ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses an environmental artistic practice that uses fieldnotes as a way to enact care in the Anthropocene. Living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Mi’kma’ki, the author explores shorelines and marginal landscapes, and collects fieldnotes in the form of marine debris, plastic detritus, photographs, coordinates, and jot notes. Collecting marine debris becomes a way of being present with, noticing patterns in, and enacting care for those who live in and with the ocean. Walking in a clearcut and tracking its changes over time becomes a way of asserting the value of the particular and of grappling with the irreversible loss that is every clearcut. This chapter chronicles the author’s methods and experiences in trying to make small moves towards environmental justice, and find a way to live ethically in the Anthropocene. Fieldnotes are a means of forming relationships with the particular in order to enact an ethics of care beyond the current colonial capitalist modes of valuing through numbers and economics.
