Felt notes
Opening of Fire, We Gather Round by Hosting Lands.
Felt Notes is a mobile meeting space developed by the artist duo Kultivator together with their more-than-human collaborators: hazel trees, sheep, and horses living and working on their farm. Based on the structure of a traditional Mongolian ger (yurt), the work was constructed through a series of workshops involving students, visiting artists, and members of the local community as part of the long-term artistic research project Tell it to the Field that She Wants to Be a Meadow.
On the opening day, visitors are invited to enter the structure and participate in the slow process of spinning black wool into yarn. The wool, gathered from the flock at Kultivator, becomes the material basis for an ongoing embroidery that serves as a living record of the project’s research, relationships, and encounters.
The act of spinning provides both a practical activity and a framework for exchange. As hands work with wool, conversations unfold around questions of land, stewardship, community, and the possibilities of hope in times of ecological and social uncertainty. Kultivator approaches hope not as optimism or certainty, but as a collective practice, something that is cultivated through relationships, care, and sustained engagement with the places we inhabit.
Bringing together human and more-than-human forms of labour, Felt Notes proposes the field as a site of learning and reciprocity. The work invites participants to imagine how shared lands might foster new forms of belonging and collective responsibility, while connecting local experiences to wider struggles and aspirations unfolding across the world.
Text by Aziza Hamrel, hosting lands