TransHuman Saunter: The Other Tree, the Other Human and Other Stories of a City.

In the TransHuman Saunter project, the other activates the streets and the city botanical gardens at Meanjin/ Brisbane. They develop multispecies storytelling centred around South Asian, Banyan ( Bangad) Trees and make these stories accessible via geolocative technology. The other here refers to four women of colour as artists who create a place and a sense of belonging by nurturing their relationality to the Banyan tree. Thereby counteracting intersectional marginalisation while also imparting agency to the Banyan, usually seen as a nonhuman resource.

The project opens multiple portals from culturally diverse standpoints of Samoa, India, Vietnam, and Thailand, woven with visuals, stories and sound as the creatives and the audience engage in wayfinding and pondering. These portals connect multitudinous presents with the past, layering cultural, historical, colonial, feminist, spiritual, artistic and ecological themes into a pluralistic and collaborative work.

The project created participatory processes to overcome the isolation and silencing of the COVID-19 pandemic. Technology helped to situate artists' works in various locations and to interconnect and weave together a robust and emerging commentary of other histories with audiences, domestic or afar. A viewer can journey to these sites and be surprised by new and multidisciplinary interpretations, accompanied by technological activations that blur the physical and the virtual, the human and the nonhuman. The project contributes to other ways of knowing: the trees become sites for connecting and gathering multiple interpretations and stories while encouraging cyclic returns.

In this presentation, Natasha (India-Australia) and Agapetos (Samoa-Australia) present vignettes of their portals, combing through sections of the walks guided by the Bangad/ Banyan with Kavita presenting a project overview. The presentation will mix and remix storytelling and performance with theoretical perspectives to deliver an experience of togetherness.

The Transhuman Saunter is accessible via a smartphone or a computer at:
https://research.qut.edu.au/morethanhuman/projects/thsp/