Thinking with the Forest

The Refrain: Getting in Sync with the World.

Episode 1, Thinking with the Forest, connects the work of Montreal-based anthropologist Eduardo Kohn — and his careful exploration of the question ‘what is a self, and do plants and animals have one?’ — to our own approach to collaborative creation with all the 'selves' around us. The main source for this episode is Kohn's book How Forests Think. We also draw on the work of Jane Bennett and her book Vibrant Matter, Peter Wohlleben and his book The Hidden Life of Trees, and the work of Canadian forest ecologist Suzanne Simard.
Credits:
Text and voice: Alex Lazaridis
Sound composition: James Maxwell
Visual artwork: Jay White
Other contributors: The world around us
About the series
The Refrain: Getting in Sync with the World is an investigation of the ideas that inform the work of Fight With a Stick Performance. Through voice and sound we investigate our interconnectedness with the world around us and our collaboration with the other-than-human. Each episode explores one or more approaches, including philosophies such as assemblage theory, Object Oriented Ontology, post humanism, anthropology beyond the human, neuroscience, traditional cultures, resurgent cultures, new forestry, biology, and more.
For a full transcript of this episode go to talkperformance.org:
Sources:
How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human. By Eduardo Kohn. https://www.amazon.ca/How-Forests-Think-Toward-Anthropology/dp/0520276116/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3RQVY2FQ748FF&keywords=how+forests+think&qid=1657037565&sprefix=How+forests+t%2Caps%2C206&sr=8-1
Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. By Jane Bennett. https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=vibrant+matter+jane+bennett&i=stripbooks&crid=3JBGGKZQXYR1J&sprefix=Vibrant+Matter%2Cstripbooks%2C215&ref=nb_sb_ss_c_2_14_ts-doa-p
The Hidden Life of Trees. By Peter Wohlleben. https://www.amazon.ca/Hidden-Life-ofTrees-Illustrated/dp/177164348X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2Y2MIL4UXRMCE&keywords=Wolleben&qid=1657037846&s=books&sprefix=wolleben%2Cstripbooks%2C279&sr=1-1
Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. By Suzanne Simard. https://www.amazon.ca/Finding-Mother-Tree-Discovering-Intelligence/dp/0735237751/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3A3OEUG43T0QM&keywords=finding+the+mother+tree+by+suzanne+simard&qid=1657037926&s=books&sprefix=Finding+the+mother%2Cstripbooks%2C221&sr=1-1
Video YouTube lecture: Anthropology as Cosmic Diplomacy: Toward an Ecological Ethics for the Anthropocene. Eduardo Kohn. https://youtu.be/87yJKnVSd0k

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