1. ANALYSIS // The Anishinaabe language in contrast to German or English, is dominated by verbs rather than nouns, which are “gendered” as animate or inanimate. For me, this grammar creates a vision of copious actants interacting and compromising to meet individual and collective needs. Latour, too, contends that place is a socio-spatial assemblage of relations between actants: places, people, things (note: these are nouns in German and English). From this I understand that as a designer, with the privilege to shape physical space, it is important I train my eye to see relationality and interdependence. Through the observation of fractal patterns in nature, I am learning how this plays out across scales. The Small is All. Systems reproduce themselves like a matryoshka doll. I project this onto the fact that the social and ecological crises originate from the same root causes: colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy - one could say hierarchies of animacy - and with this knowledge, I can no longer settle for isolated “solutions” which ask us to choose between green or social but not both. I believe that every alteration to space must be bound to the responsibility to increase ecological functioning, that we have a duty to give to ecosystems more than we take, and concurrently, that this cannot come at the cost of marginalized communities, locally or globally. Yes, I want to have the cake and eat it too - that is the challenge my generation has been served. That’s not to say that I have all the answers or even that I am sure it is possible, but that I intend to hold myself to the process of (co)learning and adapting through experimental design towards a just future.
2. PROCESS AS PRODUCT // If we understand that the only lasting truth is change, then the process itself becomes the product. This is true of ecological systems, of culture and of our visions; the moment things become static, is the moment they die. Thus, I believe we must occupy both theory and practice, we must be both utopian and practical, grounded in the current yet not limited by it. Translated to a personal positionality, I think this means defining myself not as a landscape architect but as a person who practices listening to landscape and doing my best to assist it in functioning well and catering to as many actants as possible. If I truly understand the meaning of the commons, then I, as a designer, must work in duty for the collective good, not (only) for the realization of my own wildest dreams. My role is to assist people in believing that what they already know is necessary is also very possible - if we believe, decide and then persist, as a collective. Yes, landscape architecture is as much collective narrative creation as it is the creation of beautiful, functional, multidimensional spaces.
3. WHAT ABOUT MAINTENANCE? // If the process is the product, then the need for maintenance no longer exists, as the word “product” implies a final state which then must be maintained. Similar to abolitionist critiques of punishment as justice, maintenance as care seems shortsighted. No, I certainly don’t mean that ecosystems or cultural spaces do not require care but perhaps that the care that a linear planning framework understands as maintenance work should occur much sooner in the design process. What if we applied principles of maintenance - care work - directly at the outset, in the analysis phase? What would we learn about a site if we tried to care for it before we redesigned it? Perhaps this would reveal the obstacles that are preventing the site from functioning more autonomously. I am beginning to understand these obstacles as a kind of violence we are inflicting on landscape, as if it needs punishment. From the abolition movement I have learned: first, do no harm. And I wonder: can active listening to the land reveal to us which small interventions can unleash revolutionary change?
PERSONAL NOTES // (1) I will never be perfect. Neither will my designs. Perfect is not the goal; health, care and happiness for all, in the broadest sense, is. (2) I myself am part of the system. I do not exist in a vacuum. I am not only practicing landscape architecture but also activism, empathy and being of the earth. I must repeatedly let sink in that everything I change changes me. Ultimately, I am committed to the intimate, personal work of decolonizing my own brain and heart as a learning and unlearning process that will never be complete.