Gathering Ecology
If it is a human thing to do to wander off, to notice something because it is interesting, it reminds you of someone, it is helpful, or beautiful, and put it into your brain, or a notebook, or a browser tab, or a list on your phone, or a piece of paper on your desk, or the pockets of your coat, or what have you, and carry it with you, and then later on you take it out, or find it again by accident, and use it or share it or hold on to it for a little longer or put it in the collection, the shrine, the place containing that what grounds you, and then next day you probably do much the same again – if to do that is human, if that’s what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time.
– Marin de Heij, adapted from The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. le Guin
Gathering Ecology is a research project, a method for conversation, a tool for gathering and sharing together. It explores ways of being in relation to the more-than-human/the earth/the entangled web/our ecology through the lens of neurodivergence, emphasising community, sharing, and the complexity of our lived experiences. Offering a feeling of kinship, community, and belonging among us, neurodivergent people, neurotypical people, more-than-human people, as a whole.
The project departs from the theory of neurodivergence being a remnant of our hunter-gatherer past and draws a parallel between The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. le Guin and neurodivergent thinking. Through the story of the Carrier Bag le Guin provides a new narrative of community and sharing, messiness and confliction. In Gathering Ecology, I propose the Carrier Bag and the act of Gathering as an analogy/metaphor/carrier for the neurodivergent mind; neurodivergent minds tend to Gather. In the Carrier Bag as well as neurodivergent minds there is no linearity, everything is there all at once.
For Gathering Ecology I organised three sessions in which I invited other neurodivergent people to explore, gather, share and create with me. What was their vision on my research, did they identify with the Carrier Bag, how would they imagine their Carrier Bag, etc?
Gathering Ecology can be experienced through an analog-interactive installation featuring session documentation, embroidery, weaving, audio, printed matter, and a passage from The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction entangled with my adaptation of the same text.
