Caring for Complexity (PART 1): A Tree Tender and an Artist Talk Maintenance (With Aviva Rahmani‪)‬ Our Shared Field

PART ONE: AVIVA RAHMANI

What does it mean to maintain something? How do we practice long-term care for the natural world?

Connected by their urgent efforts to tend to the environment, lawyer and Philadelphia-local Marcus Ferreira and eco-artist Aviva Rahmani talk about their varied approaches to eco-activism. Though they work at very different scales — Ferreira walks the streets of South Philly with pruners in his pocket and Rahmani writes symphonies for forests — they are both deeply attuned to the need for ecological restoration. In this conversation, we discuss the necessity of long-term thought, and the effects of planting and maintaining a single tree.

In part one of the conversation, Aviva and I talk about how she became an ecological artist, the broader role of art in the battle against climate change, and the development of her idea, “Trigger Point Theory”.

Music for this episode is composed by Hannah Selin, and featuring cellist Alexandra Jones. The piece featured here, Hirondelle, reimagines the vast intercontinental migration of the graceful barn swallow.

Check out our website to read more about the guests, and follow their collaborations together.

Thank you to Eric Carbonara at NadaSoundStudio for audio editing, and to the Center for Humanities at Temple University for supporting this podcast.