In spring 2025 I worked with students at the Claremont Colleges to develop and perform a procession that brought the names of local plants, animals, birds, insects, fungi, and landforms into view. Walking through a landscape, much of the “who is here with me” escapes my notice. By slowly painting the names of the beings who are present there, I learn to think about them—and by bringing those names into the landscape, the banner activates their presence, or my attention to their presence, in a new way.
For PROCESS!, each student and I made a large-scale model of one local being or landform—birds, fish, plants, mountains. On these, we painted language from the Environmental Protection Act of 1969. This helped us see the language of this foundational legal document of US environmentalism as alive, active, and meaningful—and to bring that language with us into the landscapes it silently and invisibly helps to protect.
We then generated our own texts that combined the habits of religious or sacred language (litany, anaphora, and words borrowed directly from our own traditions) with the names of endangered and threatened species from the area (California). We painted these texts on banners which were mounted on wooden supports. PROCESS! is the first of a series of processions for local beings, with local beings, planned throughout 2025 and 2026.
