( a report from the Transition Zone: Walking as a Collective Witness)
I am new to bringing my art-making process closer to my walking practice. Still, the most motivating part is learning to let materials and the environment guide the outcome in unexpected and meaningful ways.
In a community of walkers, every path is distinct, yet our rhythm is the same. As I step out onto the red earth of the Riebeek Valley, I realise that my contribution to this global dialogue isn’t just a collection of botanical facts about the Renosterveld, or the kilometres walked, or the iron-and-ash history of a railroad. It is about the quality of my attention. It is a beautiful irony that while I am physically on a farm—a space traditionally defined by boundaries, fences, and private ownership—I am simultaneously part of a global community through the WALC (Walking Artists Network).
In this rural setting, community isn’t always found in a crowd; it is found in the deep interconnectedness of inhabitants: human, botanical, and industrial. To walk here is to navigate a ‘landscape of permissions‘. My practice is made possible by the trust of my neighbours, who have opened their gates and their histories to me. This trust allows me to bridge the fragmented pieces of the Renosterveld, collecting the stories of the people alongside the silent “stories” of the plants, trees, animals and an unused rail line. Sometimes, the most important role in a community is the one who keeps the memory. I have access to older people in the community who have stories and experiences to share.
By sharing my work as an act of a witness, I am inviting my wider community to look at their own “wounded spaces” with a little more tenderness and a little less judgment. We often look at an unused railroad or a looming cement factory as scars on the land, but through the lens of a walker, they become something else: layers of existence. My act of witness is not a solitary one; it is sustained by a community of neighbours who have opened their gates and shared their stories, and by collaborators who help me see the land from new heights. Together, we are documenting a landscape in transition.
With my art making, I want to show that even in the path of heavy industry or discarded infrastructure, there is a signature of existence worth unrolling(currently a name of one of my WIPs). Whether it is the resilient Wild Olive (Olienhout) growing through a fence or the ghost-print of a tree on an 8-meter scroll, life persists in the cracks of progress.
My walk is a collaboration fueled by:
- The neighbours who share their land and their oral histories.
- The friends who capture the light through photography or share histories of the rail line and the community living alongside it over many years
- My fellow walkers who walk alongside, share stories, and provide camaraderie and shared purpose, where I can roam
- My son’s drone footage allows us to see the “wounded” patterns of the biome from above.
As I share this “Report from the Transition Zone” with my fellow walkers I hope to offer a reminder: we are all walking through landscapes that are part-ruin and part-sanctuary. When I stop to identify a plant, touch a fissure in the bark, or listen to the birdsong above a factory’s hum, I am not just walking—I am dreaming of stitching a community back together, one step at a time.
I would be interested to hear from others in this group about where they see the wounded space in their community that needs another look.
The unused railroad I walk on is a community of the past. It once connected the farmers of the Riebeek Valley to the rest of the world. As I walk the rails, I am walking a communal artery that has been “severed” but is now being reclaimed by nature. The rail once served humans; now it serves as a corridor for the Renosterveld to travel safely away from the ploughs. I am witnessing a “multi-species community” where the steel supports the shrub.
- I see where the cement factory dust meets the Wild Olive leaves, or where the vineyard meets the wild Renosterveld, as well as ‘alien’ plants.
- I share the idea that community is not about purity. It is about how the “uprooted neighbours” (the vines, the olives, the workers at the factory) all breathe the same air and depend on the same calcrete soil.
- I am walking a “connective tissue” between industry and nature.
- Just as the plants exist in a community, my art is being fed by a human ecosystem.
- I learned about the soil, which is shale renosterveld with areas of silcrete where I walk.
- The neighbours, by opening their land, are granting me hospitality of the soil.
- They are trust-holders. Their stories are the verbal version of the frottage rubbings I do,
- They provide the historical texture of the place.
- My son’s drone footage provides the “Overview Effect”—the macro-view of the wounded landscape—while my hand-rubbing provides the “Micro-view.” Together, they show the scale of the “Signature of Existence.”
Sometimes, the most important role in a community is the one who keeps the memory. I have access to older people in the community who have stories and experiences to share. My act of witness is not a solitary one; it is sustained by a community of neighbours who have opened their gates and shared their stories, and by collaborators who help me see the land from new heights. Together, we are documenting a landscape in transition.
- The Walk: Identify a plant that others might walk past—a tiny Renosterveld bulb or the specific “grainy fissures” of the old ancestor tree.
- The Contribution: I hope to offer an “Act of Witness.” in my writings and makings. Most of the time, I carry my cellular phone (camera/notes), paper scroll, graphite, a knife and a measuring tape with me. By identifying and naming the residents of the surrounding land (the plants, the history of the land), I am bringing them into the human community, which is mostly the walking community and my social media readers. I am giving a voice to the silent members of my local ecosystem.