When I began this residency I thought it would be fun to look up different meanings for play. One definition suggests ‘to deal or behave carelessly or indifferently, esp. for one’s own amusement’.
We recently had storms and the weather was still really windy so I took a walk to the playground to see what effects this was having. I was shocked to see that a small tree was completely snapped in half. The trunk showed a gaping gash of pale wood while the canopy hung to one side, hanging on by some sinewy threads and fluttering limply. The heavy rains had uplifted the bark chipping in the brick-edged pits and spewed it across the grass where it still clustered in damp lumps all the way to the creek. Edges have definitely been breached!
I followed the wind gusts and the dancing choreographies of small things as they left the park and I headed towards Fish Creek. As I walked I mapped these small twigs as they settled and relocated on the bridge and path in front of me. Too many to record, but their configurations are complex and make me stumble as I try to walk and draw.
As I walk the creek the wind continues to play, carelessly and for its own amusement. Its extraordinary shifting presence has forced a flattening of grasses, reeds, palms and trees as it rushed through the cut between the houses and the rising ridge. Barad is interested in ‘matters experimental nature, its propensity to test out every un/imaginable path, every im/possibility’. As I walk the twisty creek I think about the wind as it gusts, how it has (violently) played, and its affective movements with the creek bed, the trees, grasses, leaves and twigs, the water; how it plays through and amongst matter leaving it tangled, overwhelmed, bruised or perhaps invigorated. As I walk and draw I think about the un/imaginable paths the wind took, how it tested out every im/possible potential choreography as it whooshed through. 
