Coyote Walks: A Relational and Narrative Framework for an Emergent Practice

This practice based research is grounded in multi-day walking and camping activities guided by procedures which alter the ways I perceive and participate with my more-than- human surroundings. From these walks emerge animations, installations, oral presentations, as well as virtual and material objects which draw relations between humans, animals, plants, landscapes, and other entities: A creek visited during a walk spawns a carved series of stones, and a story about the birth of a child. The research practice can be understood as a relational network that is dispersed across time, place and medium. The network can also be read as a narrative, where an understanding of the practice becomes more complex as each object is discovered and incorporated into the larger story. The work attempts to understand the world through sensorial experience, indigenous ways of knowing, and Husserl and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. From these embodied perspectives, relationality and respectfulness emerge as dominant themes in the creation of the work. This narrative-relational structure acts as a reflexive framework that guide the form and content of art objects, and gives meaning to the work in a gallery space. The utility of the framework is expanded, tested and reinforced by drawing on fellow artists including Duane Linklater’s Decommission and Valère Costes’ Tortue.