Wild performatives: Experiments in rewilding at the Knepp Wildland Project

This article reflects on a two-day creative workshop at Knepp Castle Estate in October 2017. Knepp is the location of a large-scale “rewilding” project established in 2002, which uses free-roaming herbivores to cultivate habitat change and restore natural processes. Using collaborative performance-making strategies, participants attempted to respond and contribute to the complex ecology of the site, exploring the potential for productive exchanges between human and nonhuman actors. The article focusses on a series of “wild performatives” that occurred during the event. Considering three possible applications of this concept, it investigates a range of affective encounters with ecologies, performances, and conceptualizations of rewilding.