanding of how gendered relations are operationalized in nature and for insights into thinking about policy issues.
Film, Video, and Multimedia Review, Ghosts of Our Forest.
Ghosts of Our Forest. Produced by Daniel Roher, Isis Essery, and Lisa Trogisch. Written and directed by Daniel Roher. Loud Roar Productions. In Luganda, Rutwa, and English with English subtitles. Digital, 63 mins. 2017. www. ghostsofourforest.com. Ghosts of Our Forest is a documentary-narrative film that follows the Batwa Music Club from Uganda as it prepares for its first show while telling the story of how the Batwa people were displaced from their homes. Daniel Roher, the writer and director, uses production effects like slow motion, reverberation, and the juxtaposition of archival and primary footage to foster sympathy for the extreme poverty, discrimination, and violence experienced by the Batwa ethnic group. Rehearsals with the Batwa Music Club and interviews with elders of the community demonstrate how the Batwa are concerned with issues such as their current living conditions, cultural preservation, and national and international awareness of their situation. Ghosts of Our Forest is a well-made, compelling film that engages the viewer with how questions of environmental conservationist paradigms can precipitate human rights abuses and processes of folklorization. The Batwa, along with other forest communities in central Africa, have been subjected to precarious social and political positions since the 1930s due to conservation efforts to protect the endangered mountain gorilla, which shares their forests. Early protection projects focused only on the gorillas, disregarding any impact that human communities may have on the animals' subsistence. By the 1960s hunting and gathering practices became illegal within the forests, and in 1991 the Mgahinga and Bwindi forests-the home of the Batwa-were declared national parks. The Batwa were violently removed from their homes by armed park rangers and forced to live in peripheral urban communities of Kisoro in the southwest of Uganda. One of the women in the documentary describes their liminal position: "We now live in a state of insecurity, in between two worlds. We don't know if we can go back to the forest and we don't belong to the community outside the forest as well. " Many Batwa live in makeshift shanties on the outskirts of town, facing harsh discrimination, extreme poverty, and legal