This workshop explores uncertain reactions to land and waterscapes, with a focus on discomfort, mistrust and uncanny gut feelings.
Breakwater, the artist duo of Youngsook Choi and Taey Iohe, presents Submarine Consciousness, Or What Have You , a new project exploring historical and contemporary ideas of rewilding in and around Hadleigh Farm in the Thames Estuary. The project considers the neocolonial relations of Essex as the backyard of the capital and their impact on environmental degradation, as well as remarkable survival and resilience. It unpacks the complex narratives of the flood-altered landscapes, local submarine psyche, social and environmental trauma, a witness to the interspecies resilience, and intense ecological negotiations within the Estuary.
Events schedule
Sunday 22 June
10:30-12:30 Sound walk 'Cockles of My Heart 2' by Breakwater, starting from the Cockle Flag
14:00-16:00 'Dye-ing Hope' workshop by Laura Burns, private room at Hub Cafe building
16:30-17:30 Sound walk 'Cockles of My Heart 2' by Breakwater, starting from the Cockle Flag
Sunday 29 June
10:30-12:30 Sound walk 'Cockles of My Heart 2' by Breakwater, starting from the Cockle Flag
14:00-16:00 'strange feelings' workshop by Ayesha Keshani, private room at Hub Cafe building
16:30-17:30 Sound walk 'Cockles of My Heart 2' by Breakwater, starting from the Cockle Flag
Dye-ing Hope 22 June, Laura Burns: A workshop with gorse as a natural dye and flower remedy*
Gorse is a prominent plant on the Hadleigh Farm site. A so-called “native” species to the British Isles, it is used as a flower remedy to bring hope to those who have lost faith, or a situation that seems impossible. But when I spent time with Gorse and asked about its medicine, it actually said, “I am so much older than hope”. I was curious about this sentiment, and the sensation of rock-like time that the gorse bush had.
We will harvest gorse and make a solstice flower remedy, spending time with the enquiry: in times of political hopelessness/despair, what does being “older than hope” mean and how might we track Gorse in our collective listening? Can we let hope die as we dye, to make space for the medicine of this ancient plant to emerge?
*Participants will be able to leave with their own small flower remedy. All materials provided.
Laura Burns is an artist and facilitator tending to the remembrance of embodied knowing. They make and search for reparative practices to attend to the impact of colonial capitalism’s enclosures of land, bodies and practices, asking instead how the land guides and gives rise to transformative justice and abolitionist futures.
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