Abstract
In this seminar, I present my research project, which explores how wool and woolwork interfere with the making of landscapes. The project is a follow up of my dissertation entitled Fibre Formations – Wool as an Anthropological Site, which – based on fieldwork in Chilean and Argentinian Patagonia – described wool as somehow bigger than itself. It both forms part of and gives form to larger wholes: colonialism, global exchange, international standardisation, artistic practices, laboratory science, the dynamics of regional ecosystems, birds in danger of extinction, indigenous identities, industrial manufacturing, farmer’s lives and artisan crafting.

My current project engages explicitly with debates on the Anthropocene. While reflecting a severe environmental crisis, such debates often carries a normative notion of landscape as ‘a piece of nature’, which humans can survey, describe, manage and govern. The crisis calls for new ways to explore particular interferences with landscapes through deep historical perspectives and contemporary sociocultural interconnections. Through a more-than-human anthropological focus, the purpose of my project is to provide insights that contribute to a more detailed understanding of landscape-making by attending to the historical, political, industrial, social and inter-species relationships involved in producing and processing woollen fibre. My fieldwork study will compare the interferences associated with woollen fibre on grasslands in Australia and in Patagonia, South America, two important regions for global sheep farming. Landscapes are attended to as dynamic, ever-evolving and multi-layered, and as shaped and reshaped by multispecies encounters through time – and ongoingly geopolitical. The main question I work with is ‘how can wool – an ancient and still globally present material – help us understand the dynamics, effects and possible futures of co-species landscape-making in the Era of the Anthropocene’? This question opens up for more detailed probes and analyses of human-animal-landscape relations and of the livability between, across and among them.  

All are welcome to attend. However, if you would like a free sandwich to enjoy during this seminar, please RSVP to ceh@cas.au.dk indicating whether you would prefer a meat, vegetarian, vegan, or gluten-free sandwich no later than April 23 (Tuesday) at kl. 16.00.