Field Trip and Guided Walk

CONSTELLATIONS: DEEP MAPPING MIAMI’S PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

Entry to Simpson Park – The Corner of SW 15th Road and S. Miami Ave | Transportation Options

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This session introduces participants to a tropical hardwood hammock. Endemic to South Florida, these shady forests are characterized by their closed canopy of trees, home to a variety of unique plant and animal species which are now threatened due to the encroaching development into the forests. Together the group will engage in a series of activities focusing on sensory reflection and deep mapping, a concept popularized by William Least Heat-Moon’s book PrairyErth: A Deep Map (1991). Participants will gain some insight about the indigenous history of the land, speculate about ecological futures, and construct their own spatial narrative based on a series of somatic and affective experiences. Participants will be invited to reconsider the layers of human and non-human life in the landscape.
 
Please note this is a walking tour, and not all park trails are accessible to wheelchairs.

Fereshteh Toosi’’s cross-disciplinary art work involves embodied experiences, encounter, exchange and sensory inquiry. An Assistant Professor in the Art and Art History Department at Florida International University, Fereshteh is also a certified Forest Therapy Guide with the Association of Forest and Nature Therapy Guides and a member of the American Horticultural Therapy Association.
 

Onajide Shabaka’s practice is concerned with historical/biographical themes related to geography that include African diaspora and Native American cultures, and makes use of ethnobotany, geology and the performative as aesthetic vehicles for investigating and making historical/biographical themes.