A Touching ‘Contract’

This chapter speculates on how a contract with nature might be negotiated. Through the process of drawing, the author reveals the agency of the natural elements in a site. On an urban boundary in Australia, a bush track is repeatedly visited over a year. A large roll of French imported paper is used as a record of the haptic encounter. Acting as a sensual membrane between multiple forces and entities, the paper begins to shift its nature and knowledge is exchanged. Enacting the philosopher Michel Serres’ proposition that we need to enter into a contract with the Earth through engagement with the vitality of material forces the author proposes that the ‘contract,’ made in place, folds the human and nonhuman parties into the matter of paper, into a legible form, and into an ethical entanglement. Opening out the ground of a contract to include the haptic exchange that occurs in place, encourages an ethical exchange, entwining nature’s laws into concepts of morality and ethical engagement.