TransHuman Saunter: Multispecies Storytelling in Precarious Times

Emergent from Donna Haraway’s Cyborg [1], posthuman transhumanism is where the human/body is meshed with technology to enhance its abilities [2]. However, this assumes that every human/body has equal access to technology and spatial geographies. In the last two years alone, this assumption has been tested by global events and movements such as the Black Lives Matter movement, COVID-19 pandemic inequities, Australian First Nations people’s deaths in custody, and asylum seekers in Australia’s offshore detention centers on Christmas Island, Nauru, and Papua New Guinea. Certain bodies are othered, conditioned to be inferior, and gated from knowledge and technology [3]. The creative practice-based project TransHuman Saunter (THSP) explores how othered bodies—represented in this project by four women of color—creatively occupy spatiality in conjunction with the technological enmeshments offered by smartphones. Women of color face multiple forms of othering [4]: They are seen as lesser-than within binary gender dynamics (male-female), lesser than their male counterparts in their own culture, and lesser-than within ethno-racial dimensions of being women of color within white Australia [5]. Akin to the case of property, the movements, bodies, and even use of technology by women of color are monitored and controlled [6]. THSP problematizes these experiences of the lesser human, that is, the othered bodies of women of color, in solidarity with the nonhuman entity, the Indian Banyan tree (Ficus benghalensis) situated in the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens, Queensland, Australia. The Indian Banyan tree, a native of the Indian subcontinent, found itself planted during the 1870s in this Brisbane-based public garden created in 1855 to showcase non-native flora and fauna [7]. Drawing parallels with the othered women, the “expat” tree is a being “owned” by the colonizers; extracted from its homeland without its consent, taken on a boat journey as a nonhuman migrant, laid out in a foreign land with little understanding of its socio-cultural and biological context for the merriment of the colonizers, chopped and “trimmed” to be capitalized in the human project, and christened a keystone species, while key to nonhuman entities, essential to human survival.

In its examination of the tensions between the lesser human and the nonhuman, THSP in its essence is a place-based digital storytelling experience centered on the Indian Banyan tree located in the City Botanic Gardens. The work is creatively produced and curated by Kavita Gonsalves (India) as a key component of her PhD studies at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) into radical placemaking where the marginalized engage in creative placemaking using digital tools [8]. The project, first envisioned in August 2020, began as the curator’s exploration of being a woman of color and migrant in the whiteness of Australia [9]. The curator encountered the Indian Banyan tree in the City Botanic Gardens next to the QUT Gardens Point campus (Fig. 1). The tree and the curator shared a home in the Indian subcontinent and kinship as migrant beings in Australia. The tree served and continues to serve as a reminder of home, comfort, and triumph over the struggle with displacement—particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The THSP artwork expands this connection in the independent, techno-spatial explorations of four women artists of color who each bring their distinct personal geographical ties to the Indian Banyan tree: Agapetos Aia-Fa’aleava (Samoa and Australia), Lan Thanh Ha (Vietnam), Naputsamohn Junpiban (Thailand), and Natasha Narain (India and Australia). This project can be viewed on the CGeomap, a web-based locative media platform, at cgeomap.eu/thsproject/. The project acknowledges that technology itself can be a barrier to participation in the work through lack of access and inability to efficiently use it [10]. Further, it is used to surveil or control othered bodies [11]. In TransHuman Saunter, locative technology is a medium to carry, store, and provide access to these othered explorations: When the othered body cannot physically be there due to time and space to communicate, when technology can circumvent the need for physicality for this knowledge to be represented (for example, in the form of a museum or statue), and most importantly, when technology subverts having to seek permission to place other knowledge anywhere in the city. This article begins with the conceptual framework that underpins this artwork where four artists technologically entangle themselves with the Indian Banyan tree and the places of the garden. This is followed by an overview of the participatory design processes involved and means of experiencing THSP including descriptions of the individual routes and concludes with reflections on walking as a political act, in person or on a digital device.

The conceptual framework of THSP takes from Situationist techniques of dérive and détournement and the notion of place. In the dérive, one engages in unstructured activities to explore the emotions and behaviors of others through the experience of geography [12]. The dérive, a staged but unstructured walk, was viewed as anti-bourgeois and an intentional reaction to a city’s production of materialism and capitalism. But THSP acknowledges that to walk freely and without a care is a bourgeois act, as evidenced in the global movements stated above. The Situationists’ détournement—where capitalist urban media is hijacked, reappropriated, or parodied—offers a tactic for THSP: (1) the détournement of the dérive, and (2) the digital production of the other’s traces in public space. Building on works such as You Are Not Here, Mobile Narratives, and the pervasive game Pokémon Go [13], women of color create technologically enhanced counter-dérives as an intervention of radical placemaking [14]. Locative technology assists in creating the counter-dérive: The artists of color (1) adopt technology to create a structured narrative around Brisbane that the participants are loosely controlled by, and (2) layer locations with she-stories of place. “Place” refers to the container that allows for space, attachment, memory, value, and stories [15]. The production and experience of place are constantly in flux with human and nonhuman (such as the Indian Banyan tree) migrations. THSP acknowledges these pluralistic and dynamic stories of place [16]. THSP, as a collection of techno-enhanced counter-dérives, aims to subvert and disrupt the static nature of the dominant story of a place with four women of color in solidarity with the voiceless nonhuman Great Indian banyan tree. The project adopted a participatory design process, which is expanded on in the next section.

