The paper will present the results of a research that aims to document how ordinary people engage in the process of sensory meaning making with a forest environment. The encounter with the forest from which the data were collected took place during a 2 hours’ workshop under the guidance of a drama teacher who led the participants for a “walk” in varied landscapes, at different speeds. Instructions were: “to move silently, together, but by yourself”, and to “be careful not to disturb anything”. Such instructions were intended to foster a kind of responsive relatedness between participants and the forest (including the wind, rain, cold, soil, animals, etc.). After the workshop, we interviewed the participant about “a moment of the ‘walk’ that was significant for them regarding the instruction of ‘do not disturb anything’”. We used micro-phenomenology interviews to document the precise unfolding of their experience in its sensorial, emotional and cognitive dimensions. In this presentation, we’ll discuss the body conversations that take place between the participants and their surrounding and the role of the senses, and their integration, in the making of meaning.

Keywords: embodied knowledge, forest, sensory meaning making, micro-phenomenology, umwelt

Vitalija Povilaityte Petri (Brussels Health Gardens, Belgium)

Touching and Being Touched by the Szenne River

In 2019 I co-created a transdisciplinary research project “Brussels Health Gardens” where we are exploring new possibilities to increase urban resilience by experimenting diverse ways of learning and living with plants. Through time this project shifted towards multispecies interactions and moved closer to water by co-creating collaborations with various local learning communities. One of them is “STILL HERE - An Alliance of Care for the SZenne River”. The SZenne river flows in three Belgian regions: Wallonia, Brussels and Flanders. Due to intense urbanisation the bed of the river was changed in many places and SZenne was almost completely covered by 1871 in Brussels. The underground waterways have been created with possibilities to use it as the spin of the sewage network. As a response to global warming part of the SZenne will be uncovered in 2025 aiming to establish a non-exploitative coexistence between the Brussels inhabitants and its water. The “STILL HERE - An Alliance of Care for the SZenne River” is rooted in Natural Contract Lab work which explores what forms of care are possible by paying attention to relationship with river by feeling, being present with and sensing the river, and moving beyond human representation of river rights. This art-based participatory research aims to explore local social dynamics and invites people to engage into performing arts by sensing river landscapes, connecting to lived experiences, grieving of what we lost, remembering and immersing into storytelling. Participatory walks prepared by the leading project artists are based on site-sensitive scripts that help to align our sensory scores to other participants, plants, wind, light, soil, birds to follow the rhythms of the water and the surrounding land by creating spaces for togetherness and mutual care.
Keywords: sensing, river, togetherness, plants, care

John Shiga ∆ (School of Professional Communication, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada)

Sonar, Sea Creatures and Sensory Impudence

This paper explores the sensory politics of sonar litigation, focusing on efforts by military, environmental and scientific groups to translate nonhuman sensing into the governance of ocean soundscapes. While the U.S. Navy justifies the use of high-powered sonar systems as a means of detecting ultra-quiet submarines, environmental organizations argue that such technologies disrupt and harm marine life, particularly whales and dolphins, whose sensory perception relies heavily on sound. Sonar litigation is part of a broader contest over sensory regulation in ocean space and
has significant implications for questions around who controls and defines legitimate uses of underwater sound. The paper further argues that sonar extends not only human sensory perception but also asymmetries in power, reinforcing forms of remote control that have their roots in militarism and capitalist extraction while simultaneously opening new possibilities for multispecies ethics and legal recognition.