During COP Brian Eno emphasised the critical role artists have in combating climate change and how imperative it is that creatives address this urgent issue. We need new ways of thinking, behaving - but rooted in our ancestor's methods, approaches of seeing, being and doing - essentially reinstalling respect and harmony with our natural surroundings. The latter is encapsulated in the work of Crone Cast, a collective of artists identifying as old/older women, based in north Wales, arising from Wanda Zyborska's twelve years of research into reinventing becoming the withered. Together, Zyborska, Lisa Hudson, Lindsey Colbourne, Rhona Bowey, Steph Shipley, Samina Ali, Emily Meilleur and others, explore ageing, power, identity, eccentricity and merging with the more-than-human as a process of becoming, in symbiosis with the precariousness of our times.
Responding and experimenting with the conditions of the pandemic, in the context of climate change, societal and eco-system collapse, they are re-imagining crone as noticed, seen and heard, whilst noticing, looking and listening.
In winter 2021 Hagira at Dinas Dinlle is an expedition to the edge of the land, on the margin of where we live, travelling somewhere and nowhere, becoming sand, bird, wind and storm. We are battling our own and the planet's extinction.
For Marc Rees, this embodies the strength of drawing wisdom from our elders, our ancestors and how the answers that we are searching for are already here. We just need to dig, listen and take action.
Curated by Marc Rees for #PethauBychain