This thesis explores the question: how can interdisciplinary practices of collaboration and listening transform the world? Compost serves a unifying metaphor to explore how environmental philosophy, dance improvisation, Kālacakra Buddhist cosmology and meditation practices, and community engagement are all different layers of a deeper conception of what listening and collaboration mean. The interdependent nature of vermicomposting creates metaphors for ethical-political practice, and is a form of creative improvisation. From the 1400s to 1800s, a European transition from hylozoism to mind and matter separation created the waste/value dualism central to capitalistic projects today. Through an uneven and cyclical understanding of time and ritual, the process of decomposition and regeneration appears as a more ethical way towards addressing contemporary environmental and social concerns. This also appears in Kālacakra Buddhist cosmology and meditation practices, which give an account of how karma and selfhood shape the world we live in. Through composting our perceptions and emotions, all sentient beings can find liberation and transformation. These metaphors are applied to dance improvisation, prompting solo practice exploration that discovers similarities with other contemporary dance practitioners that treat the environment as agential and movement as political. Finally, I explore community engaged efforts that center listening and localized actions, which all leads towards an outline of a community center model that might house all these practices.
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