<div dir="ltr"><br clear="all"><div><div dir="ltr" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><font size="2">Thank you so much, Joan, for your thoughts. I, too, am finding these to be such (organically) fertilizing conversations and
I do hope a Ruderal Witchcraft Manifesto might arise from this thread.</font></font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><font size="2"> <br></font></font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><font size="2">In both the projects I described, the politics of remediation were fairly acute. In each case, I was confronted with my own naivete about bioremediation and conservation (at the time imagining these only beneficial), through discovering the more capitalist intentions for how they could/would be used and how I was possibly implicated. The politics of remediation are rife with ethical dilemmas, I learned, and surely the morally ambiguous Hecate was cackling at the crossroads there. Certainly the corvids were.<br></font></font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><font size="2"><br></font></font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><font size="2">I like Oliver's reflexive cautioning about the tendency to romanticize (in this case, the ruderal), particularly as creative thinkers and empathic makers, while at the same time, I very much resonate with Margarethe's delving into the shadow work of compost processes, and I wonder how to best embrace our human interventionist roles in such complex workings. <br></font></font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><font size="2">The Mi'kmaq curator/ethnologist I consulted with in Halifax had very clear boundaries around those specific ruderal territories of the gold mine tailings. His perspective was, in his strong words, that people need to, "leave it the fuck alone" and let time take care of it instead. This sentiment links to your musings on slow violence and different paces of harm, Joan, which I find fascinating.
Does slow violence ask specifically for slow recovery? Is the technology of magic a good facilitator here?
</font></font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><font size="2"><br></font></font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><font size="2">One of the interventions that environmental scientists had already attempted at the tailings sites was to 'cap' the toxic piles of sand--cover them under some kind of sheeting, essentially, so that animals (deer) would not eat the plants that grew there and absorb the metals, etc. I should note here that concern for the toxicity levels in the animals was in part motivated by the desire of local hunters to hunt and eat them without risk of bio-accumulating poison (much like how reindeer in <span>Sápmi </span>
have bio-accumulated cesium from the spread of Chernobyl's radioactive snowfall on lichen and are sometimes rendered inedible). In reality, the capping approach backfired, causing the toxic metals and arsenic to leach more concentrated into the groundwater, exacerbating the problem. <br></font></font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><font size="2"><br></font></font></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><font size="2">When my scientist collaborator asked how best to acknowledge and work within multiple areas of expertise (e.g. indigenous science) going forward, Roger (the Mi'kmaq curator) told her to look to the artists, because artists are already doing it. Perhaps ruderal witchcraft is likewise powerful in some capacity to squat along the edges of boundary spaces and see with two or three eyes focused on contiguous perspectives, a long observance facilitating a more measured response? In Mi'kmaq philosophy/practice, there is a concept of "two-eyed seeing" that is used to describe a way of producing knowledge that respects the situated knowledges of indigenous peoples as well as Western science, for example. What about using imaginary hindsight/ foresight, for what Marisa described as the possibility "to develop / expand a means of re-valuation that can be tied to beings<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">-</span>with or of the ruderal<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">? that</span><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>which may not regard accumulation / ownership, and instead focus on a care of multispecies others<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></span>?" <br></font></font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><font size="2">PS - Marisa, I still have the bundles! <br></font></font></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><font size="2"><br></font></font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="2">So looking forward to hearing more about this and the Cyborgian goddex discussions,</font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="2">WhiteFeather</font></span><br></div><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Nov 10, 2019 at 1:05 PM <<a href="mailto:joanharan@gmail.com" target="_blank">joanharan@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
I'm hoping this doesn't fankle the threading, as I'm not getting my own<br>
posts to reply to. I will eventually get to the discussion about cyborgs and<br>
Goddesses, but first I'd like to ramble a little more about the foregoing<br>
ruderal witchcraft thread, mainly to express my joy at the work that you are<br>
all doing. I've been fascinated by Oliver's work since I first heard him<br>
talk about it in Oregon in 2013, and as I've been wandering about on my own<br>
research journeys since I've been delighted to discover we're caught up in<br>
the same cat's cradle as Margaretha and Beverly Naidus, as well as other<br>
research friends like Michelle Bastian at the University of Edinburgh who I<br>
just had to email about WhiteFeather's exploration of lichenological time.<br>
WhiteFeather, I found myself reacting with visceral horror when you<br>
described the Norwegian government's policy of waterblasting as I so quickly<br>
became invested in their tenacious lifespans. I also found the comparison<br>
between your artistic poetic inoculation and the "industrial scale<br>
bioremediation" that usurped it very striking. I'm thinking of Rob Nixon's<br>
work on slow violence and wondering about different paces of harm and<br>
remediation.<br>
<br>
-----Original Message-----<br>
From: <a href="mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
<<a href="mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a>> On Behalf Of margaretha<br>
haughwout<br>
Sent: 10 November 2019 07:58<br>
To: soft_skinned_space <<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a>><br>
Subject: [-empyre-] Introducing Special Guest Joan Haran -- On Cyborgs and<br>
Goddesses: the work of Haraway and Starhawk<br>
<br>
----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div>