WILD LANDS

Interactive Video Performance Commissioned by Portico Library - Manchester - 2019

WILD LANDS is an interactive performance game where the audience is invited to navigate the woods at night as a the character of a woman artist. Created in collaboration multimedia artist Joe Whitmore and artists Rowland Hill + Juliet Davis, commissioned by The Portico Library and supported by the Zochonis Charitable Trust. Through a series of night time woodland walks and conversation about experiences in these spaces we manipulated the tradition of place-writing* responding to the ‘Second nature-What is nature anyway’ exhibition by reimagining and interrogating suburban natural space at night. We journeyed through dark woody spaces and vast blackened parks using language and movement to make sense of our environment, nature and kinds of ‘woman-hood’ both alone and together.

WILD LANDS culminated in a sharing of this process on the 18th December in an event involving a facilitated group discussion by Amy and the WILD LAND PERFORMERS about wild spaces at night, our understanding of these spaces and our bodies within them.

Unfortunately the game is not currently available to play on any public platform except within a live facilitated environment (please contact me for information) but you can see images of the game below:

* Place-writing is described by the Manchester Centre for Place Writing as a term they ‘use to frame writing about a variety of kinds of place: from the multifarious forms of landscapes conventionally described as ‘natural’ to those of the contemporary city, and the ‘edgeland’ places in between.’ This feels like an appropriate description for the purpose of WILD LANDS.