‘In Contact’ was conceived in Spring 2023 in response to a callout for projects for the newly formed Creative Climate Action Fund, managed by the Northampton Community Foundation.
We are facing an ecological crisis. Which is a human crisis; a crisis of how we live, operate, and treat each other and our beautiful, but deeply hurt planet. The events of the next few short years are predicted to see a series of catastrophic threats to our planet, which will shape whether or not we have a future as a species (See the IPCC report for a summary of the latest climate science).
It will require all our wisdom, creativity, solidarity, and care to navigate these crises: we will need to find new paths to tread and/or rediscover old ones that we forgot - the ones that got tangled in thorns, became difficult to find, and virtually impassable, lost in time, thwarted, and often, actively oppressed.
Art has a huge role in these uncertain and unstable times to help us process our experiences, imagine new futures, and (re)birth ways of living, breathing, and being. Helping us seek out the paths less well travelled, or even forge new ones entirely. It can help re-orientate us away from our human-centric endeavours and find new ways to care for our world. The ‘In Contact’ project was designed to provide spaces for people to navigate this journey together, share knowledge with each other, build community, and develop strategies for adaptation and resilience.
The title of this project ‘In Contact’ emerged for several reasons. I use printmaking as a core part of my practice and one of the unique things about printmaking as a process, compared to most other visual arts, is that the image is created in a dark and hidden space, between the surface of the matrix (which holds the image) and the substrate (which the image is transferring to). It is only after this moment of being ‘in contact’ (physical touching and pressed together) between these two surfaces that the print is then revealed to the light. As a result, printmaking always has an element of the unknown, and there is a sense of surprise, joy, and wonderment that happens at the moment of the reveal of the print. As we face the ecological crisis, we are in desperate need of reconnecting with forms of knowledge that have become hidden, often through colonial oppression of indigenous knowledge, and also through our increasing disconnection from the ecologies we are intrinsically enmeshed with. There is an urgent work of translation needed between us and the more-than-human world to ensure we are embodying modes of being that are sustainable, restorative, healing, and regenerative. This project essentially set out to do that. To find, or indeed rediscover, ways to be ‘in contact’ with ourselves, with each other, and with the more-than-human world.
“A print is an object that has been made by transferring an image between two surfaces in contact” [Jennifer Roberts]
Over the year, I first spent time with Sol Haven, the community organisation hosting the project. Sol Haven is a community garden in Northampton that adopts permaculture principles in everything they do. I started by taking their Ploughing the Mind course to understand the permaculture principles at the heart of their organisation and to see the ways they already used these principles to support wellbeing. I then began to consider the ways that these principles could already be seen in my approaches to artistic practice and to find ways to communicate how people could engage in those principles as a meaningful tool to engage with the climate crisis. I particularly wanted to make space for participants to process the emotions that the ecological crisis is evoking, such as climate anxiety and grief.
“Permaculture is a revolution disguised as gardening” (co-founder of the Permaculture movement David Holmgren)
This time of research led to the development of workshops, a new Perform//Print work, a zine, an exhibition and a hand-bound artist’s book. All of these have provided participants and audiences with chances to engage with knowledge about the ecological crisis and embodied experience of the Permaculture principles. Below you can see documentation from the project.
WORKSHOPS
Each workshop was designed around permaculture principles and provided participants with opportunities for discussion and reflection on key aspects of the ecological crisis; such as deforestation, mining and extraction, soil erosion, water and air pollution, climate refugees, biodiversity and species loss. Together we would undertake somatic and body-based practices for connecting with the more-than-human world and healing. This was then linked to Perform//Print processes that allowed participants to be directly in contact with botanical and natural materials. Every workshop utilised different types of botanical printmaking methods; mono-printing, sun-printing, relief printing and ‘contact printmaking’ (a method I have developed which is akin to the Japanese Gyotaku method). All the inks used were hand-made and fully natural.
Photographs: Joe Brown
Perform//Print
This performance dealt with my own journey through climate grief and an embodiment of my ancestral understandings of our connection to land. In Welsh culture, the relationship between the human and the more-than-human world is understood to be deeply entwined. We have a word ‘hiraeth’, that has no direct English translation but is something close to longing or nostalgia, specifically for homelands. This word carries with it a deep cultural significance based in Welsh culture’s framing of our connectivity to the land. Our longing for home, both real and imagined, courses through us like blood through our veins. Like the roots of the tree spreading down underground we are connected to the lands to which we belong, as if those roots connected our feet down into the depths. To be separated from the land to which we belong is to experience great loss and great longing. In the performance, root systems become a metaphor for connection and belonging, a network that links us to the more than human world, from the cosmos to the hidden underworld beneath our feet.
In the Mabinogi[on], a woman is made from flowers and transformed into an owl, a man becomes an eagle to escape death, and it is possible to ride fish! The land has a vitalism and magic that permeates all experience. Little to no distinction is made between the body and the ecology to which it belongs. Features of the landscape, such as stones, pools, water, and caves, become portals for transformation, acting as liminal spaces between our world and the spiritual or magical realms beyond, such as Annwn, the Otherworld or Underworld a place where it is possible to discover new ways of being and knowing. The journey to Annwn became a metaphor for exploring climate grief and for seeking new ways of being in the world. The imagery from the Mabinogion a way to embody both the human and more-than-human experience.
In these hidden, dark and mysterious parts of our world, deep underground, are opportunities for transformation and rebirth. Many forms of life thrive in the darkness; root systems and mycelial networks reaching out to communicate and share knowledge. Creatures lurk in the deep and primordial slimes which survive on next to nothing. They are adaptive. They are resilient. They are the sources and origins of life. So, in times of great ecological crisis what can we learn from the dark? From the hidden spaces of our world? From the creatures that dwell there? What can we learn from our ancestors and their stories? What transformation can come through journeying with and through the dark night of the soul?
Photographs [Left]: Elizabeth Tomos
Photographs [Below]: Joe Brown
Elizabeth Tomos (2024) In Contact. [Perform//Print]
Credits:
Lead Artist: Elizabeth Tomos
Choreographer: Sivan Rubinstein
Creative Producer and Graphic Designer: Tamsyn Payne
Host Community Organisation: Sammuel Yisrael at Sol Haven
Photography and Film: Joe Brown
Machine Fabrication: Murdoch Design
Costume: Heidi Harper
Set Cloth Dyeing: Kit Helme
Team Badges: Lauren Hubbard
Crew: Dylan Fox, Billy Hawes, Dhiren Basu, Daniel Bebber and Gabriel Thorpe
Transportation: Martin Washington
Studio Assist: Sophie Joiner
With huge thanks to:
Our funder Northampton Community Foundation Creative Climate Action Fund.
Arts Council England for additional funding towards the costs of the fabrication of the machine.
Our partner venues: The Lab, The Umbrella Fair Organisation, Delapre Abbey, and Hideaway Farm.
To all the personnel that supported us on location, and especially to Ian (Batesy), Tina, Marly, Kirsty, Amy, Eleanor, and Ian (Saunders).
Natasha, The Loving Chef, for her delicious provisions!
