The aim is to use creative skills to foster sustainable and regenerative connections with the natural world. In doing so, nature connection practices must draw upon and navigate a variety of intellectual knowledge traditions, from botany to human psychology. Additionally, embodied practices, spiritual traditions, indigenous knowledge, and esoteric thinking systems all inform us on sustainable ways of living in harmony with the land.
The third theme we aim to explore in the Creative Retreat is the application of existing knowledge traditions in projects like these. This field is filled with conflicts and differing viewpoints. However, rather than promoting a dogmatic stance in favor of one tradition, our goal is to strengthen a vocabulary that facilitates exchange between them. When working in public spaces, the objective is to find strategies for engaging with and communicating across these varied perspectives through their practices.
What is natural and sustainable? In efforts to form new relationships with the land, practices like these often intersect with larger philosophical questions about what “natural” and “nature” mean in various traditions. The term “sustainable”itself is problematic—is it simply an attempt to conserve a nature that is always changing? What are re-naturalization practices? Can something truly become natural again if “natural” means untouched by humans? What defines an invasive species? How can something be invasive if it is part of the natural world?
What biases exist in our ways of approaching nature? Perspectives from ecofeminism, queer ecology, and postcolonial thinking suggest that we need to examine how nature has been (and continues to be) understood in order to form possible sustainable ways of living with it in the present. Such critiques have influenced how artists and activists approach ecological projects, from questioning the history of plant naming to examining how the sexual ordering of nature shapes our ideas about the natural world. Taking part in these discussions is from the art world often considered central to the artistic potential of projects like these.