Abstract
The Exotic Terrains – grounding critical walking practice in the post-Anthropocene
By Louisa King, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
This paper discusses agency creative practice research in accessing specific forms of ‘earth bound knowledge’(E et al., 1941) in the post-Anthropocene. By illuminating creative practices agile nature as means to access the direct site of the philosophical inquiry at the foundation of critical post-Anthropocene thinking makes a case for and offers strategies towards creative responses in problematizing this epoch. With a focus on movement and landscape, in particular walk-events, the paper will discuss strategies coming from creative walking practice, which embed walking within the spatial-temporal realm of the ‘environmental crossings’ of climatic change and earth system collapse. This is offered in an alternative to typical to design approaches to these dilemmas, which typically see the environment as a problem to be solved, and seek moral responses of guilt, fear and paralysis. Here, sensitive zones of earthly contemplation are brought to light in my creative practice, as praxis offers up modalities for accessing knowledge epistemes’ which must be encountered. Sensitive zones, are places of acute sensorial and thought space, in which complex entangled ontologies and epitomes must be known.
Author keywords
Post-Anthropocene, walking practice, landscape, environment, knowledge, socio-material