More-than-Human Dérive interweaves more-than-human stories and perspectives to imagine our shared forest futures. Through drifting, we might augment sensing and knowing our forests to include more-than-human stories, ‘voices’, and perspectives by exploring new ways of mapping with expanded, multisensory ideas of data. More-than-Human Dérive brings together existing open datasets about urban forests and invites people to add their own stories using different kinds of media, sensory impressions, and personal expressions.
We’re hopeful this would entangle the existing dataset with data that question and obscure the currently collected and available – mostly quantitative – data about creatures in and around urban forests. In recognition of the profound need in mapping to dismantle the imperialist and colonialist discourses, and support for pluralism, some data and information are deliberately made ambiguous on the map and the portal itself. With More-than-Human Dérive, we desire to playfully encourage people to join us in this questioning so that we can imagine and build beyond human-centred and instead more-than-human futures. We found inspirations from and applied the “drifty” ways the Situationist International challenged the established urban systems through creative engagement. We are hopeful that further evolution of More-than-Human Dérive will deepen and diversify means of troubling across scales, and importantly, imagining and care-full action towards more-than-human futures. More-than-Human Dérive Uroboros Edition is inspired by and entangled with many different projects past and present, including the version launched at 2021 Melbourne Knowledge Week, with a feral twist.
To register for the More-than-Human Dérive – Uroboros Edition session, visit the event page at the Uroboros 2021 festival website.
The More-than-Human Dérive – Uroboros Edition is part of the Feral Creative Practices track at the Uroboros Festival 2021, along with Nocturne Altar Hack: Wild Designs for New Eco-rituals by Isabelle Beavers, Cyano Automaton by Agnieszka Pokrywka, Building a vocabulary for change by Amira Hanafi and the workshops Feral ways of knowing and transformation and Learning Feral Ways of Transformation – hands on workshop. The festival track will conclude with an open conversation on Feral Creative Practices.
CreaTures project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870759. The content presented represents the views of the authors, and the European Commission has no liability in respect of the content.
