Sylwi/Noticing: Found Utopias Bach
“As ‘progress’ tales lose traction, new tools for noticing seem so important: it becomes possible to look differently, to notice the divergent, layered and conjoined projects that make up worlds. Indeed, life on earth seems at stake”
- Anna Tsing
Weithiau y peth mwyaf radical allwn ni ei wneud ydi dechrau sylwi. Beth os wnawn ni dalu sylw i’r pethau bach – y prosesau bach, y creaduriaid bach, y tirluniau bach, y rhwydweithiau bach, cipolwg i mewn i ffyrdd eraill o fod, drysau bach i fydoedd parallel – yr Utopias Bach sy’n bodoli’n barod, sydd rhywsut yn cynnig cipolwg i ni i ffyrdd eraill o fod…
Os gwelwch yn dda, anfonwch ddelweddau/geiriau/fideos/sain o’r Utopias Bach dach chi wedi dod o hyd iddynt i ni eu hychwanegu i’r oriel…neu o soes gennych chi lawer, gallwn wneud tudalen yn arbennig i chi!
Sometimes the most radical thing we can do is to start noticing. What if we pay attention to the little things - the little processes, the little creatures, the tiny landscapes, the fleeting interactions, the glimpses of another way of being, portals to parallel worlds - the Utopias Bach that are already present, that in some way offer us a glimpse of another way of being…
Please send in images/words/videos/sounds of your found Utopias Bach to add to the gallery… or if you have lots, we could make you a page of your own!
“It is essential to acquire as much cold-blooded knowledge as possible about the heated activity of an Earth grasped from up close… through the causal chains in which we find ourselves entangled”
— Bruno Latour
Y Bluen Fach gan Siân Shakespear
The small feather
Hundreds of delicate filaments,
radiating from a graceful shaft,
together a ragged masterpiece,
with its frail edge,
vague in outline.
Deep-brown stripes undulate,
zigzagging across the mellow orange.
Soft,
to protect snuggly.
Light,
to float in the breeze,
Round,
to wrap gently.
Resilience in tenderness
Strength in fragility.
Diferyn / A Drop
Adlewyrchiad rhes o ddiferion glaw yn glynnu i frwynen plyg ar wyneb y pwll. Adain gwas y neidr yn arnofio ymysg y chwyn ar wyneb y dŵr. Arogl coed pîn. Gwair meddal. Goleuni. Dwi'n sylwi ar yr ysfa i ddal y pethau hyn. I ddarlunio, neu ffotograffu, i sgwennu cerdd. Y teimlad nad ydi'r foment ei hun yn ddigon. Yr awydd i gydied mewn pethau, eu gwarchod a'u cadw, i'w cario nhw efo fi, a'u dangos i eraill. Ond tra'r ydw i'n brysur yn gafael yn y foment yma, fydda i ddim yn effro i'r foment nesaf. Ac fe fydd y foment hon hefyd wedi llithro o fy ngafael, achos dydi adlewyrchiad diferyn o ddŵr ar wyneb pwll ddim yn rhywbeth y galli di gario efo chdi. Dim go iawn, dim y peth ei hun. Dim y ffordd mae'r diferyn yn siglo, a'r golau'n goferu. Fe fyddi di wedi ei cholli. Felly mae'n rhaid canolbwyntio. Nid jyst ar un foment, ond ar yr holl fomentau. Nid ymarfer ydi hyn, hwn yw dy fywyd. Paid a methu fo.
A row of rain drops hanging on a bent reed reflected on the surface of a pond. A dragonfly's wing floating among weeds. The smell of pine trees. Soft grass. Light. I notice the desire to catch these things. To draw, or photograph, to write a poem. The feeling that the moment itself is not enough. The urge to fix things, to carry them with me, and show them to others. But while I am busy holding on to this moment, I miss the next one. And this one will also slip from my grasp, because the reflection of a drop of water in the surface of a pond is not something you can carry with you. You lose it, every time. So you have to concentrate, not just on this moment, but on all moments. And at the same time, you have to let go of this moment, so the next one can arrive.
