Collective Processes in Land Crafting : Neighbouring through natural dyeing

This article is based on the 3-day workshop, “Botanical Colour Laboratory”, which mapped the colours of the landscape of Osterøy, Norway, through land crafting with natural dyes. Land crafting builds an understanding of, and connection to, the land. This article discusses the multi-sensorial aspects and the relations between humans and non-humans in the process of collective plant dyeing. The terms: situated knowledge, orientations, the unruliness of things, production of locality and mujaawarah (neighbouring) are used to reflect on the workshop and its entangled relationships to matter, landscape, crafting and knowledge. These terms are woven together with the experiences of the “Botanical Colour Laboratory”. The research is conducted as a creative practice with an ethnographical approach. By combining written texts with video and drawings, I have made new multi-modal field notes. These field notes give a glimpse into the multifaceted processes of plant dyeing. The research shows that projects like “Botanical Colour Laboratory” are highly relevant and can influence orientations to our surroundings through collective land crafting processes with our living and non-living neighbours.