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Contribution short abstract:

The presentation outlines how an ‘experiential’ urban walking intervention can help subvert the currently hegemonic conformations of power by catalysing respectful acknowledgement of and relationship with other-than-human nature.

Contribution long abstract:

The epoch we live in is informed by a variety of hegemonic and variably synergistic power formations centred around the Anthropos, capital, the plantation, as well as others. Among the notable effects of these power formations are the unfolding ecological crisis and expanding urbanization.

With other-than-human (OTH) nature fast disappearing and the majority of human beings living in towns and cities, it is particularly in the urban environment that OTH-human entanglements proliferate; it is therefore here that opportunities to think and practice subversively different ways to be-come human and to experience, conceive and relate to OTH nature can, and must, be found.

Mindful of these considerations and focusing on the U.K., the presentation outlines an ‘experiential’ urban walking intervention.

The intervention draws on a number of insights, from phenomenology to Material Feminisms, and conceptualises walking as a world-shaping-world-shaped poietic process through which OTH and human entities continually materialise.

Building on this theoretical framework, the walking activity mobilises multisensory perception, behaviour, and language to achieve a number of interlinked objectives. These include, firstly, to answer in an emancipatory way the largely unmet public demand for contact with OTH nature and boost human well-being; secondly, to promote respectful acknowledgement and interaction with OTH nature. Lastly, to provide first-hand experience that every OTH natural entity, even the most ‘mundane’, should be acknowledged and respected in a non-utilitarian way.

By aiming to achieve these (and other) objectives, the intervention would unsettle the currently hegemonic conformations of power that be and help materialise alternative worldings.