From February to July, 2024 I had the opportunity to participate in an intradisciplinary, creative-critical enquiry towards an Experimental Ecology of Line with Camilla Nelson, a PhD and founding editor of Singing Apple Press, whose work explores the materiality of language in relation to the other-than-human world.
Ecology of Line really resonated with me because I see my environmental art projects as entwined in line. While I initially thought about above-ground lines like linear perspective, the horizon, property and plot lines, I soon added notions of thready roots and tendrils of my beans, and the shapes of living and dead organic matter in the soil beneath my feet. Printmaking is also a particularly line-oriented medium.
Each month, using Tim Ingold’s taxonomy of line as a framework, the group of artists, poets, writers, scholars, and creatives explored nature though the lenses of threads, dots and blobs, traces, weaves and transcriptions. Through group discussion, sharing, and generous feedback, we each strove to produce a creative work – be it an image, poem or text, video, or other construct of some type – that encapsulated our individual creative thinking that month. In the summer each participant was invited to submitted two pieces for presentation in a group exhibition. This fall Towards an Experimental Ecology of Line was launched, curated by Camilla Nelson, and including works by Amanda Brown, Carol Dalton, Susanne Eules, Nancy Holmes, Petra Kuppers, Boya Liang, Karen Neuberg, Mary Newell, Chris Partridge, Linda Russo, Beth Shepherd, Jennifer Spector, Natalie Vestin, Tessa Waite, and Sarah Westcott.
The exhibition presents a selection of work in four groupings related to Ingold’s taxonomy of line: TRACE, THE THREAD & THE WEAVE, DOTS & BLOBS, and TOWARDS AN ECOLOGY OF LINE. I have work in the first and the last sections. In TRACE I have my artist book series of prints called DROUGHT. In TOWARDS AN ECOLOGY OF LINE you can view my two-minute video poem: Plot 46: The Unterwelt. Please enjoy the entire innovative collection of work.
I enjoyed this collaborative form of artmaking so much – it is like being on an international residency — that I have signed up for the ADVANCED EXPERIMENTAL ECOLOGY OF LINE, designed for “towards an experimental ecology of line” graduates.