The Garden of Resistance
OPENING: 24/08/17 12:00 PM – 9:00 PM | FREE
The Garden of Resistance, The New Matrix and the Time to Come!
Thursday 24 August
A day long communal immersion in Edge Hill Station Garden
The day will involve: workshops, live performances, presentations, poetry readings, talks, food and fire.
The event is FREE and open to all
Day workshops from 12 - 4pm
Evening event from 6-9pm
A detailed schedule of events will be printed and available at the event
The Garden of Resistance, The New Matrix and the Time to Come! event is a part of Sabina Sallis’ work and research undertaken during Connect/Exchange residency, hosted by Metal. Her research and actions at Metal are focused around generating a factual/fictional scenario about a covert eco-poetic society and their infecting and infiltrating poetic actions. The scenario entangles factual and fictional aspects about poetic activities that are subtly spreading and infecting the political and social system to transform it towards a sustainable future.
The event is cooperatively curated and activated to celebrate the garden, the deeper values and dimensions of our life and formation of temporary communities. This inviting gathering is a diverse collection of multiple experiences, tactics of resistance and examples of ‘the constituent power of lived imagination that are transforming the world around’.
Appreciating and respecting diverse perspectives, collaborations, various forms of activism, micro-political applications and shared dream for better future, the event, without hierarchy, weaves affinities and new strategies giving a glimpse of a time to come and future world!
Gabriella Warren-Smith and Lily Mellor will be exploring the evolution of dialogue in the digital age and its potential for meaningful existence within the site specify and community in the garden.
Devon Forester Jones (She/Her) and Olive Sanderson (She/Her, They/Them) will be exploring life editing as a process of cooperation and meetings of meshwork of life with art and art with life. For their appearance at Metal, Drip Tones will be conducting a meditative performance that invites participants to listen on a deeper level to the sounds that envelope Edge Hill Garden and the train station.
Pauline Sallis will read some of John Clare`s wonderful poetry showing his love for the beauty of the natural world. George Monbiot rightly calls John Clare 1793 – 1864 “the poet of the environmental crisis”, a poet for today.
Joanna Straczowski will give performative talk about aesthetics, anarchy and philosophy in everyday experiences.
Stephanie Pitchers will present a poem about life and the garden and how her garden makes her dreams come true.
Combining the latest findings in neuroscience, ancient wisdom and insights about financial system, Joanne Theaker, will talk about emotional wealth and psychology of money.
Sabina Sallis will present a performative talk with video. Sabina will share her experience of being an artist in residence at the Metal and working in Liverpool, at Edge Hill Garden and other wonderful places.
Tracey Dunn will talk about activism and permaculture.
Day workshops with Sabina Sallis
Sabina invites everyone for an imaginative immersion in Edge Hill Station garden. Drawing from Sabina’s experience as an artist in residence at Metal and sourcing from root methodologies of her recent training as Earth Forum Responsible Participant (Social Sculpture Research Unit, Oxford) Sabina will offer ‘imaginative space’ -drawing and gilding workshop and drawn sachets/seed bomb making.
Families welcome!
Participants bios:
Devon Forrester-Jones is a Liverpool-based artist working with words, improvisation and performance to try and figure out how people really understand each other when their main means of communication is language.
Drip Tones are an experimental project working in sound and performance. Investigating the daily grind of ordinary mundane existence, they plunder the world that each of us inhabit – morning alarms, bored commutes, the repetitive tasks of menial labour – searching for insights within often ignored everyday experiences.
Gabriella Warren-Smith is a Liverpool based artist and curator, who primarily works in the medium of pencil and pen. Her drawings seek to challenge the perception of drawing and to encourage new ways of exploring its potential as a medium.
Joanna Straczowski is an aesthetic philosopher interested in anarchistic ideas. She is currently finishing her PhD researching Aestheticizing of Politics. She is a passionate fan of David Lynch blogging about everyday surreal experiences.
Joanne Theaker: ‘I worked as a teacher, economic reformist, national charity leader and IT consultant in London for the Bank of new York and Lloyd’s reinsurance market. I went on to launch social enterprises delivering social and environmental change. I draw on rich diversity of experience in economics, entrepreneurship, education, psychology, gender studies and spirituality. I am a professional member of The Human Givens Institute, a member of the Gender identity Research and Education Society and Fellow at the Royal Society of Arts’.
Lily Mellor is an artist, curator and producer, currently living and working in Hull. Her practice often uses performance, sculpture and installation to explore anthropological ideas: In particular, she critiques and highlights etiquettes, power balances, instruction and proof. Lily holds a Masters of Fine Art and currently works as Assistant Producer on this year’s Turner Prize, as part of Hull City of Culture. She is also co-director of Surtsey Projects.
Olive Sanderson:’ Within my artistic practice, inseparable from my life, I am bringing into question social norms (the way we do things) and folkways (why we do things) by altering my daily life. Using my own routines as a medium I present possible change to normality. Creating new rules for my life and asking questions about the ego, the self and identity’.
Pauline Sallis: Poetry has always been important to Pauline. She agrees with William Blake that poetry liberates the imagination and frees “the mind-forged manacles” of repression and restriction. Let`s all live poetically!
Stephanie Pitchers after running away from conventional work to play games all day at university, Stephanie found herself married with two children and a keen interest in politics. Stephanie dreams of a career that is either easy or enjoyable and a future that is kinder and fairer for everyone.
Sabina Sallis has a multifaceted approach to arts provision- as a researching, collaborating and exhibiting artist and as a curator and facilitator. Sabina lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Tracey Dunn:’ I grew food as a child as half our garden was producing apples, gooseberries, rhubarb, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, onions and more for our own personal use. I learnt to cook very young as I received a cookbook from my parents aged 5. The first thing I made was scrambled eggs… strange as I don’t much like eggs anymore! I do extreme recycling as far as picking up broken things in the streets to take home to fix then taking to charity shops. I try not to buy much new, most of my clothes are passed down to me by family members. I try and live outside mainstream society as much as possible as it’s very stressful though I try and spread the word about creating a better world as much as possible. I do social media for a local alternative magazine so I get the chance to express myself as much as I want.’
Connect/Exchange is a nationwide programme of Exchange/Research/Networking residencies for UK-based artists with a screen-based practice. Led by Northern Film & Media in collaboration with Chapter(Cardiff), Metal (Liverpool), BALTIC (Gateshead), The NewBridge Project (Newcastle) and Stills (Edinburgh), the scheme enables artists to undertake initial research and development of a new work or project. Connect/Exchange is supported by Arts Council England, Creative Scotland and Arts Council of Wales. For more information:https://northernmedia.org/project/connectexchange