becoming
BECOMING is a creative enquiry into the relationship of human and nonhuman organisms expressed through the medium of poetry, theory, soundart, fine art and performance. This project investigates what it is to BE fungus, plant, insect, bird and animal in a shamanistic effort to better explore and integrate these different ways of being into our human selves.
In Spring 2020, as government responses to coronavirus shut down human activity, the rest of the world thrived. Unmown verges flowered and seeded, animals moved into urban centres, air and water cleared, bird and fish populations began to recover. It has taken a pandemic for humans to register the profound effect our behaviour has on the species with which we cohabit this earth. BECOMING builds on a heightened sensitivity and commitment to finding a better way to live with rather than in spite of or at the expense of other life forms.
BECOMING / HERE
a work-in-progress exhibition
16th Sep - 1st Oct 2023
New Farm, Lydford on Fosse, TA11 7HA
(two doors up from the cross keys pub, opposite the bus shelter)
EVENTS PROGRAMME
New Farm, Lydford on Fosse, TA11 7HA
(two doors up from the cross keys pub, opposite the bus shelter)
I was delighted to co-host a 📣 BECOMING BIRD WALK 📣 on Sunday 10th September as part of Hanna Tuulikki's programme of events celebrating ‘the bird that never flew’ at Glasgow Cathedral.
Responding to the habitat of the Necropolis, I shared fragments of poems to help participants sink into a deeper listening of the place. We listened and flocked and hummed and sang. Gradually rising to the top of the Necropolis in our growing appreciation of the birds in this place, becoming gradually more bird in our avian attunement, grieving the silence and absences, celebrating presence.
My next BECOMING BIRD WALK will take place at 7am, Sunday 1st October at New Farm, Lydford on Fosse.
See events page for more details.
UNCANNY LANDSCAPES
Delighted to be interviewed by the fantastic landscape writer, Justin Hopper, for this brilliant podcast series.
BECOMING
Transreading Interspecies Empathy & Innovative Poetics
AN EXHIBITION OF LANGUAGE ART
in association with
The Poetry School
becoming fungi, becoming forest
Thurs 2nd, Fri 3rd & Sat 4th December 2021
Coventry
becoming fungi, becoming forest was a sirenscrossing production, created in collaboration with Carolyn Deby, Jamie McCarthy, Jia-Yu Corti, Katye Coe, Camilla Nelson, Tom Simkins, Debra Salem, Mary Savva, Rosie McCauley & Lisa Franklin.
Inspired by Merlin Sheldrake’s book Entangled Life, the work imagined Coventry as a place of invisible connections and interacting ecosystems including humans, fungi, trees, microbes and other life - from the fungi sprawling through and under city surfaces, the yeasts living inside our body, to the fungi that link together with plants in complex networks known as the ‘Wood Wide Web’. The work invited small groups of up to 25 audience members to move through a series of 6 locations over the progress of 2 hours, exploring performance, poetry, moving image, mycelial and wild yeast experiences, choreography and singing at a series of secret locations across Coventry’s city centre.
Commissioned by Coventry City of Culture Trust and Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art, with support from The Pod, MRC Centre for Medical Mycology at University of Exeter, British Mycological Society, Arboricultural Association, Coventry Tree Wardens, and GroCycle.
This project was part of #GreenFutures, supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and Severn Trent Community Fund.
Vienna Biennale
28th May – 3rd October 2021
MAK: The Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna
Fragments of BECOMING FUNGUS (featuring Merlin Sheldrake, angela rawlings, Rhys Trimble, Milena Popov-Nena, Camilla Nelson, Amy Cutler and Helen Moore), BECOMING PLANT (featuring Jez Riley French, Reiko Goto, Tim Collins & Chris Malcolm, Tom Ingate, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Cosmo Sheldrake & Erin Robinsong) & BECOMING INSECT (featuring The Insect Librarian / Linus Slug, Lily Hunter Green, Tom Moore, Dr Eyal Maori, Dr Luigi Aloia & Karin Matharu, Heloise Tunstall-Behrens & Auclair, Helen Frosi and Susie David) were displayed live alongside artwork by Ana Mendieta and Lawrence Weiner among others at MAK’s (Museum of Applied Arts) CLIMATE CARE: Reimagining Shared Planetary Futures for the 2021 Vienna Biennale.
The exhibition takes visitors on a voyage of discovery through an inspiring panorama of ideas, processes, and narratives on key areas of life and activity, to include nourishment and nurture, living, motion, production, cooperation, and the mobilization of active hope.
THE BLIND TOURIST
5th July 2021
WFMU
New Jersey
Camilla speaks plants, fungus, reading and writing, dreams, ducks and other life forms with Adriene Lilly on The Blind Tourist, over at WFMU, New Jersey.
Parts of Becoming Fungus and A Yarn Er Narrative aired again here, alongside a number of works by other plant-inspired artists and authors.
Check out the full programme here.
In November 2020, at UnderGROWTH’s invitation, BECOMING developed into a number of performative experiments into becoming insect, plant, bird and animal through movement and mark-making. The result was a series of original artworks, poems and creative prompts that were handbound into sixty-six booklets and accompanying artworks for delivery across Coventry via The Pod. Recipients are encouraged to share their prompts, artworks and poetry to create a fungal network - a wood wide web - of creative resources across Coventry to better support and integrate these plural ways of becoming.
