Nocturne

Nocturne is a series of altars placed in urban wilderness. Nocturne was initiated by Isabel Beavers who started making these altars in her neighborhood, but she has opened up the practice so that others can also make and install them in their surroundings.

Goal

The Nocturne project is an experiment in care-taking and being intimate with the more-than-human-world. It requires people to take care of and deeply appreciate a specific site. This helps us shift our attention from humans to non-humans. By having people all over the world set up these sites the project aims to grow a network of places where humans collaborate with non-humans to create sites where eco-rituals can be performed.

Target audience(s)

1. Local nature appreciators 2. Neighborhood inhabitants

Main activities

1. Give a medium for nature appreciators to highlight their local nature and care for it on a deeper level 2. Be more aware of their non-human surroundings

Team

Artist Isabel Beavers

This pause and break in their typical movement patterns and speed are meant to lead to a moment of deeper observation of the network of more-than-human species around them. Generating this embodied experience aligns with relocalization practices, and subverts the hierarchy of intellectual versus embodied knowledge present in Western epistemologies. To come back to our bodies is to come home, and in this case to come back to the more-than-human entanglements that we are a part of.

Isabel Beavers, initiator of Nocturne

Relevant dimensions

The dimensions most relevant to this project are: embodying and caring