The Garden of Resistance

The Garden of Resistance, The New Matrix and the Time to Come!

Thursday 24th of August, Metal Liverpool

Day workshops with Sabina Sallis for everyone from 12am-4pm
Evening event of live performances, presentations, poetry readings, talks, food and fire. – 6pm-9pm

This event is a part of my research residency at Metal. My research and actions at Metal have been focused around generating a factual/fictional scenario about a covert eco-poetic society and their infecting and infiltrating poetic actions. The scenario entangles factual and fictional aspects about poetic activities that are subtly spreading and infecting the political and social system to transform it towards a sustainable future.

It is cooperatively curated and activated to celebrate the garden, the deeper values and dimensions of our life and formation of temporary communities. This inviting gathering is a diverse collection of multiple experiences, tactics of resistance and examples of ‘the constituent power of lived imagination that are transforming the world around’.

The event was pulled together following the spirit of unfolding and intuitive guidance for spontaneous cooperation. The programme evolved without over scrutinizing the agenda or the individuals/collectives that are taking part in the event. Rather, through trusting embedded human instinct, kindness, reverence and reciprocity and the need for collective action and the emergence of collective wondering!

Appreciating and respecting diverse perspectives, collaborations, various forms of activism, micro-political applications and shared dream for better future, the event, without hierarchy, weaves affinities and new strategies giving a glimpse of a time to come and future world!

• Gabriella Warren-Smith and Lily Mellor will be exploring the evolution of dialogue in the digital age and its potential for meaningful existence within the site specify and community in the garden
• Devon Forester Jones and Olive Sanderson will be exploring life editing as a process of cooperation and meetings of meshwork of life with art and art with life. For their appearance at Metal, Drip Tones will be conducting a meditative performance that invites participants to listen on a deeper level to the sounds that envelope Edge Hill Garden and the train station
• Pauline Sallis will read some of John Clare`s wonderful poetry showing his love for the beauty of the natural world. George Monbiot rightly calls John Clare 1793 – 1864 “the poet of the environmental crisis”, a poet for today
• Joanna Straczowski will give performative talk about aesthetics, anarchy and philosophy in everyday experiences
• Stephanie Pitchers will present a poem about life and the garden and how her garden makes her dreams come true
• Combining the latest findings in neuroscience, ancient wisdom and insights about financial system, Joanne Theaker, will talk about emotional wealth and psychology of money
• Tracey Dunn will talk about activism and permaculture

I will present a performative talk with video. I’ll be sharing my experience of being an artist in residence at the Metal and working in Liverpool, at Edge Hill Garden and other wonderful places.

Day workshops with Sabina Sallis
I will also be running some day workshops. I invite everyone for an imaginative immersion in the garden. Drawing on my experience as an artist in residence at Metal and sourcing from root methodologies of my recent training as Earth Forum Responsible Participant (Social Sculpture Research Unit, Oxford) I will offer ‘imaginative space’ – drawing and gilding workshop and drawn sachets/seed bomb making. Families welcome!