Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

In this paper I will outline how the construction of entangled participation in the Valley of the Wild occurred through a series of both circumstantial and deliberate methodological operations. I do this by outlining the key theoretical perspectives and how they operated together in overlapping sequences to inform an ethico-aesthetic method deployed to ignite events towards constructing an aesthetic community. The event will be explained in ecological terms, meaning to ignite evental conditions, i.e. new ways of developing ongoing processes of engagement for both human and nonhuman participants towards building participatory community. In this paper I will outline how the major outcome has been the development of a website, which can be understood as itself an ongoing process and as part of such ecological practices of events. The website, called, “When the Creek Talks Back,” encapsulates an ecology of listening and speaking in its design for both human and nonhuman participants.