In 2020 I began a conversation with the composer Jack MacNeill of the propellor ensemble. He was interested in the work I had been doing in the field of acoustic ecology and the sound arts, particularly my community engaged approach, my focus on excluded voices, and the way I created outputs from performances, to installations and publications, in order to reach as wide an audience as possible. These conversations struck a real chord, as they allowed me to begin to explore the personal impact the research had on my everyday life. Sometimes to explore difficult topics you step a little outside yourself, perhaps as a coping mechanism. To have such a long and deep conversation allowed for a form of self reflection, and over the course of the past two years, I have placed these thoughts into the performances that Jack and the Propeller Ensemble have created and for which I have been invited to perform alongside with the absolutely amazing ecologist and ornithologist Mark Cocker. So in July this year I performed alongside Mark, Jack and two additional performers from the Ensemble at the Hebden Bridge Festival Open Space 70. We performed together last year at Lancaster Arts, but this felt like an evolution and refinement of how we collaborate on stage. All of this stems from the podcast series Jack created as a result of conversations with a variety of arts, ecologists and theorists, and they are a staggering creation that can be accessed here.
Below is a series of snapshots from that performance, listen through or skip through, but its a lovely piece to watch or listen to.