A DOTS FIELD GUIDE: Introduction to the Series

DRAWING ON THE END OF THE WORLD | RED HOOK

exercise 1:

Make a drawing of the stump from the sensory perspective of someone in the stump’s ecosystem. How might a beetle record its daily traversals above, around, or across the remains of the tree? How might the roots of the grasses surrounding the stump be communicating with the tree root mycelium under the ground? What senses might these trunk dwellers, neighbors and visitors use to interact with the stump? Experiment with ways to draw the trunk through the eyes, ears, feet, sensilla or mechanoreceptors of someone in this trunk’s community.  

exercise 2:

Find a place to explore the soil. You don’t have to dig it up or even see it, you can just stand there, or sit, and feel it. Imagine yourself with roots reaching down into the earth. Now imagine your rooted form has decomposed and is traveling through the soil as mineral. How far back through time can you travel? When you’ve gone as far as you can, down to the bedrock or further, start making your return through the hot and cold layers of earth, through glacial till and outwash,through dredge and fill materials, through the leaded soil and turf above. What is carried back into your body from those soils? Can you taste the sediment of deep time on your tongue?

Close your eyes and make a drawing of that soil in your body. Keeping your eyes closed, scan through your body and let your hands make whatever marks they want to make as you explore this dark terrain. What secrets does it hold? What grows from that soil?

exercise 3:

Find a place where you can be still, perhaps on the bench in front of the record shop if you can find a spot, and write or draw all of the sounds you sense. Listen with your whole body, with your bones and your nervous system.

Now imagine the noisy street disappearing under a great wave. 18,000 years ago, the record shop would have been under a glacial lake, and climate change predictions say it may be underwater again in 2050. Drop down below the surface. Feel the vibrations, the sound waves passing through your head. You can remove your headphones now, plug your ears with your fingers, and just swim through the tidal creeks that still flow under the surface of the asphalt, concrete and cobblestone streets, carrying you back to the marshy shore, into the Buttermilk Channel, around the bay. Swim backwards and forwards in time, swim through glacial melts and ice age nematodes. Swim through the estuary waters where the beginning and end of the world mix. Sing, listen, breathe when you need to, and keep swimming.

These exercises can be used as reflections or as prompts for a series or project. If you would like to share your reflections and work, you can upload images, text, audio, and video files to:

Red Hook Field Guide Participant Works

Thank you:

The handmade paper works were created with Red Hook Soil, and recycled paper generously donated by NY Printing and Graphics on 381 Van Brunt St 11AR 

Sources:

https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/56225

https://www.nyc.gov/assets/oer/downloads/pdf/red-hook-brooklyn.pdf

https://www.bklynlibrary.org/blog/2019/09/10/not-so-brief-history-red

https://www.redhookconservancy.org/about-red-hook

https://redhookwaterstories.org/

https://www.sutori.com/en/story/erie-basin-red-hook--TTb8H8L6xoMqMoxPKoesJ8Ww

https://www.hudsonriver.org/article/december-2020-ames-seminar

https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0833/ML083390034.pdf

https://scienceandnonduality.com/article/becoming-earth/

https://catmap.co/

https://www.consumerreports.org/corporate-accountability/amazon-warehouses-are-straining-a-brooklyn-neighborhood-a2966247023/

https://urbansoils.org/blog-pedosphere/soils-and-the-city

https://www.nycgovparks.org/about/history/geology

Additional Reading:

The writers and speakers whose work I thought with while writing this guide include

Bayo Akomolafe

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Catherine Keller

Naomi Klein

Eben Kirksey

Beatrice Marovich

Anna Tsing