ECOTONE
At the edge, a world becomes less certain about what it is.
Salt waters slide into fresh water, and roots and spores and winged things cross all the imaginary borders we humans draw around them. In that unruly meeting, life improvises and new creatures are grown from the between, shaped by the tension of living where one world meets another.
Ecologists call this an ecotone. Eco (oikos) which means home; and tone (tónos) which refers to tension. "Home under strain" is a place where two different natural communities meet and pull against each other.
Ecotones are not tidy places. There is competition and fecundity, solidarity, decay, adaptation. Old arrangements come apart and unexpected alliances take root. The edge is not just where one thing ends and another begins; it has a life and intelligences of its own.
Ecotone is a practice and research lab working with organizations, groups and people who are meeting the confluence of crises from a different place.
Our work tends towards the places where systems and soul, institution and imagination, rigour and reverence, human and more-than-human, the known world and stranger one scratch at the edges and come into company with one another.
We are interested in the tones and tensions moving through living systems, to what is sounding loudly, what has gone quiet, what is ending, and the notes whispering beyond the score.
This is systems artistry as we understand it: the strange and demanding practice of becoming sensitive enough to hear what is actually playing, the dissonance, the unfinished phrases, the repetitive refrains, and knowing when to listen, when to join in and what our next move might be..
Welcome to our home.