Tanya Poole, The Whispering Spring

scientists to when the continents were all one
continent. In describing the spatio-temporal
dimensions of the work, Poole (2018) makes the
following statement:
“‘The Whispering Spring’ exists in the
dimension of time too. That’s so important,
because it really is about the future —
it’s a proposal for ways of working and
researching and making and connecting
going forward. The fact is that we can
imagine our Utopias, and we should. And
what can help us imagine the future is to
know about the past.”
She also expresses an intensified love and
fascination for the world of insects and plants
and insect-plant interactions in terms of their
relevance to our past and our future. In particular
the way in which they co-evolve together. Prevec,
Matiwane and Mbunge assisted in the process
of educating Poole about these insect/plant
relations. There is also an intergenerational
element to the network that Poole has nurtured.
Her daughter Sophie is 17 and during her school
breaks worked with Khokela Camagu, a fossil
excavator and preparator who works at the
Albany Natural Museum where Poole would
regularly visit and be taken on tours of the
various collections. Out of two paleontology
trips, two freshwater ecology trips and numerous
visits to the Albany Museum and the Botanical
Gardens, Poole selected three subjects: seven
female researchers, a selection of trees from the
Botanical Gardens and a selection of different
species of bees.
The Researchers
The title of each of the seven portraits is the
researcher’s name and profession. Each of these
women is engaged in scientific research that
revolves around relationships and information
derived from trees and insects. Poole spent
months observing their work and participating
in activities with them when invited. In fact, her
method could be described in anthropological
terms as “hanging out”, a self-descriptive name
for a form of participant observation where the
researcher does not have any rigid requirements
but is open to any possible direction the research
may take them and essentially spends as much
time immersed in the field as possible. The most
important method to this research is simply
that one relinquish a specific agenda and just
“hang out” with a group of people while they