Field Notes for the Future invites artists to spend time with place: observing, questioning, documenting, experimenting, and making alongside ecologists, researchers, community members, and the more-than-human world.
There is no prescribed medium or outcome. A field note might begin as a drawing, photograph, sound recording, poem, performance, material experiment, map, movement, conversation, or something we haven’t imagined yet.
Artists can contribute individual Field Notes or become more deeply involved through the Art & Ecology Field Lab, our growing programme of field-based workshops, collaborative research, artist–scientist exchange, ecological stewardship, and public participation in rural Ottawa and the Ottawa Valley.
We are particularly interested in practices that are curious about place, ecological change, biodiversity, land, memory, material relationships, climate, care, and the ways people understand and relate to the more-than-human world.
Ways to take part
You might:
help us imagine what an artist–science field lab could become
contribute work to the Community Field Notes archive
join an artist-led field day or workshop
spend time observing or making at Fallow Art Farm
meet and exchange ideas with ecologists and other researchers
participate in collaborative field research
experiment with locally grown, gathered, recovered, or ecological materials
propose an activity, workshop, or research question
contribute to future exhibitions, publications, performances, or public programmes
Artists are not here to illustrate the science.
We are interested in what happens when different ways of knowing and paying attention meet in the field.
Artists bring their own questions, methods, observations, uncertainties, and ways of making meaning. Scientists do too. Neither is simply in service of the other.
The Field Lab creates space for those practices to encounter one another—and for unexpected questions, relationships, and forms of knowledge to emerge.
Have something you want to explore?
You don’t need a fully developed proposal.
If you’re an artist interested in ecological practice, field research, collaboration, or simply spending time paying closer attention to a place, we’d like to hear from you.
Tell us a little about your practice, what you’re curious about, and how you might like to participate.
