This FEELed Note was written by our visiting artist and researcher Clara Kleininger-Wanik.
Wednesday brought together unexpected neighbours in the FEELed lab’s school house: those living around Woodhaven park, who walk it everyday and know its changing (withering) trees, those who work at the FEELed lab, happy to trade their everyday campus office for walking to their desk through a shady, cooling stretch of forest, on screen – a mother racoon with her babies (called kits, as I have just found out), a deer with her two fawns, many squirrels, cedars, cottonwoods and Oregon grape.
And me, screening what I could cobble together during the month I spent as a visiting research student at the FEELed lab. Using my camera to get closer to Woodhaven’s multispecies inhabitants, I sought to understand why water does not flow into the park, leaving them thirsty.
We talked animatedly afterwards about who should see the film, what people need to know about Woodhaven, and what the slow, still images of the park can achieve: an extra thought about how other living beings experience drought, that quail also need to drink, no matter how small they are, and whether the more-than-human gaze, pointed straight at the camera, may be read as an accusation.
Note from the Editors: We will share more reflections from Clara, and a link to Clara’s amazing film when it is ready – stay tuned!
The FEELed lab 