Follow the Plants

Abstract

Through poetic glimpses of an ongoing participatory art process, Tree Memory Gathering, this essay considers the special issue theme by questioning, “How might the concept of ‘social warming’ invite new possibilities for creative-relational inquiry?” Responses unfold through three variations of social warming inspired by socially engaged art and ecopoetry. These variations—gathering, participatory bookmaking, and perforating—unsettle residual boundaries between tree bodies and human bodies, generating ecological wisdom for living and inquiring differently in the world. Perforating is theorized as an alternative to research findings in post-qualitative approaches to inquiry.