SENSORY INDEX: CREEK NOTES 4-7

Developed to accompany the online work M0ther developed by the Umwelt Collective, the Sensory Index: Creek notes 4-7 is a short collection of texts developed in embodied relationship and response to four creeks across Australia. Utilising New Materialist and Post-human frameworks, this series weaves together field notes, poetic response and sensorial mapping processes, examining how bodies of water run through our understanding of site and self. Arising from attentive, slow work in each location, Sensory Index: Creek notes 4-7 looks to the myriad bodies, dynamics and languages of the creeks as archives, choreographies, points of transition and of departure. By noting ‘attempts’ at engagement, efforts to move beyond the anthropocentric habit of contemporary western culture, Sensory Index: Creek notes 4-7 explores the embodied and embedded ways we come to know the non-human world, and wonders what it is to learn from and alongside the water bodies that we encounter in daily life.

(Creek nurses’ bodies, hatching.)

The gestures here are guarded. Light low in the deepest part of the water, wattle trees bent low, shielding the water from a historic violence in perpetual motion. The rocks lean in from storm water drains ready to topple on bodies less welcome than mosquitos thickening the wet air (there can be no question that the vocabulary of moss is one of ease) - magpie lark, blow fly, minor, cockatoo, moss, labrador (black) golden retriever puppy, great dane, staffy (grey) lollipop stick, straw, straw, glass, tinsel, bubble wrap, (wattle bird) cling film, chewing gum wrapper x 6 and packet and gum, t-shirt, cardigan, whistle, driver’s license, bong, train ticket, wrapper, safety tape, human, polystyrene (big, small, individual) yoghurt tub, ice-cream cup, twist ties, chip packet, snickers bar (frog).

Feels like itching, like slight shards of plastic between fingernail and flesh.

Sensory Index: Creek notes 4-7 was published by Outerspaceari as a part of Umwelt Collectives M0ther exhibition and can be read in full here.