Weaving Witnessing: A creative search for re-entanglement

Abstract: In a creative exploration, Nicole Taylor and Xander Garcia engage in a collaborative reflection that entwines visual exploration and metaphor to weave together personal and poetic narratives, academic theories, and observations of a world fragmented by Cartesian dualism. Drawing on personal and lived experiences, place-based and outdoor education, systems thinking, and transformative education, their conversation seeks the possible re-entanglement of humans with the more-than-human world. Taylor and Garcia use wefts and warps as weaving symbols to represent their voices and their lived experiences. Also woven throughout is their journey with theoretical insights and historical roots of the separation of humans from nature (Cartesian dualism and the Capitalocene). With deep grief and curiosity, they effort to make sense of witnessing ecological devastation while also advocating for a movement and language that creates a possible “next,” beyond the Anthropocene. This work, with heartbreak and hope, searches for interconnected roots and community through multi-modal forms of engagement and reciprocity, ultimately envisioning possible paths toward collective re-entanglement, transformative justice, and in-becoming more-than-human.