In an experimental sound artwork, an art and ecology research collective talks with an elder piñon pine about the future and other arboreal concerns.
We, the Submergence Collective, imagine a radical future in which the knowledge, experiences, and stories of more-than-human entities will be heard and understood and that all species will be consulted in ethical decision-making for our shared futures.
In our experimental sound artwork, Bearing Withness (2024)—both a performance and conversation—the collective talks with an elder piñon pine. We confer about change, loss, grief, and futurity. The tree is connected to a biodata synthesizer which “reads” the electrochemical activity within the tree and translates this data into audible sounds. The unfolding conversation gestures towards an imaginarium of humility and relationship with other species as they experience tremendous change.
This interview with a piñon is part of The Piñon Project—an intentionally slow-growing, multi-year exploration of the ecological and cultural resonance of piñon pine (Pinus edulis). Piñon is a vital member of New Mexico’s ecology and culture, providing nourishment, shelter, and kinship for myriad species for millennia. As Southwest communities contend with the potential extinction of piñon due to compounding anthropogenic conditions, including increasing aridity, rising temperatures, wildfire, bark beetle, and the coextinction of their essential mycorrhizal partner, Geopora pinyonensis, the project deeply considers the nuanced entanglement of care and violence in symbolic and biological symbiosis.
The project asks, what emerges through grieving, witnessing, and listening to each other?
The project enfolds these complexities into visual art, sound, storytelling, poetry, and regenerative actions. We advocate for tangible approaches and accessible meditations on what it means to be a surviving species on a quickly changing planet. The project asks, what emerges through grieving, witnessing, and listening to each other? What are decisions we can make together about multi-species care and hospicing?
Listen to the site recording of the conversation here. Readers/listeners are invited to seek out and sit with a piñon as they experience the conversation. In the spirit of collaboration and community science, we also invite readers to contribute their accounts of deeply listening to piñons to The Piñon Project to weave diverse voices into the narrative preservation of this keystone species. To contribute, please fill out this form and tell us a little more about your experience sitting with a piñon. These contributions will be included in our forthcoming book about this project and piñon’s vitality within the Southwest bioregion.
The Submergence Collective is an art and ecology research collective composed of Kaitlin Bryson, Hollis Moore, Mariko Oyama Thomas, and Rachel Zollinger. The collective employs education, interactive workshops, performance, visual art, and writing to imagine and facilitate the realization of a more balanced future where the goals and actions of humans are aligned with the thriving of all species.
