A MULTI-SPECIES LABOR MARCH

Exploring ideas of sustainability, land, species, and labor through design fiction.

PRESERVATION VS. DEVELOPMENT
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When I walk in my neighborhood I often pass through a park with native prairie restoration, not uncommon for parks in Chicago. I had considered myself a unquestioned proponent of preserves such as this as a needed oasis in the otherwise developed bio-region. However, as I was grappling with these questions along with ideas from literature and class discussions, I began to see the space differently: the concrete path and metal wires began to signify an otherness between people and the ‘natural wilderness.’ That in order for nature to thrive, humans must remain separate. I began to wonder why we see ourselves as separate from nature, might we instead exist symbiotically?

THRIVING WITH
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A bison’s invisible labor

Bison enjoy a symbiotic relationship with prairie flora. While they migrate and eat the grasses for sustenance, their movement and behavior creates conditions for the prairie ecosystem to thrive. By stomping clearings in the dirt, new seeds may take root; and in eating tall grasses, smaller ones are afforded a window of sunlight.

As we think about preservation of the land as leaving it alone — "letting nature do its thing" — we neglect to acknowledge the impact that we've had on the symbiotic ecosystems that allow for life to cycle and thrive. Across the Great Plains bison were hunted to near extinction by white settlers and human behavior continues to impact plant and animal ecosystems in all corners of the world.

DESIGN AS PROVOCATION
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I imagined a sort of thing-portmanteau — combining a bison hoof and performance shoe — in order to provoke contemplation about how we interact with the land. In a speculative near-future without the invisible labor of animals, humans work the land as an act of caring rather than for eventual human benefit.

Pattens (above) were over-shoes worn in Europe as a means to stay out of the muck of the city during the middle-ages through the early twentieth century. This style inspired the design of the fictional artifact while also providing an opposing metaphor towards being-with nature and getting in the muck.

The outdoor industry is a trope that I leaned into to scaffold the near-future scenario. Companies representing some of the largest brands champion the preservation of nature as a counter-narrative to the development paradigm, yet the consumption of nature as a frontier to be explored maintains an othering attitude that often fails to acknowledge its preservation of the dominant colonialist narrative.

The setting of the prairie appealed to me for this design fiction as a landscape deemed as un-sexy by the standards of nature tourism.