Operating from the travelling cart workshop, I developed a series of making processes and listening tools that help illuminate the hidden value of the canals and waterways in London. Through practices of care and repair we can begin to imagine alternative futures for these water commons.
I draw upon the notion of the immune system as a beyond human condition, whereby our own health and the health of our planet are interconnected and inseparable. The processes I use embody the slow pace of canal life and the DIY / autonomous attitudes towards materials that are helpful when living on the canal. From developing ways to store environmental information in domestic handmade objects, like data quilts, to weaving oil selective fabric from human hair to help keep our canals clean; these processes reveal how a collective care-taking of the canals, by canal users, could provide autonomy to the communities that exist there as well as a reciprocal intimacy that allows both biological and social ecologies to thrive.
