The Water–Ecology–Touring Centre,
or W–E–T, is an ethics of practice.
The W–E–T Centre is a spatial ethics formed by the relations inbetween things, people and ideas—a bit like identifying a shape within a constellation of stars in the night’s sky. Yet, similar to the astrological Sea—several constellations that dwell together in a celestrial water that can be seen from Earth’s Northern hemisphere—the W–E–T Centre shifts fluidly between scales, forming as a single constellation but also as encompassing relations across many constellations in space and time.
The term ˘sensitive˘ derives from the notion to find one’s way via what we perceive of the world around us through our body and being.
Seeking out relational space is a practice of ecologically sensitivity—to find one’s way in the world as a relational being, in terms of what we perceive spatiality, emotionally and temporally; whilst also understanding our role and impact in that which we perceive personally, socially and environmentally.
Unlike practices such as sustainable development, to be ecologically sensitive is not to strive for an ideal future that we may one day reach, vaguely in the distance—but a development that unfolds from within. To be constantly and repeatedly finding our way, as a tiny part living relationally within an expansive ecosystem.
Each constellation that becomes and is formed with the W–E–T Centre is held by a re-searching of emotions that trangress the ecological world (such as markets can be flooded, lands can be flooded and people can be psychologically flooded).
This process of re-search maps a caring and facilitating relational spatiality. And such a spatiality respects and holds these relations, whilst also being a contained space for emergent emotions and dynamics to be experienced as the relations develop further over time.
Although subjective in experience, to emotionally relate requires an act of empathy, which in itself demands a reflection on our own emotions. And it is such acts of empathy that move us, and such movement is critical to finding one’s way towards practicing ecological sensitivity.