Botanic Field Aesthetics: A Methodology of Embodied Research into Indigenous Southwest Flora

Abstract

This article describes two prongs of a larger research approach I have termed 'botanic field aesthetics', which begins with living plants in their biodiverse habitats to create embodied poetic representation. The methodology has been designed to materialise and poeticise research into indigenous flora. As components of a broader qualitative field approach, both poetic enquiry and gestural walking constitute specific engagements with plants. The use of poetry and walking aims to show the possibility of an embodied aesthetics of plants and a progression from a visual floral aesthetics to an corporeal floraesthesis, from ocular speculation to multi-sensory experience, and from a metaphysics of being to a poetics of becoming.