Listening to E/earth

Listening to E/earth

FORM at Arcosanti

October 2026

Instructions for Listening to Ear/th

Description:

Instructions for Listening to E/earth is a grounded and joyful collective experience founded on deep listening.

An orthographic text score.

Instructions for Listening to E/earth is a collaborative composition founded on the principles of deep listening. Together participants compose a moment specific text score by practicing slow, focused, and imaginative listening, and participating in actions inspired by the Instructions in Listening to the Earth score. By bridging geo-poetics and a collective creative experience, Instructions for Listening to E/earth presents “deep listening” as a practice rooted in ecofeminist ethics of attentional care, positioning listening as an available tool for reanimating love of earth, leading to activism for our home planet, and each other.

As we become more connected to the special environment of Arcosanti, constructed on a volcanic mesa, rich in dark, dense basalt rock, our breath exchanges with the air around us, feeding plants as they feed us, our symbiotic bodies made-up of more microbial cells: bacteria, fungi, archaea, and viruses than human cells. As we walk, as we live, we exchange atoms with everything around us. Our bodies are made of the very same chemical elements and minerals found in the Earth’s crust. The inorganic nutrients required for human biological functions—such as building bones, carrying oxygen, and firing nerves—originate directly from the earth. We are all of Earth and the earth is us.

Statement:

In my practice and research, I imagine extending my senses to understand the experiences and sensations of other life forms. If I could feel like the other, wouldn’t I treat the other with respect and value their life? I believe that acknowledging our entangled interdependence will bring us a saner future—an alternative to our current destructive state of separation from nature. I envision a future that bridges the rift between humanity and our ecosystem, fostering a collaborative way of living in which all species exist respectfully within a complex, interdependent network.

My studio practice spans performance, interventions, video, sculpture, multimedia installation, and collaboration. Most recently, I have become captivated by eco-acoustics, which sharpens sensitivity to the unseen and unheard species living and growing all around us. When I record the natural world—capturing the sounds of lichen, rocks, or wind moving through trees—I feel a wild, visceral connection to it, as vibrations resonate through my skull via my headphones. I am increasingly aware of my aging body, learning to appreciate it as both a metaphor for our ancient planet and a record of time—a collapsed timescale compared to the slow growth of lichen or the gradual formation of sedimentary layers, yet a record, nonetheless. I value art as a way to communicate ideas, present potent possibilities, and grant permission to sit quietly in the world, recognizing our place in nature. Art may also serve as a tool. Author Amitav Ghosh, in The Great Derangement, argues that contemporary art has largely failed by rarely addressing the most pressing issue of our time—the global climate crisis. He writes: “When future generations look back upon the Great Derangement (Ghosh’s term for our inability to apprehend ecological cataclysm), they will certainly blame the leaders and politicians of this time for their failure to address the climate crisis. But they may well hold artists and writers to be equally culpable—for the imagining of possibilities is not, after all, the job of politicians and bureaucrats.”

I agree that we have failed to share a compelling creative vision to counter climate change. This is why I focus on making work that is making-with: collaborative, boundaryless, and open to change and growth.