On the state of flux: traveling through and with

“If the Terrestrial is no longer the framework for human action, it is because it participates in that action. […] Space has become an agitated history in which we are participants […].” (“Down to Earth”).

Bruno Latour shows that the territory we believed to be our stable ground has vanished – we are now confronted with the notion that former fixed lines of orientation, be it politically or intellectually, are dissolving, or bending, or spinning. “How are we to orient ourselves?” (“Down to Earth”). We learn from the science of the Critical Zone and Gaia-theory that all life-forms and their material worlds are acting in a fine balance, in repeating cycles and adjustments over various lengths of time, and that the human being appears as a disruptive force within them.

How to engage, how to learn new tools, how to move on when every step seems to be relying too much on a former security, too blind for refined balances? How to be through and with the framework that Latour mentioned in the quote above?

Latour juxtaposes the known system of production with a system of engendering, which “is not interested in producing goods, for humans, on the basis of resources, but in engendering terrestrials – not just humans, but all terrestrials.” And he goes on to state that in this kind of system, “all the animated beings raise questions about descendants and forebears: in short, the question of how to recognize and insert oneself within lineages that will manage to last.” (“Down to Earth”).

Let’s look at lines of movement, at traveling through and with space. And let’s go for a walk, though this could be applied to any other way of moving you prefer. Let’s go for a walk as walking is a simple way to notice and experience that we are in a constant state of flux, a process of adjusting in response to our own anatomies as well as to the material and living forms we are traveling through and with.

With special thanks to Marlon for support in camera and sound.