Panel 3: Climate Rituals

Keira Greene, EUSTATIC DRIFT (2018) (video 9 mins)

“once we were plankton slouched in the oceanbut now we are code,surfaced and held in the laminae of rock like open scores ”This narrative voice comes to us from the fossils of Graptolites, our long extinct plankton ancestry. Their speculative voice speaks to us from within deep time as they coil past and future, blending evidence of our interspecies story. In Eustatic Drift we experience the real and imaginary potential of the Graptolites, as a tangible index of a once dominant species, and as a latent oracle. The film opens with wide images of the remote landscape of Dobs Linn, Scotland, significant for its graptolite-bearing strata. The landscape is richly complex in these singled out moments, held at a distance. History is sunk into the fabric of the rock and at the same time in constant change; change is its constant truth. The landscape is cut with images of the fossils; they remind us of the certainty that everything is vulnerable, of trauma that has lost all meaning, but the Graptolites present a post literative world, in which language and hybridity must evolve.In a studio environment dancer Katye Coe performs the Graptolite as an open score. She unfolds the rock and imagines how the species may’ve moved. In one instance we read in their script:“perhaps we were swimming?”Coe’s performance bears resemblance to the development of a seedling in the dark. She draws upon the depth of our interspecies memory in the absence of scientific knowledge as to how the Graptolite species moved or how deep in the Ocean they lived.In Eustatic Drift the camera meditates on the surface of images, preoccupied with that which runs beneath “there and not there”. What is immanent to the Graptolite? What is rooted in the dialectic of an embodied experience, that is critical to all species? Eustatic Drift addresses a growing consciousness that our interaction with other species is critical for human survival.

Biography

Keira Greene is an artist whose work takes the form of digital video, performance, and writing. Her research is critically engaged with the representation of intimacy and politics of resistance, explored through poetic narrative, oral history, non-verbal language and the body.

Greene’s practice often takes the form of an inquiry into the comingling of human and non-human life. Her work frequently begins with a specific location, it’s social history and its ecosystem. She is interested in producing a rapport through collaborative working across the disciplines of art and science and in particular her role as a woman artist engaged in fieldwork.

Greene uses multiple means of speaking in her video work that involves narrative text and spoken dialogue, in relationship with the non-verbal of musical score, choreography and performance. She continues to study dance and movement techniques, often considered ‘somatic’, and does so with a critical approach to their historic, social, biomechanic and aesthetic qualities. She is interested in dance as a process of being in motion and how the practice can raise questions rather than fix knowledge.

Greene has made artworks about artist communities and significant individuals whose work has facilitated social and political movement, radical ideas and alternative approaches to living. In 2015 she made the work Totally on Fire which restaged a game and social experiment from the Esalen institute, CA (circa 1970) on the grounds of the secular community Braziers Park, Oxfordshire. In 2016 she made the film Grain at the home and historic dance deck of dancer Anna Halprin in California.

Greene is currently working on various long-term collaborative projects with musicians Paul Abbott and Michael Speers, dance artists Katye Coe, Alexandrina Hemsley, Susanne Mayer, and writer D. Mortimer.

Ciaran O Dochartaigh, FEROX (presentation 20 mins)

FEROX is an experimental research project that explores complexities inherent within post-colonialism and the legacy of post-conflict and is informed by lived experience, fiction, oral history and storytelling. The project references the proximity of sites of historical, political, and eco-political relevance of non-human species that occupy these spaces, realised through mixed media experimentation, new materialism and drawing.

The performative presentation and accompanying live audio recording reference and use artwork that takes the form of a guide or ‘how-to manual’ to ‘Lough Fad East’ in Donegal - a small body of freshwater that supplies drinking water to the surrounding townlands. The ecosystem of the lough has been damaged in recent years, most significantly through water abstraction and the introduction of a new fish species that has irreversibly altered the biodiversity of the lough which had previously been unaltered since the last ice age. A newly dressed series of speculative fishing flies for

Lough Fad East are made from discarded natural and synthetic waste found around the lake and are used to catch the extinct fish. The fish becomes a conduit for looking at subjects of political violence, human trauma, and illness manifested in the body. The presentation draws parallels between the ecological decline of the land and the creatures that occupy it, and the collective experience of trauma by contextualising the technical drawings of the fish next to an imagined rendering of the late Caoimhín’s stomach, which was completely removed.

The radical medical procedure resulted in a new stomach organ being constructed from the small intestine. The diagrams subvert the language of the how-to manual and user guide and applies it to issues of eco-political crises, undoing the apparent neutrality of the manual.

