Nature's Narrative
Last year, we dedicated an entire day of the festival to it: Nature’s Narrative – the story nature wants to tell, but that we humans find so hard to hear. But one day was never going to be enough. This is a conversation we need to continue, which is why Nature’s Narrative has now become a fully-fledged programme line within Exploring Stories. After all, nature cannot be contained in a single afternoon. This year, we want to listen more attentively – to all the stories nature offers us in rustling leaves, cracking ice, melting silence, birdsong, or deafening stillness.
Once again, we ask ourselves: what does it mean to give voice to nature? Last year, we explored the many ways we as humans might begin to listen to the more-than-human world. This year, we focus on what such listening demands of us. Because if you really listen, you also hear pain – the pain of ecological devastation, political decisions, and structural exploitation. Nature’s Narrative might make our ears ache a little. But perhaps that ache is a call to action.
These programmes create space for stories beyond the human perspective – and reflect on the responsibility we carry as humans. How can we speak on behalf of nature without drowning it out? What kind of language might allow us not only to represent non-human life, but to protect it? Can literature, activism and philosophy truly challenge the dominant worldview in which the Earth is seen merely as a resource?
Within Nature’s Narrative, we hear voices that question – and redraw – the boundary between human and nature. Voices unafraid to confront us with uncomfortable truths. Voices that remind us that connection and repair are, in fact, possible. In conversations with, among others, Sunil Amrith, Bibi Dumon Tak, Arita Baaijens, and Roxane van Iperen, we ask how nature tells its story – and whether we, as humans, are even capable of hearing it. And if we can listen: will we hear only cries of alarm, or also the music of another possible future?