Creativecritical relations: Outgrowing current crises of connection

Creativecritical writings and methods in the humanities are examples of what Anna Tsing et al. call arts of living on a damaged planet (Tsing, Bubandt, Gan, & Swanson, 2017). Exploring creativecritical writing as “arts of living”, this essay addresses life writings that reflect a vibrant more-than-human relationship: the topic of gardens and gardening. Combining elements of creative practice and critical analysis to generate and explore new ways of relating to knowledge, creativecritical writings make room for the uncertainties of embodied self-experience and self-reflection, shifting the focus from the largely disembodied knowledge practices which traditional university teaching relies on. The present exploration of what nouns, actions and methodologies to attach to the adjective “creativecritical” takes place in a global climate of threat: “The urgencies of the Anthropocene, Capitalocene, and Chthulucene demand [a] kind of thinking beyond inherited categories and capacities, in homely and concrete ways” (Haraway, 2016, p. 7).