Surrogate prosthetic equine ears (3D printed plastic horse ears) with holes close to the opening of the inner ear canal, hosting the embedded binaural microphones, will be used for live recording during the presentation alongside ceramic ‘speculative ceramic massage tools created for equines’ by artisans in France to record the participants from the perspective of the equine. Through live reading of a short story, we are asked to engage with a kind of ethical question, countering stories of interrogation and forced conditioning during political incarceration.

Biography.

Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh is an artist, researcher and Gaeilgeoir from Derry. His mixed media practice explores complexities inherent within post-conflict experience and the embodiment of personal loss with the legacy of political violence and lived experience. The work is inseparable from personal chronic illness. Recent research and collaborative work intersect the material processes and experimentation of the artisan with the precision of industrial design and product prototyping processes. Recent research has focused on collaborations with an illustrator, a glass blower, a woodturner, whisperer, ceramicists, a stonemason, and a fishing fly-tier. It also focuses on visits to the home of a political prisoner and working with a Horse whisperer (equine behaviorist). Ciarán is a PhD researcher in the art department at Goldsmiths and obtained an MFA at Goldsmiths College, London, 2010-2012

Recent selected shows include Ferox CCA Derry, 2022, 2022 Metabolic time / Am meitibileach, Project arts, Dublin, 2022, Periodical Review 12—Practical Magic, Pallas projects, Dublin, 2022, Outpost Norwich 2019; DOBLES DE PROXIMIDA, Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art, 2018; Tulca international festival 2017; Kisses Sweeter Than Wine Treignac Projet, France, 2016. Lofoten International Art Festival (LIAF), Norway, August 2015, Vanishing Futures: Collective Histories of Northern Irish Art, Golden thread gallery. Ciarán was invited to theorem 2019, Anglia Ruskin; Goldsmiths annual conference 2019; CIAP residency Ile de Vassivière, France, 2016. Ó Dochartaigh has taken part in theorem 2019 at Anglia Ruskin, Goldsmiths annual conference 2019; CIAP residency Ile de Vassivière, France, 2016.

Jennet Thomas, IT ONCE HAD A FACE, NOW IT WANTS ONE AGAIN (2020) (video 7 mins)

Two billion years from now, the oceans are beyond understanding, yet undersea karaoke may still be possible. Cloth and string, song and dance, costumes and goo collaborate to find new ways of moving in bleak time, with help from Stevie Wonder. The ghost of an oyster holds memories of what happened. It sings to a scrap of cloth that fell to the bottom of the sea, trying to form new life, trying to get a face. THE WORLD IS COMPLETELY ALIVE OR THE WORLD IS COMPLETELY DEAD!

Biography

Jennet Thomas makes films, performances and installations. She creates absurdist worlds that confound straightforward readings, in the form of sci-fi folk tales, musicals and unreliable lectures. She mines the connections between fantasy, ideology and the everyday, using DIY methodologies and the absurd as experiments in resistance to capitalist aesthetics. Her works have shown widely, including solo shows at Matt's Gallery London; Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool; PEER, London; film festivals including IFF Rotterdam; European Media Arts Festival; New York Underground Film Festival; and museums such as Tate Britain and MOMA New York. She is currently Reader in Time Based Media and Performance at University of the Arts, London.  

Harry Meadows, Whippy, (2021). Wind direction meter, ceramic waffle cone, resin laminated sandbag, ratchet strap, powder coated steel. 200 x 100 x 70cm. (sculpture)

The sculptures proposes a new design for weather stations influenced by the existential drama of our climate. The character suggests a blurring of the boundary between human senses and mechanical sensors. This assemblage explores the potential for the instruments that we use to measure our environment, to also become a handle on the hyperobject that is our global climate. In re-evaluating the aesthetics of the weather station, we can hope to devise new, entangled relationships between humans, machines and our atmosphere.

Biography

Artist and lecturer Harry Meadows leads Critical Zone Observatory. This research framework explores sculptural possibilities for environmental sensing practices and creates partnerships for artists, musicians, games designers and scientists. This practice-based research imagines the relations between humans and living systems under the conditions of the climate crisis. Recent exhibitions include Art for Climate Action at Gods House Tower, Southampton (2023), Cloud Sediments at Ambika P3, London (2022), Look Up and Look

Beyond at the Regent St. Cinema (2022). Climate Action & Visual Culture at University of Huddersfield (2021), Extra Sensory Weather Station at D-Unit, Bristol (2021) Climate Data Karaoke at Kiosk 7, Copenhagen (2020), and Digital Ecologies, Bath Spa University (2019).

