More-than-Human Pastoral Landscapes in South Africa
Eastern Cape & Rural Grasslands
The soil is red, dense and textured, carrying the traces of movement. Zebras run across the open field in coordinated rhythms, their bodies moving as a collective formation rather than as isolated individuals. In the distance, elephants remain still, watching. Their presence is not passive; it is attentive, perceptive, and aware.
It is difficult to reconcile their immense physical scale with their sensitivity. The elephant listens before moving. Her body responds to sound, vibration and proximity. As I follow her from a distance, her footsteps press into the soil, leaving temporary imprints that mark both movement and presence. The ground records these interactions, holding a memory of multispecies encounters.
Giraffes move slowly across the landscape, their pace distinct from the urgency of other animals. Each species inhabits time differently, producing overlapping yet non-synchronous rhythms. Together, these movements form a layered system of relations that extends beyond human perception. In this landscape, the absence of humans does not imply emptiness. On the contrary, it reveals a more-than-human world structured by attention, coexistence and interaction. Animals are not background elements but active participants, continuously shaping and sensing their environment. The landscape unfolds as a multispecies field, where soil, bodies and movement are entangled in a shared ecological and perceptual system.
