Wales is a community of communities that celebrates its difference. In celebrating that difference, we must also respect the differences of others. My devolutionary texts are warnings, that with freedom we do not replicate the logic of deference.
Open Mind Series
The Open Mind Series is a selection of interviews with artists, designers and other ‘creators’ from around the world giving us an insight into how they see the world now and tomorrow. No qualifications required. No taboo. No right or wrong. Just openness.
I personally went through a period of confusion around the climate crisis because the discourse around it used to be quite singularly around end of the world, whereas my sense was that there was something much more personal, philosophical, ethical, and present than an imminent doom…
I hope to leave audiences with an acute awareness of their individual and collective power. I hope the theatre I make helps people feel alive. In order to get there, I think audiences need to be radically welcomed. They need to feel like they belong and have a vital role to play.
Symbiosis is a source of inspiration, as a way of rethinking planetary life, sociability, knowledge, mutual help, relationships, care, community, all of it in order to stimulate a world where diversity and multiplicity can thrive.
Crisis is all we know. We live our whole lives in the context of escalating planetary transformation, and the ground we stand on has never been steady. Theatre is what I do, it’s how I choose to live my life, but the crisis is the air I breathe…
Rocks are my main staple in my work and for me they contain so many possibilities. You never really know what’s going to be inside when you crack it open – how it will behave, smell, look, and sound. There’s a whole world just waiting to be revealed.
To me community is our human re-enactment of the forest. Together we intertwine and grow, creating our own micro-climates and connections that can nurture and support each-other as well as create space for a rich ecosystem of others to find their place within.
Storytelling from the perspective of ice, or a stone, a tree, a branch, a ray of light, for me is such an intense way to build a relationship with the Earth. And language becoming a thing that doesn’t separate us from the natural world, but a way of entangling us in its system of exchanges.
The emotion driving my work has changed several times throughout my practice, initially, it used to be healing, and even at some point reconciliation. Now I think it’s more a desire to share, to spark curiosity, and start a conversation about the natural world.
What I see in the community of generative artists – that I am part of – is a great direction of what I wish the general art world would be like. In my experience, artists in this field tend to be very open-minded, helpful and gladly share their experiments and tricks…
I intend to rescue ancestral rituals related to sacred places, ancestral geography and original memory, and take them into my own exploration where the work is presented as a syncretic bricolage, as an attempt to reconcile different doctrines, a process of trans-culturalization and miscegenation, the union of the sacred and the secular…
I believe that education and a return to a nature-centric narrative will naturally cause the tide to shift for more altruism, thoughtful living, and preservation. I see cities and small community villages that function like biological organisms because it makes sense to build them that way…
How do you connect with the Earth today?
I connect to the Earth in so many ways, living on her and depending on her… the biggest connection comes in moments of ceremony and prayer. I have always lived in natural places far from cities, so daily I connect to the earth by walking in the forest …
In 1000 years, I imagine that individual countries are no longer governed or dominated but there is one “administration” for the whole globe. It is not politicians who govern, but artificial intelligence. Human vanity and power obsession are thus eliminated…
How do you imagine the world in 20 years?
I imagine it with more extremes. People more aware and people farther from consciousness. More technology but also more self-sufficiency. More agroecology and more virtual worlds. More activism, more social struggles. More radicalisms. I’m afraid to think about it and at the same time it excites me…
What is the plant, animal or object that most inspires you and how?
From the age of 8 until my mid-teens I used to breed moths and butterflies in a shed at the bottom of the garden. Together my father and I built the silk-screened cages that housed them and their food plants. I’d sit in a stripey deckchair and draw the insects as they rested…