The dream(ing) field lab started as a way to share different knowledge. systems and to create a space for women and femmes of African heritage. Speaking to Zoe from the dream(ing) field lab felt like a nice end to the artist interviews which I have conducted over the past few months. Each artist has given their thoughtful insights for me to reflect upon and I have been grateful and found myself feeling better intend with myself and my project.
Zoe elaborated on her relationship with nature and how she has never seen a separation between herself and the landscape, she has a bee-keeping practice which meant that she learned to work with nature and not against it in a way that we have been taught to see nature as an objective space to overcome.
This point of view is something that I have been reflecting on more and I have been using self-portraits as a way to medicate and document my relationship with nature - in particular with the landscape of my local park in South London. Zoe also talked about elements of the landscape such as fungi/moss and trees and how they function within their own eco-systems - having an awareness of this can hopefully enable us to see nature as not just an isolated objective space that is operating from us, we must learn to acknowledge and understand that nature is not here to serve us and our aspirations.
Zoe’s curiosity and learning about the ancestral knowledge has led her to work in community settings to share and feel agency over nature - this starting with bee-keeping and doing workshops with young people in nature and has been extended in the dream(ing) filed lab which is a collective that I came across on Twitter.
After going to one of their workshops, I felt a sense of community and calmness that I had been seeking lacked in particular around the conversation about climate change and nature. The concept of healing and healing within nature is something that I talked about with Myah Jeffers.
Our conversation focused on the community as I was curious how working as a collective has enabled Zoe and the dream(ing) field lab to think and visualise the conversation about climate change and ecology, in particular with black women and femmes. As I want to create a workshop in the future with a specific focus on communities of colour, I think the methodologies and ideas of the dream(ing) field lab have been a good experience to reflect upon in any future projects I embark on. especially when I am thinking about language and also how to create a welcoming space that will enable everyone to feel engaged and open to talk about climate change, ecology, and their relationship to nature.
Self portrait made in Brockwell Park as part of WIP Sequence. October 2021. ©Marie Smith