The Banyan tree, one of India’s most sacred trees, does not allow any plant to grow under it and grows fruit unfit for human consumption. The tree can grow over centuries, and it creates a micro-ecosystem thanks to the substructure formed by its aerial roots, where it shelters both nonhumans and humans. Banyan trees are considered akin to hermits, as they are generally planted near Hindu temples and represent the spiritual aspirations of humans. Further, the Banyan tree’s reputation for longevity, stability, and self-sufficiency is associated with immortality in Indian mythology. Indian women worship it to ensure the immortality of their partners or husbands [17]. This relationship between Indian women and the tree beyond patriarchal constraints and combined with technology created the chimerical research questions for this creative practice-led project:

How can women of color (lesser humans) and the Indian Banyan tree (nonhuman) engage in participatory community knowledge-making and -sharing? What processes and digital tools can enable this process?

The project had four goals in response to the research questions: (1) to work with women artists of color living in Brisbane with a situated sociocultural connection with the Indian Banyan tree from their country of origin; (2) to create digital media that explore these connections; (3) to utilize locative media as the vehicle of this artistic exploration; and (4) to enable the mainstream audience to learn from the artists of the significance of the Banyan tree in other cultures. Four Brisbane-based women artists of color joined the project: Agapetos Aia-Fa’aleava, an independent Pasefika filmmaker from Samoa; Lan Thanh Ha, a digital communications strategist from Vietnam; Naputsamohn Junpiban, an experience and exhibition designer from Thailand; and Natasha Narain, a visual artist with roots from India and based in Australia. The project development involved the artists along with the curator meeting online via Zoom (online video conferencing software) four times over two months (1 February–31 March 2021). Each session involved a combination of storytelling activities, discussions, brainstorming, draft route development on Google Maps and CGeomap, and weekly uploads of artwork progress onto Google Drive. The process involved three rounds of testing THSP in the City Botanic Gardens: two where artists provided feedback to each other and one with the QUT Urban Informatics research group, of which the authors are members. The curator met one-on-one with the artists to finalize the narrative and media of the work and coordinated the media upload to the CGeomap platform. On completion of the THSP artwork, it was showcased at notable festivals and exhibitions such as the BAD (Brisbane Art Design) Festival and the Uroboros Festival 2021 [18]. Artists also conducted walks with participants in the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens, which is one of the best ways to experience THSP. The next section expands on this in situ experience.

THSP can be accessed using both desktop and mobile web browsers. However, the true experience of the work lies in experiencing it in situ in the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens with earphones. All locations are digitally layered with media such as text, audio, video, and hyperlinks. The project starts with the first entry, “X1. TransHuman Saunter” (Fig. 2), which expands on the project’s concept, giving instructions on how to engage with the work and safety tips. To orient participants in the garden, the listener is instructed to head to the second entry, “X2. Welcome,” at the Speaker’s Corner in front of Queensland Parliament House (Fig. 3). The Speaker’s Corner is a significant site for protests in Brisbane and aligns with the activist nature of THSP. Here, the participant is introduced to the four artists: (1) the pink icon represents Aia-Fa’aleava’s saunter, (2) the brown icon is Ha’s saunter, (3) the blue icon is Junpiban’s saunter, and (4) the green icon is Narain’s saunter. Each artist’s route has ten locations listed under the numbering with letters “a, b, c, d …” The listener can choose an artist’s route or choose locations in a random manner, although the former is recommended. As the participant approaches within 50 meters of a location, such as at 2g (Fig. 4), the first associated audio file will autoplay. We expand on the individual counter-dérives of Aia-Fa’aleava’s, Ha’s, Junpiban’s, and Narain’s in the following sections.

Aia-Fa’aleava reimagines her ancestors’ journey through the stories of the Aoa, the Banyan tree, using film, still images, and her voice. She sees the Banyan tree as a metaphor for her family’s hard journey to find opportunities across Fiji, Samoa, New Zealand, and Australia. Key to the work is her culturally significant Samoan tattoo, known as a malu. Traditionally, the malu was made with the ink of the candlenut or Indian walnut tree (Aleurites moluccanus), native to Indo-Malaysia, which connects her to India. Further, the streets of Samoa, where Agapetos grew up, were lined with Polynesian Banyan trees, which form a significant backdrop to her memories. Her saunter explores her malu within these memories of home, community, and migration with the Banyan tree being a symbol of comfort and shelter. The key places in her saunter are the Banyan tree in front of QUT Art Museum (1a. Weaving Aoa) as this is where she began her filmmaking journey; the Goodwill Bridge near QUT Gardens Point campus (1e. Weaving Fatu; Fig. 5) as this was a place where she and her friends and would gather at 3 a.m. to talk about their lives; and the iconic “BRISBANE” sign at South Bank (1j. Weaving A’oa’oga), because Brisbane represents her journey as an undergraduate, a master’s student, and a PhD student. These spots can be identified on the CGeomap’s web-based map as in Fig. 3 or on the list of the locations provided on the app.

