Threads: Connecting (the) Dots and Trees

It all lines up: art keeps on growing, as ideas keep on sprouting. In March (below) I didn’t even list everything, and April is becoming a thrilling time table.

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Much centred around the 21^st March, just after Equinox, World Poetry- and World Tree Day. And there was more: I had a tiny role in the film ‘Myth’ for Victoria Rance’s ‘In Real Life’, a project which is currently on show, and there is a finissage on the 14^th May: Victoria Rance : In Real Life – Cable Depot (cable-depot.com)

In the film for Victoria’s project I am with Esther Bunting and Steve Ritter – I had played a little part before in Esther’s ‘Girl in Suitcase’ play, and Esther had resurrected it recently and recorded bits of it, including the two poems I wrote for it then, about the Goddess Kali and about Blood and our cycle. I felt inspired to record it as well then, so here is Esther Kali on Vimeo, then me Ursula performs KALI & BLOOD on Vimeo and here we are together on her blog: Kali – Esther Bunting

My ‘threading technique’ developed, from tiny ‘threads’ at the local church yard – which is pretty much our local park to the current layering practice I now do, spontaneously for a little film I did for IWD, (8^th March) where I performed an imaginary unveiling around our local obelisk, to dedicate it to Mary Fleming.

Then the opportunity arose to do a performance for the Becoming Tree Festival: this would also be an opportunity to combine my tree-threading with Simon Bradley’s sculpture that arose out of our Pylon111 project for ReDrift. So this combined performance will take place on the 24^th April online, live art on a livestream, and the link is here: Be-coming Tree | Facebook

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Threading a tree is a great way to reenact our lost connections to trees, to nature and to (tree)roots – and to help us try to imagine how many roots they have between them. So as World Earth Day is coming up on the 22, I’ll do another tree thread ‘sculpture’ for that – probably this one on the banks of the river Ellen.

Maybe we need reminding of our (tree)roots more and more: I imagine too, how a threaded tree might protect it from being felled, or harmed otherwise – if only symbolically: at least its threading might highlights it for the little time duration that I let it be on it. My intention is to raise awareness of it as too precious to be damaged. Pick up this thread, think about the tree, and about us. Damage to our environment also means damage to ourselves: a significantly shocking example here is the disaster in Chernobyl, which will be 35 years ago exactly on the 26^th. And we have Sellafield here, as our local reminder. I pointed to this link (two power stations – two accidents) – in the Ukraine exhibition, which is now on show in Enger, Germany. Another exhibition, ‘Europe and the Bull’ follows soon.

And of course I have been writing as ever, and I got published in the amazing Purple Hermit, issue The Haar / Behind the Mask, a wonderful literary journal coming out in the far north, edited by writer Lydia Popovich. It’s here: Behind the Mask – The Purple Hermit xxx

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And more. coming…