Aligned to wider global environmental concerns for the health of our waterways, including activist and cultural responses to these systems, we have been focussed on celebrating the river’s presence amongst our communities, with the regard that the river is always more than the trauma that it is currently expressing.
The work, at all its levels, included an honouring of the river and the lives it supports, whilst acknowledging the trouble it is expressing, troubles that we are implicated in. To regard the river as ancestor, as bringer of wisdom, as an animist witness of the Anthropocene, was to express with tenderness, both the grief and the reverence in which it is culturally held. Each artist was both an ear and voice for this process…
Proceeding through ‘listening’ methods; both auditory and somatic, these processes included ways of dancing with, singing with, walking along, being within, moving with, recording and responding to the river’s behaviour. These were subsequently shared with our communities along the way. Some practices invited participation in movement and sound scores, river ecology walks and the arts of noticing.
Please visit the Afon (Deep Listening) residencies pages for documentation and reflections by each artist.
