Nature + Communication with Ashley Eliza Williams

 

About the Episode

Do plants speak? Might rocks store memory? Can trees hear? Is soil perceptive? Can lichen give us an ozone report? And, do the hairs on your arm have something to say?

Humans most often think of “language” as written, spoken, or even signed, but communication happens—or struggles to happen—constantly, all around us. In fact, your own body translates messages without your conscious awareness all day, every day, passing chemical and electrical signals between your cells, telling you when to eat, when to be afraid, and when and how to respond to other sensory information.

So, if humans are part of nature, is the rest of nature always communicating, too?

If this is sounding a bit animistic, or even like I’m saying nature might have a case of synesthesia, well, welcome to This Plus That, a show about connecting the seemingly un-connectable and why it matters. Wild mash-ups like this are what we do here. In this particular conversation, I talk with painter, sculptor, and amateur ecologist, Ashley Eliza Williams, about nature’s communication attempts, and those communication attempts are or are not successful.


Episode Details

About Ashley (she/her)
Ashley Eliza Williams is a painter, sculptor, and amateur ecologist exploring new ways of interacting with nature and with each other. She received a BA from UVA and an MFA from The University of Colorado, Boulder. She is a recent MASS MoCA North Adams Project grantee and has been a resident artist at Vermont Studio Center, Anderson Ranch, Millay Colony, Alte Schule Germany, the Shangyuan Art Museum in China, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally at museums, galleries, and scientific institutions. She is a member of the research-focused NYC art collective Sprechgesang Institute. Williams has taught painting, sculpture, and color theory for six years. She currently lives in Massachusetts.


What We Discuss

  • Anxiety, awkwardness, and “failed” communication attempts as subjects of Ashley’s work.

  • The dialogue between plants, animals, and even celestial bodies, which humans often envy as we struggle to communicate with each other.

  • The “mutual aid” practices of nature, like lichen and trees.

  • A story about the forest near Ashley’s suburban childhood home, the conversion of that land into a strip mall, and how it turned her into an environmentalist at an early age.

  • What lichen communicate to us about pollution.

  • The language we use about the natural world and how it shapes our engagement with it, and the way our engagement with nature shapes our language in return, including how we think about time.

  • The Western perception of time as scarce, and how it also shapes our language, which then impacts our behavior.

  • Ashley’s dad and his creative way of conjuring up original bedtime stories with her and her sister when they were young.

  • Her fascination with magical beings and the history of monsters.

  • Why we might pray to pollinator deities in the future.

  • The ancient memory of rocks and trees.

  • And much more.


Sources Mentioned

 

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Credits
Audio engineering by the team at Upfire Digital.

All of my music is provided by the in-house musicians at Slip.stream.

Episode Transcript

Coming soon, hopefully! Would you be willing to help? Email me at brandi@thisplusthat.com!

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Microbes + Spirituality with Asia Dorsey

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Infinity + Nuance with Kendra Krueger