Yn ystod ein sgyrsiau ‘beth nesaf Utopias Bach’, wnaethon ni benderfynu creu cylchlythyr i rannu gwahoddiadau. Dyma ein un cyntaf!

During our 'what next Utopias Bach' conversations, we decided to create a newsletter to share invitations. Here's our first one!

Gwyl Afon Ogwen 2022

Hu-mycelium movement Invitation 24.9.22

Following the first performance at Gwyl Metaboliaeth, exploring the forms and functions of mycelium (microscopic fungal network), we would like to extend Hu-mycelium into the community and invite people to join us in a workshop and performance.

The movement is slow and mindful, seeking connections and creating symbiotic exchanges, in the space between people and other living things.There will be a workshop and on 24th September at the Ogwen Festival, Bethesda.

If you might like to be involved, please contact Emily Meilleur emily1one@yahoo.co.uk 07791951233

Placing Experiment: Avant-garde practice and the nonhuman

Sarah Pogoda and Zoë Skoulding are inviting interest from members of Utopias Bach in this Bangor University project, which runs from now to July 2023. ‘Placing Experiment: Avant-garde practice and the nonhuman’ aims to create spaces that allow mutual learning and unlearning together across beings and disciplines, to uncover questions we’ve not seen before. Spaces will sometimes be wild, sometimes calm, sometimes non-places, sometimes academic, sometimes artistic, sometimes hybrid or just everything! There will be artistic installations, sound and poetry, performances and experiments, conferences and workshops. It has an academic objective but all are open to everyone interested.

The first event is a one day hybrid conference 3.12.22 (online and face to face). The focus of the event (again, with an academic focus but open to all!) is on how experimental process and procedure in art and writing, influenced by avant-garde legacies of the twentieth century, may be newly imagined in a local and global post-pandemic context.

Research questions:  

• How do forms of knowledge that are embedded in practice, such as writing and performing, suggest ways of understanding relationships between humans and the nonhuman world?

• Can these practices broaden our capacity to think ecologically, and across disciplines and cultures?

• How can a dialogue be developed between non-Western epistemologies, in which nonhuman forms of intelligence tend to feature prominently, and the ways in which Western experimental writing and art practice questions human subjectivity?

• What forms of creative translation might enable artistic and scientific knowledge to inform each other?

If you might like to hear more, to contribute or take part in this project/event , please do get in touch with Sarah Pogoda