the research/
This work addresses a local question that has global
applicability: what if there is no material division between “nature space” and
“culture space,” and the obligation to care for and about living systems reaches beyond the borders of those categories and into all environments of our daily
lives?
While the question is broadly applicable, the specificities of this particular project help scaffold thinking through what borders and boundaries between nature/culture mean materially.
This project focuses on the space on either side of the boundary line around the UW Madison Arboretum –the conservation park on one side and other forms of built landscape including houses, industry, freeway, golf course on the other –and looks for kin-collective of black walnut trees that traverse and tresspass the imagined line.
I am an Arboretum Research Fellow, and in that role I have a permit to collect walnut leaves inside the boundaries of the Arboretum.
My transect, or the path along which I travel and record my encounters with walnut trees, crisscrosses roads, trails & neighborhoods.
I am looking for very old walnut trees, such as the tree at the west entrance to the Areboretum which is at least 171 years old, and for very young walnuts that might be their offspring, such as the small saplings growing in many front garden beds.The oldest black walnuts growing where the Arboretum stands now precede the conservation park, and precede the division of the landscape into parcels that followed the arrival of settler-colonial surveyors. The oldest black walnuts in the surrounding neighborhoods likewise have stood rooted since before the streets were poured in. Their offspring trees crowd along marginal spaces such as fences, sidewalks, and the bike path.