Since receiving an AHRC award and completing an MFA at Goldsmiths College, Meadows has exhibited with institutions such as Southbank Centre, Oriel Mostyn and Aberystwyth Arts Centre as well as commissions for Hayward Touring, Supernormal Festival and The Granary, Central St. Martins. He has been artist in residence at London Metropolitan University and Brazier’s Park. Since 2014, Meadows has worked at Arts University Bournemouth as Senior Lecturer in Fine Art. He is currently a doctoral researcher with the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media (CREAM) at the University of Westminster. Research groups include The Deep Field Project and Drawing: Transformative Matter, Material Trace.

To find out more go to - https://www.criticalzoneobservatory.com/

Videos on the monitor

Alijca Rogalska, The Feast (2022) (video on monitor)

The Feast (2022, single screen video, 41'32") documents a metabolic feast: a dinner-ritual commemorating the end of humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels, happening sometime in the future when humans harness and distribute surplus energy generated by their metabolism and movements. The dinner guests consume fossil fuels and other substances once used in energy production, such as coal, crude oil, diesel, lithium and uranium, whilst discussing the strategies that could have facilitated a social transformation needed to avert the climate catastrophe. Mourning, fighting, redistribution and decolonisation are impersonated by the four performers, who - through a mostly improvised conversation - recall humanity’s struggle to wean itself from dirty energy and create a more just global society. The work was developed and produced in the framework of a residency at The Faculty of Social Sciences at Essex University and commissioned by Art Exchange and Focal Point Gallery. It forms a part of Rogalska’s practice-based PhD at the Art Department at Goldsmiths College, where she is researching future imaginaries in social art practice.

Biography

Alicja Rogalska's practice is research-led and focuses on social structures and the political subtext of the everyday; she mostly works in specific contexts making situations, performances, videos and installations in collaboration with other people to collectively search for emancipatory ideas for the future. She recently presented her work at National Gallery of Art (Vilnius, 2023), Scherben, Berlin Art Prize (2022, winner), Manifesta 14 (Prishtina, 2022), Temporary Gallery (Cologne, 2021-22), Kunsthalle Bratislava (2021), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna, 2020-21), OFF Biennale (Budapest, 2020-21), Art Encounters Biennale (Timișoara, 2019), Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (2019), Biennale Warszawa (2019), Museum of Modern Art (Warsaw, 2019), Kyoto Art Centre (2019) and Muzeum Sztuki (Łódź, 2019). Rogalska was a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin program (2020-21), and took part in residencies at City of Women Festival (Ljubljana, 2019), Stuart Hall Library (London, 2019), Paradise AIR (Matsudo, 2018), Museums Quartier (Vienna, 2018) and IASPIS (Stockholm, 2017), amongst others.

Sam Wilkins, Solar Panels, (2023) (video on monitor)

The work 'Panels' (2023) is part of an ongoing series called 'Landscape/Composite'. ‘Landscape/Composite’ applies visual effects techniques to remediate and animate landscape paintings to create ultra high definition tableaux vivant video works presented on large scale video screens. It uses Terry Gifford’s (1999) Post Pastoral idiom as the contextual frame for the remediation. The project provides a contribution to the emerging method of artists’ use of visual effects techniques to reexamine painted images of the landscape. The series also asks viewers to reconsider our cultural preconceptions of the landscape and concept of the Pastoral and the picturesque. In 'Panels' druids are cleaning solar panels and preparing them for a ritual event within a composite landscape. The original painting is by Poussin, but much of the original painting has been lost in the process.

Biography

The work of Sam Wilkins explores how our relationship with and our understanding of the landscape has been shaped and influenced by art history and oil painting. Sam uses visual effects techniques to create ultra high definition videos that animate paintings, creating complex tableau vivant to investigate ritual behaviour, land ownership and use, ecocriticism and leisure. Sam draws from the rich legacy of landscape painting to construct new narratives that ask audiences to examine their own identification with the landscape and Pastoral through art history while also encouraging viewers to scrutinise their own personal relationship and behaviour in the land that surrounds them.

Sam has shown work at various venues and events including the ICA, Aesthetica Festival and the New York Filmmakers Festival. Sam also makes visual effects for other artists and his commercial motion graphics clients have included Nokia, Bupa, Glyndebourne Opera House, Kia, B&Q amongst others.