A conversation through listening to everyday walks

Abstract

Prior to reading our text in this chapter, we invite you to spend a few minutes listening to and watching this video – https://youtube/SnoQu7B7bVs. What we present here is a conversation between five authors, each residing in different places in Australia and the UK. Sharing, listening and conversing about our everyday rambles, we set out on a collective task of recording a short ‘audio walk’ through our individual local environments.

As a creative act, the chapter unfolds through the experimental, creative and collaborative form of a ‘conversation’ as a way to listen to ‘ecocide’ within and through the often overlooked, seemingly banal and mundane spaces of everyday life. In this era of ecocide, a ‘passionate immersion in the lives of fungi, microorganisms, animals and plants is opening up new understandings, relationships, and accountabilities’ (Van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster 2016: 1). This experimental, emergent and creative approach is inspired by Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy that centres speculation as the ‘art of life’. In this manner, our ‘conversation’ traverses the methods, media and conversations that took place over the duration of this small project....