You are invited to join a conversation between ‘rock enthusiasts’ that explores alternative ways of sensing the narratives of deep time below our feet, that challenge the hierarchy of the animate-inanimate divide.
How can we actively engage with strata in our volatile times of climate breakdown?
How can we develop an ecology of care that considers ethics when engaging with strata?
Invited speakers are:
Katya Mora is an artist researcher. Through her practice, she observes human behaviour and various forms of colonisation. In a recent project ‘Forces That Are Not Landscape’, a two-channel HD video installation, she recreates a space of intimacy and living dialogue with a non-human entity: the Popocatépetl volcano. The installation explores a range of social, political, and economic factors that contextualise this dialogue through rituals, narratives, and ways of naming.
https://katyamora.com/
Sharon Gimpel is a dance artist and somatic movement practitioner. She explores the materiality of the body and the textures of movement in her encounter with the environment: gravity and light, floor and walls, rocks and water, and other sentient bodies in space.
https://www.feldenkrais.co.uk/profile/sharon-gimpel-2/
Mike Adcock is a musician and composer who has been involved in many musical collaborations over the years, playing in a range of bands and in various duos, particularly in the field of free improvisation. About twenty-five years ago he began to develop an interest in the musical use of stone in different parts of the world and dating back to prehistoric times. Mike employs different types of stone in his improvisation work and his forthcoming album Playing Bluestone features a series of improvisations on pieces of ringing stone from the Preseli Hills in Wales, of a similar kind to the rocks transported to Stonehenge. Mike has recently had a book published tracing ways in which stone has been used musically in the modern era, Music Stones – The rediscovery of ringing rock (Archaeopress).
https://mikeadcock.com/
Jordi Raga studied Art in Spain, Italy and Greece. After obtaining a BA, he was awarded a scholarship to study marble sculpture in Carrara, Italy, in 2001. He spent over a decade working on Heritage restoration all over Europe before settling in Oxford as a full-time sculptor, where he is currently based. His current work reflects on his relationship with stone as the primary material of his practice, and on the historical status of stones and their role in establishing and maintaining power structures.
https://www.jordiraga.com/
Bruce Swait is the director of Cotswold Stone Floor Cleaners, he has been restoring stone floors since 1999. His work takes him to places all around the Cotswolds and beyond to work with many different stones. He advices and educates customers on the uniqueness of the materiality and how to care for the physicality of strata on a day to day level. Bruce is a keen surfer and has an acute awareness of ocean beds, coastlines and their relationship with the ocean and the forming of waves.
https://cotswoldstonefloorcleaners.co.uk/
Pay What You Can £6 / £8 /£10