MARKÉTA DOLEJŠOVÁ
Feral Gift


    A co-creative experiment in feral ways of knowing, sensing, and making sense with more-than-human worlds.

    Feral ways, like the creatures who roam them, thrive beyond boundaries, in the liminal places between the wild and the domesticated, the familiar and unknown, the serendipitous and intentional. They are curvy, lively and surprising; inviting spontaneous journeys that can lead to unexpected encounters in space and time. They shape and are shaped by the landscape they inhabit, always keen on slowing down and making a pause to listen and sense the surroundings. 

    Interested in following these directions, Feral Gift invites varied groups of (other-than-) human contributors to gather sensory impressions and embodied reflections of their surroundings and exchange them with each other as gifts. The collective gifting exchange is performed as a looped process of prompting and enacting, where one contributor shares a prompt (instruction score) to be reflected and enacted – narrated, sang, danced, cooked, or else – by the rest of the group. The documentation of these enactments – as poems, songs, videos, photos, recipes, edible dishes, and more – are shared within the group as gifts. The project thus connects various creatures and knowledges into shared moments of feral inquiry, hoping to make visible relations that might otherwise go unnoticed.

    The Feral Gift experiment was initiated in 2022 by Markéta Dolejšová and Danielle Wilde and brought to life together with Ann Light, Felipe G. Gil, Iryna Zamuruieva, Martyna Miller, and the Open Forest Collective.