Ha explores her identity conflict as an individual coming from Vietnam, a country ravaged by war, to her experiences in Brisbane. Taking inspiration from the Banyan tree in City Botanic Garden, being a migrant, she explores what it means to be a temporary visitor in Australia subject to migration rules and the acceptance of the exotic Banyan tree in the Australian landscape. In the saunter, Cây đa (the Banyan tree) is her mother, who experienced war and made great sacrifices for her children, as in the case of Ha, who moved to Brisbane to study. Ha’s Buddhist lens adds another layer to her work: The tree is normally colocated with a pagoda and is a cousin of the Bodhi tree, the tree under which Buddha gained enlightenment. Her saunter combines poem, visuals, and audio that evoke a Vietnam unable to move on from war and moving on by adopting the global capitalist–extractivist complex. The key places in this saunter are QUT Library (2e. Our Victory; Fig. 6), which is a space comfortable for Ha but inaccessible to Ha’s mother due to language barriers or limited formal education; the construction tunnel (2g. The twist of history), where all the differences of people such as race and backgrounds are squeezed into the tiny space of the tunnel for a moment; and under the Banyan tree (2b. Ours, Not Theirs), which is a safe and familiar space where Lan has spent time.

Like Ha’s, Junpiban’s saunter draws from the Buddhist ecology movement in Thailand, where Buddhist monks engaged with environmental conservation practices and projects such as tree ordination to protect the trees [19]. She offers three paths to the individual experiencing Sai Ngam (the Banyan tree) in her saunter through poetry, storytelling, and illustrations of data visualization: The first responds to positivist European and American traditions that require justification for the relevance of the tree in data, the second is that of interpretivist traditions in the form of stories passed down through traditions, and the third is her own spiritual journey with the tree in the City Botanic Gardens. The COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible for resident migrants (expats/migrants/settlers) to leave Australia and visit their homes, as international borders have been shut since March 2020 [20]. The tree served as a portal for Junpiban to call on land, water, and air to link her back home to Thailand. The key places in Junpiban’s saunter are a spot along the river, (3d. The Invasion; Fig. 7) as it layers land, river, boats, and trees and serves as a reminder that man is an invader on these lands; and the destination of the saunter, which is marked by the Jimmy Morrill and Brolgas sculpture (3j. Best Wishes), where Junpiban hopes for a better world.

For Hindus in India, the Banyan tree is a Kalpavriksha, where kalpa means aeons of time and vriksha means tree. In traversing time, the tree symbolizes longevity: experience, resilience, and wisdom. It is a vessel that carries memories and provides shelter while being connected to the cosmos. Narain’s saunter takes the form of a pilgrimage in the gardens: honoring the grandeur and wisdom of the Banyan tree while recognizing its unwitting role in eradicating native flora and fauna through its tentacular overground and underground root structure. The saunter thus seeks to acknowledge the other trees, both foreign and native, and pays homage to their networks that keep pluralistic Brisbane regenerated with oxygen. The key places in this saunter are the Bunya Pine (4a. Bunya to Banyan; Fig. 8), a tree that has been a place of nurture and community for Indigenous communities; the Moreton fig tree (4b. From Moreton Bay), due to its visual appearance, with dark cavities and trailing roots; and the Java almond tree (4c. Kookaburra’s Almonds), which is an unassuming tree that reaps both fruit and memories of a Kookaburra bird.

At its essence, THSP is a détournement of the dérive: Four women artists of color created structured counternarratives of their relationships with the Banyan tree in Brisbane City and utilized locative media technology to place these stories to create entangled experiences. The control and surveillance that othered bodies experience was superimposed on the movement of the listeners for a moment and held together through alternate stories of places in the digitized form of spoken word, imagery, and narrative of the artists. In interviews with the artists on their experience of creating the work in a participatory manner, they said they learned a new method of art making but also worked together to learn from each other. An example of this is when the artists assisted each other in creating audio recordings. In the making of the artworks, the artists explored their own positionality within Australia as people of color, and the project offered them space for sense-making and personal reflection. Those who experienced the artworks during festivals and exhibitions spoke of the invaluable lessons of and on the tree, from the contexts of India, Samoa, Vietnam, and Thailand, that otherwise stood quietly in Brisbane’s landscape. Technology served to transcend the boundaries of the human, lesser human, and nonhuman, the dominant and the other, and history and she-story. Thus, THSP represents the creative possibilities of techno-enhanced counter-dérives as an avenue of making lesser humans’ and nonhumans’ unheard and otherwise inaccessible stories visible during contested and volatile times. Future work involves the development of a framework for the participatory design processes used in this project toward the paradigm of radical placemaking.

THSP was funded by the QUT More-than-Human Futures research group: research.qut.edu.au/morethanhuman.