Wild_ _ness/Weird_ness

BAMFIELD, BRITISH COLUMBIA — AUGUST 6–12, 2016

• WILD_ _ NESS // WEIRD _ NESS by Gwen MacGregor, Lewis Nicholson
• Increasingly I have become suspicious of the wilderness by Gwen MacGregor
• The Crabs were elusive, Little George Retired, and the Weirdness of the Crustacea Transcends Time and Space” by Rodney Sayers
• ANTHRO-TOPO-Scene by Hester Jiskoot
• Wildness/Weirdness by Dagmar Dahle
• Collaboration mediated by nature by Cat Normoyle, Rebecca Tegtmeyer

Wild_ _ness/Weird_ness explores pathless, tangled places that quicken the eye and body to wholly alien and complex languages.

Explorations of the natural world often focus on an element of environmental guilt or awestruck wonder. Being (rather than talking about) in pathless, tangled places quicken the eye and body to wholly different and complex languages. As the relationship between the manufactured and natural worlds reaches a crisis point, how might humans unlearn from pre- and post-industrial approaches to problem-solving?

If wild_ ness situates itself apart from the cultivated world—untamed, unrestrained, unruly—and weird_ness draws its roots from a supernatural state, what do we need to do to suspend belief? Is there something to being in wild _ness that offers an alternative to the design process? Can design bewilder?