Tarkind: Education, Storytelling & Exploration about Living Systems

The Tarkind vision and mission is to connect with takanya / Tarkine forest in North West Tasmania as a community with a heart, head and hands approach of education. We will host an annual collective art project based in Hobart and a citizen science project based in Corinna in the takanya / Tarkine. Both of these initiatives will connect our participants to the interconnected and cutting edge wisdom and science of living systems.

Living systems are all around us, at a microscopic level all the way up to a planetary level. Within living systems wisdom we can uncover critical knowledge for the design of regenerative systems. At the heart of the Tarkind project is to educate on this topic. I am passionate about this subject area, the people I meet in the process and the emergent possibilities that we humans can create to design a better world.

As Fritjof Capra describes: “Throughout the living world, we find living systems nesting within other living systems.” Linked to this thinking is The Gaia Hypothesis proposed by James Lovelock (1972) suggesting that living organisms on the planet interact with their surrounding inorganic environment to form a synergetic and self-regulating system that created, and now maintains, the climate and biochemical conditions that make life on Earth possible. Lovelock described in 1979 “the entire range of living matter on Earth from whales to viruses and from oaks to algae could be regarded as constituting a single living entity capable of maintaining the Earth’s atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts.” – Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth.

As Capra describes: One recurrent theme discussed by systems practitioners is the question of why it is so difficult to help people make the jump from a mechanistic world view to a networked world view. In this new systems view of life, we have to change our understanding of living systems as machines to a view where cognition plays a role in dynamic and autopoietic processes.
Cognition, then, is not a representation of an independent existing world, but rather a continual bringing forth of a world through the process of living. p256 A Systems View of Life, Capra
The notion of “bringing forth a world” can be compared with the way in Capra and Maria describe as *holonomic thinking*.

I believe as a heartfelt and caring community we can connect in a practical way through art&science and with the forest to create better understanding, empathy and even strategies to address the critical problems we need to solve in the future. I am looking forward to going on this journey with you, First Nations people and with the forest, in dialogue and in kindness.

We will be launching Tarkind on Sunday 5th of May at the Hobart Botanical Gardens in the POD. There will be two art sessions run on the day. Between 10am - 12midday and 1pm - 3pm. We will be painting art with guidance from local artist Gemma O’Rourke and biologist Dr Keith Martin-Smith.

Tarkind project collaborator and advisor Gemma O’Rourke local artist and Melukerdee woman shares the process of development of this art piece for Tarkind. “it was inspired by a brief that wanted to portray inclusiveness, friendliness, kindness and particular engagement for children…It is hand drawn with chalk and pastels. The chalk/pastel look I feel is very approachable and endearing for kids. They feel a sense of ownership... I took inspiration from the Moss Beetle (Dr Keith Martin-Smith’s Photograph) in terms of colours and form, weaving her into and around the TARKIND name, intermingled, interwoven , interconnected, vibrant matter. The colurs and patterns from her exterior reflecting cosmic shapes to the wildness of down deep Tarkine terrain.

Background information about takanya / Tarkine

“takanya / Tarkine is a vast expanse in a wilderness wonderland of wild rivers, dramatic coastal heathlands, button grass plains, bare mountains, ancient Huon pines, giant eucalypts and myrtles and extraordinary horizontal scrub. It is home to rare and endangered birds - like the orange-bellied parrot and the white goshawk - and countless animals such as the eastern pygmy possum. 40,000 years takanya has been home to the Tasmanian Aboriginal tarkiner people who inhabited the Sandy Cape region of this island’s wild west coast. The name Tarkine means belonging to, or of the tarkiner”

— Tarkine by WWF / Discover the Tarkine

The Tarkine is the second largest temperate rainforest in the world and the largest temperate rainforest in Australia, with over 400,000 hectares of virgin wilderness. Here are some facts to share about this beautiful forest:

There are three plants that are a direct link with South America’s Patagonia, New Guinea and New Zealand, with which Tasmania was connected to as part of the super continent Gondwanaland.
Over 2,000 hectares is covered by wet eucalypt forest areas, where trees grow to be taller than 41 metres high! These areas are said to be “large enough to be self-sustaining and support ongoing evolutionary processes”.
The Tarkine is home to more than 60 species of rare, threatened and endangered species.
The world’s largest extant carnivorous marsupial, the Tasmanian Devil, lives in the Tarkine rainforest.
The Tarkine is home to the world’s largest freshwater crayfish, Astacopsis gouldi, also known as the Giant Freshwater Lobster.
There are almost no introduced predators.
The world’s only known insect fossils were found in the Tarkine rainforest, found in sediments of true glacial origin.
Fossils between 100-700 million years old, algal stromatolite fossils, were found around the Arthur and Julius Rivers and are Tasmania’s oldest known fossils.
The Tarkine is a mix of rainforest, wet and dry eucalypt forest, mixed forest, riverine, heathland, moorland and coastal ecosystems (Reference: https://www.tasmanianexpeditions.com.au/Blog/top-facts-about-the-tarkine).

Community Art Event Details

A community art project takayna / Tarkine held at the Hobart Botanical Gardens. Lets come together as a community to express our love for this forest.

Sunday 5th of June, 2022.

Educators including a local artist and biologist will support children and teens to create a piece of art work for the Tarkind Exhibition (approx. one month later date TBA).

The presentations from educators will inspire children and teens to engage in this unique place which has the largest areas of Aboriginal archeology in the southern hemisphere and is also the largest temperate Gondwanan rainforest in the Southern Hemisphere.

takayna / Tarkine is one of the few remaining pristine wilderness' in Australia, it needs to be protected for current and future generations - by engaging in this vulnerable forest and its sacred living systems living systems we can redirect the current destruction occurring into opportunities for regeneration.

We look forward to meeting you. We are creating a community who values kindness for each other, our own self, the forest & future generations.

Link to book for the Tarkind Community Art Project.