Gwahoddiadau - invitations

Entropi Exhibition 26.11.2023 5-8pm

5 - 8pm, 26.11.2023

Stiwdio Gelf / Art Studio, Cei Llechi, Caernarfon

Open daily 10am - 4pm 27 - 30.11.2023

Manon Awst, Lucy F-M, Anders Hultkvist, Distant Animals, Catrin Menai, Gwenllian Spink

a nifer o berfformwyr yn cynnwys / and many performers including:

Zoë Skoulding, Sarah Pogoda, Lee Duggan, Lowri Hedd, Charlie Blake, Esyllt Lewis,

Hedydd Ioan, Rhys Trimble, Steffan Phillips, Buddug Robert, Layla Hignell-Tully

Manon, Lucy et al.

Cysyllte…Connecting 

This experiment, led by Ellen Davies is a community arts project weaving original conversations and poetry, music, movement, clay, paint and dance to create a new conversation, that goes beyond words: To feel a part of rather than apart from and thereby improving well being and mental health... We have run a series of workshops on the theme of SOUND YOUR VOICE - BE HEARD - RE-CONNECT - RECOVER and we are now working towards sharing the results as a public experience at Pontio 6pm 14th January 2024 (save the date!), together with a month-long exhibition. See more here

Gwyl Afon Ogwen Festival: Celf yn y Coed 23.9.23

An invitation to join Gaia Redgrave and Cathedral of the Trees: A Triad of Being

Cathedral of Trees: A Triad of Being is An experiment in reconnection and communication with the landscape, & more than human. You are invited to sign up to a series of five events, spending creative time with the natural world, experiencing three journey packages received through your letterbox.

Please sign up to receive the packages, prompts, emails etc from Gaia: https://forms.gle/3otrTZCwrfH3mr2N6

and

Join Gaia for The Gathering

Date: Wednesday May 3rd 11:00 a.m - 12.30pm

This zoom event is an introduction to Cathedral of the Trees, the Triad of Being & an invitation to start mapping your journey. Also an opportunity to sign up if you haven’t already done so.

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This event is over zoom:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86279842189?pwd=ajhMRVpjbHY5cit0ai9Ja2RPam0wUT09

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If you have any questions please email: cathedralofthetrees@gmail.com

Instagram: @cathedralofthetrees

Placing Experiment: Avant Garde Practices 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.

Research questions:  

• What specific places and/or constellations have been conducive to the emergence of avant-garde practice, and why?

• How can artistic critique of subjectivity help to inform intellectual, scholarly, scientific processes? 

• What role do experimental artistic practices play in contesting ideas of place?

• 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? 

• What forms of interdisciplinarity does avant-garde practice draw on, or enable?

• What forms of creative translation might enable artistic and scientific knowledge to inform each other?  What forms of transgression are involved in this encounter?

• How does the re-use and re-appropriation of texts and materials suggest new forms of place and placing? 

• How can dialogues be developed between non-Western epistemologies and the ways in which Western writing and art practices question human subjectivity?   

• How can artistic practices help us to understand the wider distribution of agency and meaning beyond the human? Could this lead to better ecological understanding?  

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

Quilt Utopias Bach Ecosystem

Utopias Bach is collaborating with Rewilding the Artist, considering how we maintain Utopias Bach as a healthy, balanced, functioning ecosystem for humans and more than humans. In exploring the possibilities of a creative approach to ‘policy’, the idea of creating some kind of Quilt emerged, working individually and collectively to embody our values and ways of working.

If you are interested in being involved the quilt, please email utopias bach

Our first quilt making session will be on 21.11.23 in Bangor/join by zoom see details here

Dysgu Cymraeg Utopias Bach

Mae grwp bach ohonon ni, sy isio ymarfer a dysgu Cymraeg are meeting dros zoom ar bore dydd gwener (third Friday each month). There is no tutor, we are just dysgu together, and supporting each other to teimlo mwy hyderus to siarad Cymraeg. We you would like to take part, email Utopias Bach

Stryd Celf Bangor Street Art

This is a call out for local artists, musicians, performers from Utopias Bach to be part of a street art festival in Bangor next year (from Lucy F-M)!

Street art can be contested if it is not done by and for the given community, and Nuart festival in Aberdeen, one of the biggest street art festivals in the world, is a real inspiration here.  Nuart have an arrangement with the local council and Chamber of Commerce, who agree to cover the costs of the festival, and the works, which brings people, events, cheer and colour to the granite city.  The artists are a mix of local and international.  Bangor could be such a wonderful place for public art, given the number of boarded up buildings, and if the council and community might follow other festivals' lead.  This is a call to see if anyone would be interested in collaborating on this.  

An idea could be to depict local stories, myths, the Mabinogi, characters and folk lore, that communicate and support social justice, give access to law, and narrate peoples' rights in some way, through public art on the street. whatever people wish.  And have events, performances, etc, culminating in the summer 2024.  

It is also the 30 year anniversary of the Criminal Justice Act 1994 next year (very stringent anti-social behaviour legislation around land, housing rights) and it could be good to raise awareness of this too within the themes of the works and relating to local examples (perhaps through connection with land, nature, home, belonging, homelessness, etc.).  But these are all just ideas, and legal themed (given Lucy's background) and would be up to those participating as to what they would like to focus on.

Something similar is happening in Caernarfon (Canfas) but not quite the same with three locations as canvases, but not necessarily with a social theme, but it just shows that councils and communities are taking public art commissioned by local artists seriously.

There are currently some funding calls with a possible street art opera theme, amongst others.  There are already some street artists and storytellers on board that are from around the country, but it would only feel right to go ahead with the project if it is local North Welsh artist grassroots-based, and Welsh speaking too.

If anyone interested can get back to Lucy at info@theloreschool.org just with an expression of interest and if you know of any other local artists or street artists who might be, that be wonderful! 

Diolch yn fawr iawn,

Luce

Lansiad Y Nendryau 22.7.23

Collaboratory

The Utopias Bach Collaboratory is a space to come together each month (once on zoom, once in the ‘real world’) to share learning and ideas. If you have a subject (or a visit) you’d like to put to the ‘hive mind’, please contact Lindsey

Utopias Bach Scripts/Scores

Lindsey Colbourne and Sarah Pogoda would like to see if we can collectively somehow collate the various invitations/scripts/scores that our various explorations have created into some kind of Utopias Bach publication (in the broadest sense). Inspired by the Serpentine’s Art & Nature publication.

If you are interested in creating something/helping us think it through please contact Lindsey

Galeri, Caernarfon 2023-4

Llinos Griffin and Lindsey Colbourne have had an initial conversation with Galeri, Caernarfon about the possibility of working with them in creative/socially engaged ways in 2023/4. Galeri have offered Utopias Bach a residency in 2024. And in the run up to that…

In June to August 2023 we will have a Utopias Bach exhibition of work we’ve made to date. We’ll be featuring the various ‘invitations’ we have been working with, and use these as a way of engaging people and finding out what they might want from our residency. Also opportunities for performance perhaps! We will also be working with Galeri/GISDA’s programme of Llwybrau Celf Uwch which will focus on high quality art experiences for young people age 14-17, specifically for young people from diverse and hard to reach backgrounds.We would start thinking about it in January 2023. If you are interested in being involved, please contact us