THE ART OF POLLINATOR PATHS A suburban journey of wayfinding with pollinator insects

Abstract Grounded in the suburban neighbourhood of Whitby/Pāuatahanui, through the seasons of two years, this art-science thesis narrates a journey on foot visiting backyards, berms, plots and parks creating a growing dialogue of wayfinding with self and others. Stories from moths, bees, butterflies and flies connect with stories held in the landscape and in the past and intermingle with those of human neighbours, beekeepers, entomologists, artists, butterfly rearers, horticulturalists, landscape architects, the local mayor and council staff.

This thesis is situated at the intersection of socially engaged art and practice-based art research drawing on environmental humanities, anthropological, ethnographic and feminist perspectives including Anna Tsing, Donna Haraway, Thom van Dooren and Deborah Bird Rose. The work also travels alongside art-science projects which seek to critically engage with our more-than-human and multisensory worlds through creative methodologies. The imaginative project explores pollinator pathways through ecologically centred, embodied techniques and aesthetic, sensory experience and fact. In the role of artist as researcher, catalyst and pollinator, the researcher uses the practices of close observation, journaling, photography, videography, drawing and mapping, and weaves them within the outputs of a multi-media blog, an eco-art berm creation and expressions of wider environmental goals with the community.

The work narrates tales of unfolding reflection and insight into ordinary, day to day encounters with life-giving pollinator insects. Created in the context of the worldwide decline of insects and mindful that cities are becoming increasingly common habitat areas, this work contains a series of vignettes of wonder, unknowns and uncertainties that argue with the progress narratives of the human world and its preset logic. These are also tales of companioning and reciprocity within our shared times of precarious futures.