On Care, And Finding The Cur(V)E. A Geography of Difference Through Caring

‘ ‘Taking care of’ as an activity that includes ‘everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible.’ (Joan Tronto and Berenice Fisher 1990)

Working at the intersection of ‘dialogics’, ‘feministics’ and ecologies, my ecofeminist position is grounded in care ethics (Virginia Held). This focuses on relationality, microsociology and microeconomics in the everyday, to impact the wide political landscape, as a form of ‘quite’ activism. Dialogics is said to enable ‘the differential unification of ecology and feministics that can produce a new perception of the relationship of humanity to the world...’ (Murphy in Bauer and McKinstry, 1991). In this presentation I will present a preview of a performative (cognitive) mapping action being developed as part of my latest project (Pratiche di Cura, o del cur(v)are, Practices of care as ecofeminist and spatialized art, 2018/2020). It draws upon dialogic strategies I use in my artistic practice, which are informed by environmental psychology (Seamon 2017). I will be referring to my other projects, in which I investigate various ways to experience place attachment (Lived Dialectics, Movement and Rest, 2016/2019), attachment between carer and child (Mettere Ogni Significato Sotto-Sopra..., 2006), care and architecture (CARE: from periphery to centre, 2018), and care labour (Pratiche di Cura, o del cur(v)are - Practices of care as ecofeminist and spatialized art, 2018/2020). The performative mapping action raises issues focused on geography of 'difference' (Haraway 1988) through caring.