Materials as participants for social and ecological justice: An artistic hundred-word writing experiment

Abstract

The pandemic and youth-led activism worldwide have disrupted the order of education systems and exposed existing social and ecological inequalities of all Earthly beings. Under radical uncertainty, as transdisciplinary researchers, we created an artistic hundred-word writing piece with materials as participants. We framed this experiment within posthuman thought, which criticizes anthropocentric practices. We recognize the agency and the mutual relationality of humans and other-than-humans in our pedagogical practices and research. We are education researchers at various stages of our Ph.D. studies. In this artistic writing practice, we share our diverse projects: a speculative creation of space, a multispecies ethnography of becoming-with dust and a visual ethnography of urban artistic activism. Following The Hundreds, we partake in each other’s research journeys through hundred-word units. The collaboration engages our rethinking of art and environmental education to answer the call for social and ecological justice.