Fieldguides for a Preternaturalist

deep histories fragile memories is an artistic research cluster based at LUCA School of Arts, Brussels. It aims to bring together like-minded researchers, practitioners and projects to create a collaborative body of knowledge that will be accessible to a wide audience. Fieldguides for a Preternaturalist is a series of chapbooks, each written by a different practitioner/researcher within the project, Nothing of Importance Occurred: Recuperating a Herball for a 17th century enslaved Angolan Midwife at the Cape.

The fieldguide series is intended to be an ambulatory library of ten chapbooks that mark a return from Cape Town to Angola. Vol. 1-3 (2022) mark the first leg, from a shrine on Signal Hill to a village in the Kamiesberg, Namaqualand. The guides are Nadia Kamies, Rachel O’Donnell, Joshua Cohen and Johanna Lot.

My essay,  UNPICK, RESTITCH Doilies, Medorahs and Labouring Plants, draws on an archive of the ordinary that includes family photographs, hand-crocheted doilies, an intricately embroidered medorah, and a plant held for generations within a family, through which we may rethink the threads that bind us. The essays are intended to be read aloud at gatherings in order to generate further collaboration.

A Fieldguide Gathering & Polyvocal Reading with Ten Voices

featuring the essay of Nadia Kamies,

will be held in collaboration with

Deep Histories, Fragile Memories and Cape Town Museum

on 15 April 2023

at the Cape Medical Museum, Green Point, Cape Town.

Read more here about  the Fieldguides and the guides. The first three issues are available from Berlin-based publishing atelier, K. Verlag and from Clarke’s Bookshop in Cape Town.