Bodyplacetime: Painting and blogging ‘dirty, messy’ humannatured becomings

Abstract

The separation of nature and culture has been identified as a significant problem underpinning the failure to adequately address issues of planetary sustainability. In this chapter I explore the necessity of attending to the sustenance of self in order to sustain places through examining painting and blogging as acts of making involved in ‘humannatured becomings’. In my research I spend time with local artists and my daughter, Edith, and we paint (in) local watery places. I then blog these experiences where the paintings and time spent (past) intermingle with my everyday experiences as a mother, education researcher, scientist, and inhabiter in the blogging moment (present). In this chapter I exhibit three blogposts and re-tell the stories of their making. I re-tell the stories from the blog with attention to dirty, messy possibilities, giving me a way to explore the possible humannatured becomings without speaking about them. I find a space of sustenance emerging in a playful, pleasurable present laced with the past, and not focused directly upon a better future. I refer to this space as ‘bodyplacetime.ߣ I conclude having not found my humannatured becoming, given that in becoming other, we may be unrecognisable to ourselves. Though humannatured becomings may not be recognisable, I notice it has been nourishing for me simply to ask the question.