3ecologiesThe 3ecologies Project, Sainte-Anne-du-Lac, 2023.
Photo: courtesy of the artists

How to Give Land Back to Itself?

“If you want conditions of life to be different in the sense that other opportunities for living and learning can be imaginable in a time of climate destruction, then you need to create cultures for that.”¹ 1 - Erin Manning, personal interview, September 28, 2023. All statements attributed to Manning in this text are from this interview. Erin Manning, co-founder of the anarcho-communist The 3ecologies Project (with Brian Massumi), explains as we sit on her balcony in Montréal. Manning, an artist and scholar, has been rethinking cultures — habits and ways of life — that facilitate more-than-human encounters for over twenty years.

The 3ecologies Project (3e), adopted from the work of philosopher and activist Félix Guattari,² 2 - See Félix Guattari, “The Three Ecologies,” in The Three Ecologies, trans. Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton (London and New Brunswick, NJ: The Athone Press, 2000), 23 – 105; and Félix Guattari, “The New Aesthetic Paradigm,” in Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm, trans. Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995), 98 – 118. is “an autonomous learning environment exploring collective techniques for creative thought and practice… dedicated to participatory experimentation in research-creation.”³ 3 - “About 3e (The 3ecologies Project),” 3ecologies (website), accessed November 20, 2023, accessible online. One of 3e’s developing projects examines the histories and contexts of private property, settler agriculture, and land development by directly confronting colonial and genocidal systems. This land-based project welcomes anyone who wishes to experiment with a refusal and re-sorting of these systems. For Manning and Massumi, 3e is taking up Gilles Deleuze’s adage that “concepts are nothing if they are not lived.”⁴ 4 - Gilles Deleuze cited in Erin Manning and Brian Massumi, “3ecologies Project: An Interview with Erin Manning and Brian Massumi,” interview by Stacey Moran and Adam Nocek, Techniques Journal 2 (Spring 2022), accessible online.