GhostGardening; ecological puppetry as a research tool

The floating Otterdam garden in the main pond of Amstelpark celebrates the return of the otter after a 50-year absence. Other iconic water animals like the moose are still missing.

In her thought-provoking book, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, Anna Tsing describes how we live among ghosts in late industrial landscapes – the shadows left behind when animals disappear or even become extinct.

When animals like the #moose disappear from our landscapes, we lose not only their presence but also the unique behaviours and connections they share with us. It is also a cultural loss.

The experiment:

In #GhostGardening we explore the lost world of the moose through the art of ensemble puppetry.

A small team embodied the spirit of the moose, an incredible creature that once roamed these lands and waters.

With intern Kim van der Sman, Theun first built a cartboard life-size sketch of a moose, but because Moose are water-animals the second version is waterproof.

With a small team we had a first test in Amstelpark exploring what happens when a (ghost) moose returns. Not just how people react, but more importantly how the entire environment responds to its presence, including the ducks, dogs, and all kinds of other beings in the park.

Team reflections on the experiment:

• What do you learn when doing this?
• Could ecological puppetry be a research tool?

Dealing with this large body with a group of people is not easy, but you quite quickly get a feel for a moose’s gait, its rhythm and how it moves through the world, because you need to navigate it physically. You get a sense that it might actually be quite hard for a moose to be agile, maybe they can’t even go backward?

When we moved around with the moose, you just automatically find it is drawn to the leaves of trees and herbs. That just happens. It makes you wander about motivates a moose, what forces drive it to do things.

We were all in charge of different parts of the moose, which also makes you wonder about the significance of its different organs. As the back-legs you mostly just follow, as the head you seem to be the instigator.

What senses would be dominant for moose? What would a homunculus (representation of the relative importance of the senses in humans) look like for moose? When we reached the leaves, we realised it misses lips. Those are probably very important for a moose.

By walking through an environment you get an appreciation of the moose’s senses, even when we didn’t yet go into the water. That might be a great second experiment. Also since most of the birds are around the pond.

We didn’t yet encounter dogs, but the children really loved the moose. (Their first guess was cow, then horse, and then yes!! moose.)

The experiment was on the same day as a pokemon event. So there were lots of people working with ghost like presences.

Overall the experiment felt very intuitive. Even when you are not a skilled puppeteer, it can help you get a sense of the world of moose.