Past events continued...
Tending
Site-specific performance, Joya: arte + ecología, Spain, 2022
During a residency at Joya, a centre for art and ecology in Andalucía, I developed a performance in response to the local terrain. I presented the piece in the late afternoon, in the golden light preceding dusk. The sole instructions to the audience were to keep the silence and to follow me at a distance. When I started walking, this marked the beginning of the performance.
We walked through an olive grove and into a pale field where there were many holes dug in the ground. I’d been struck by these hollows during my daily walks. They had been dug in anticipation of a mass tree planting endeavour due to take place later in the autumn. Little piles of dusty earth sat beside each hole. They were reminiscent of graves. My performance responded to the dual nature of these cavities as sites of potential growth and of death and loss. They were to be understood as both wombs and tombs.
Tending was informed by the saying: a wise person knows they’ll never sit in the shade of the tree they plant. I intended to create an image of a gardener tending the soil in which one day they will be buried. The performance evoked the notion of intertwined forces of living / dying and symbolised a commitment to action in the face of climate crisis, however absurd or futile.
Generous emptiness: sculptural and architectural encounters
Artist talk, The Posthumanities Hub & The Eco- and Bioart Lab Hybrid Seminar, Linköping University, Sweden, 2022
This talk pondered different kinds of ‘emptiness’ and their potentialities. As a way into thinking about some relevant themes, I introduced the Sun Hive, exploring the hive’s material and conceptual aspects and how it symbolises a certain kind of relationship between humans and honeybees. Unlike many other forms of bee box that already have frames installed inside them, the Sun Hive provides a colony with a primarily ’empty’ space in which to build their comb, contained by a form that reflects and honours the bees’ natural preferences. The hive is imbued with an ethos of generosity, love and respect rather than of control.
Thinking about the Sun Hive enabled a consideration of some of the meaningful and generative ways in which an artistic practice can meet with a scientific method of observation in an ecological context. We also looked at spatial sculptural/installation practices as transformative sites in terms of human health and wellbeing. I narrated embodied encounters with artworks and the ways in which these resonated and provided support during a time of bereavement. The talk closed with a reflection on some of the ways in which built environments can be conducive to contemplative states, drawing on examples of remarkable public spaces such as the Kamppi Chapel – “the chapel of silence” – in Helsinki, and contrasting this with the prevalent strategy of ‘hostile architecture’ in urban design.
All Bodies One Body
Solo Exhibition, London 2018