Job Oort
The Cormoradeship Collection: Unleashing Animalship
Feeling like an animal in our surroundings –feeling a kind of ‘animalship’– can help us to not just know about , but physically experience our entanglement with the landscape and its non-human inhabitants. Experiencing a sense of belonging in a certain environment, facilitates care for that environment.
It’s relatively easy to feel a deep, immersive connection to your surroundings in some far-away, remote wilderness but to experience this close to home, in well-regulated parks with footpaths and fences can prove to be a bigger challenge.
As one of my direct non-human neighbors, the great cormorant has been the perfect guide to lead me to my own ‘animalship’. This lovely wild bird clearly knows how to live within the landscape that we both inhabit and so it inspired the Cormoradeship Collection.
The Cormoradeship Collection is a set of tools that help to open up the landscape to our experience and allows us to feel close to the area as one of its inhabiting non-human animals, all from the ‘confines’ of the dedicated paths. The collection facilitates slow forms of outdoor recreation focused on being present and developing sensitivity rather than on completing achievements as is often the case when running, cycling, walking, climbing. It’s is all about living the experience of being with nature –equal and humble. About finding and embracing slowness..
Please take a look at the Cormoradeship Collection Manual to learn how you could unleash your own sense of animalship! Whose neighbour are you?
As a birdwatcher, passionate amateur ‘adventurist’ and a designer, I became intrigued in bringing the deep nature experiences that I’ve had on my travels closer to home. How do I access the same type of rich immersion without the same vast wilderness?
The Cormoradeship project is a first exploration of a larger theme of designing for animalship. The challenge and aim that I set for myself here is one that I will continue to pursue.
I am eager to continue to show and explore how this approach can lead to different outdoor gear, products and behaviour. To show how a wetsuit becomes a drying suit, a stool becomes a perch or a bench becomes a nest. Product design doesn’t have to be about ownership when a product can become a means, a tool for getting into a different mindset, a new way of experiencing.’
www.unleashinganimalship.com
Text: Job Oort