-Seran Dolma
Julie Upmeyer: The Yellow Bucket
“Even the most disturbed environments settle into layers according mass, density and porosity” - Julie Upmeyer
Inspiration for the Succession project
Cerdded yn Penrhyn ym Mis Hydref
Gan Llinos Griffin, 2021
Layers and traces
By Sarah Holyfield, photos and words created as part of Utopias Bach Collaboratory meeting, hosted by Kar Rowson
Turkey Tail Fungus
by Anna Powell
Close Noticing, Wanda Garner 2022
SUMMONS
By Wanda Garner, 2022
Were we the gods?
Did we cast the spell,
Under which comforting blanket
Complacency spawned complicity?
And dulled and sluggish
We edged to the brink
Clinging to old ways.
Not seeing
Not feeling
Not knowing.
Yet we must rise,
Become new prophets
Become brave usurpers and radical disrupters
Become one with the earth.
We are not alone.
We are accountable
Mwsog - there’s something about mosses…
“This is what has been called the dialect of moss on stone - an interface of immensity and minute ness, of past and present, softness and hardness, stillness and vibrancy, yin and yan.” -Robin Wall Kimmerer
Lliniau gan Lindsey Colbourne
Moss @ Geocache Bach, 2021
Geocache Bach, part of Gwyl Metamorffosis Festival, was an invitation to find and build your own Utopias Bach - a world of tiny possibilities and imaginings - in dystopian cracks and corners in and around TOGYG (The Old Goods Yard, where two of the Utopias Bach partners have their studios): to discover messages from the future, to materialise your vision in a miniature scale.
By Wanda Zyborska
Park Life, by Lisa Hudson
By Alice and Clara
By Lindsey Colbourne
Breadfruit garden by Audrey West
Utopic Boot
Iain Biggs: Came across this abandoned and colonised boot recently and thought of Utopias Bach - maybe it's a sign of nature's resistance to being "stepped on"?
Lindsey Colbourne: Toadspawn Dreaming
The possibilities of going on (a human/amphibian entanglement)
I spent Spring/Summer 2020 entangled with with toadspawn.
I witnessed the laying of spawn in our pond, and the pain of its almost complete consumption. Countered by rescuing some from drying out in a field, rearing the spawn in cooking dishes until releasing them as toadpoles into the pond.
“[Amphibians] are so very much ‘other’, cold, slimy creatures verging on the repulsive to the warm-blooded Homo Sapiens. Their startling otherness makes it al the more remarkable that we are here in their defense. They bring us face to face with our innate xenophobia, sometimes directed at other species and sometimes directed at our own… Being with [amphibians] gives honour to otherness, offers an antidote to the poison of xenophobia. Each time we rescue slippery, spotted beings we attest to their right to be, to live the sovereign territory of their own lives”
— Robin Wall-Kimmerer
Utopia Bach Mewn Postyn
Inspiration for… going against the mainstream
Iwtopia Bach ar ben bostyn: Siân Cwper (2020)
Wedi cael ei ffindio gan Ioan Llewellyn (28.3.21), Utopias Bach Penrhyndeudraeth
Inefficient Mapping - Lisa Hudson
I was hoping to write something about these inefficient maps, but its all a bit vague at the moment and I don’t want to stifle it with words just yet. Theres definitely something in the process that I am really enjoying.
Here are two: The Sound of Water, Gerlan to Rachub and The Incidences of Birds
The incidences of birds
Lisa Hudson: Witness
“My personal Utopias bach will be a research project based in my garden. I will be observing Utopian systems that exist in the small space that I also inhabit. I will begin by observing the wild strawberries in the southwestern corner of my garden. I will draw them, photograph them and document their growth. My role will be just that of witness.
My usual approach would be to study them as a model or a metaphor for an inter-human relationship or process, or I would look at them and wonder what I need to learn from them for my personal growth. This as an acquisitional approach that I want to challenge. My observation of the strawberry and research into its properties, histories and symbolism has no goal beyond that of learning about the strawberry plant and observing it as what it is rather than what it is for or what it means to me.”
"Utopia is a place where everything is good; dystopia is a place where everything is bad; heterotopia is where things are different."
- Walter Russell Mead