“What nourishes our lives and our work? What does it mean to eat well in the Anthropocene?” were the questions that kicked-off our April walking seminar, a special addition with a very special guest: Sophie Chao. Following a beautiful seminar-lecture about Multispecies mourning by Sophie the day before, we went into the Dutch meadows to walk and talk.
Sometimes, at these walking seminars, the thematic questions are discussed. Sometimes, they are lived through. Our conversations loosely meandered, together with the river we walked along. We talked about nutritional microbes and placentas and living arrangements in rural towns. We exchanged elegies about attempts to finish articles that stick to us like thistles, and our eyes grew wide with newfound curiosity we hoped to nourish with new research projects.
All the while, we stopped talking every now and then, to feel the sun pleasantly heating the tops of our heads (or scolding ourselves for forgetting sunscreen) or to point out animals we crossed paths with. There were a lot of animals: swallows sweeping low to catch bugs, hares making startled eye contact before scurrying away, water birds tugging along in the river, goats grinding their jaws together in that sideways motion goats use to grind their jaws together. When squinting into the sun for a group picture, a herd of sheep stared right back at us. Cows urinated in the same fields that we’d come to urinate in ourselves, for lack of a public toilet.
One moment in particular stuck with me (Sam). At the end of the journey, we sat down at a cafe. As we drank our fermented beverages and nibbled on olives, a barn door opened in the adjacent farm. A swarm of brown cows stormed into the field. They looked childishly joyous, these gargantuan beasts. Every fiber of their muscles became visible as they jumped up and down, as if miming: “The sun is out, it’s really out! And at long last, winter is over, we find ourselves in the field again.” They paraded over the farm’s surface before settling down to graze. I felt so similar, being out in the sun again. Of course, the difference was that I was chewing on a piece of cheese as this thought went through my mind.
What does it mean to feed and be fed in multi-species worlds? While the question may have been discussed, it was mostly felt. Through a resonance across fleshy and furry bodies, roaming the same flat landscape under the burning sun, bodies bearing the scars from being squeezed through winter’s dark tube, but also the asymmetrical interdependence of bodies that feed on one another, that grant each other existence through relations both generous and fraught.
Walkers: Sophie, Andie, Rebeca, Ildikó, René, Roos, Kyana, Sam, Samar, Michelle, Butet, Shivani, Rebeca, Shahana, Moataz.
Photo Collage by Ildikó Plájás, text by Sam van der Lugt.
