The Worldwide Confederation of Wonder Collectors

Welcome to the Worldwide Confederation of Wonder Collectors. (DRAFT!)

This organisation has been initiated by a floating flotilla of intrepid journeymakers travelling in the remote deep forests and valleys traced by the Whanganui river, in Aotearoa, New Zealand. From a gathering held at a secret community land holding, came a shared desire to build and grow a world of wonders around themselves, by collecting things to remind themselves of the wonderful things they might find on their travels.

This has resulted in a worldwide organisation dedicated to the collection and sharing of wonders of all shapes and descriptions. Agents of the Confederation may also choose to have particular specialty areas of wonder collection. This could be from the natural world, the cultural world, the ridiculous worlds or the everyday worlds.. this is up to each Agent to decide or leave wide open.

If you are interested to become a Wonder Agent of the Worldwide Conferderation of Wonder Collectors, you can contact us at: trudy@intercreate.org.

Best of Luck Out There.

//Agent Miranda.

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Electrosmog Festival Description

Project Name: The Wonder Collectors

The Worldwide Confederation of Wonder Collectors is a global collective of people interested in paying closer and deeper attention to the small wonders of their everyday encounters with the world around them. Loosely defined as something causing a ‘short sharp intake of breath’ or an impulsive expression of awe, a wonder may take many forms from the whimsical to the empirical, the historical to the zoological. In sharing these small, personal wonders online as part of a global collective, the Confederation seeks to provide a space for both inspiration, reflection, and research as a way of deepening our connection to our everyday lives and surroundings.

Recently formed during a slow drifting journey known and Slow Flow, which travels amongst the deep green forests, rapids, stories, and sandflies of the Whanganui River, the Confederation continues this mode of prolonged, heightened observation. A simple networked audiovisual diary allows these first Wonder Agents to continue to explore and share their understandings of the worlds from their respective homes and lives. Wonders collected to date include thunderous, bellowing roars of both the sky and of snortling, snoring, sleeping airways; ‘salt trees’ existing in the middle of remote forests far inland; large orange balls of fire seen floating across the sky from backporches; deserted books found which link back to previous generations of wonder seekers; clocks powered by soil and light bulbs lit by the head and tail of an electric eel.

This collecting of wonders in turn relates back to the long-term goals of a certain Wonder Agent who plans on extending the existential purposes of a farmhouse homestead in Miranda, New Zealand into a live-in and living Wunderkammer or ‘House of Wonders’. In focusing on ‘everyday natural wonders’ this agent seeks to gather a myriad of small wonders which reveal or remind us of our limited views and/or understanding of what is termed as ‘nature’. Wherever possible these small wonders will be made available with DIY instructions for these wonders to be recreated at the homes of others. Providing conversational points for local and more distant visitors, the collection seeks to promote the expansion of hard set perceptions of nature. Through this shared learning the House project in time seeks to demonstrate the resilience, resources and inspiration possible when one lives locally (is largely immobile) and listens and learns their way towards developing a collaborative, mutually beneficial and integrated relationship with the living systems around one’s own living space.