Here Commons Everybody

Ecological recovery: land, shared commons and coexistence


Reflections, undercurrents and new pathways


Videosonic explorations and compositions


UK & international programme


2021-22

Working closely with:


CCRI - Countryside and Community Research Institute (UK, co-funder)

Jesse D Vernon 'Morning Star' (composer, musician, conductor, Bristol & Paris)

&

The Letterpress Collective & Nick Hand (Bristol; socially-engaged print studio)

&

Connected to an eco-art residency project in Portugal, supported by the Endangered Landscapes Programme & Rewilding Portugal



Situations, explorations and locations included:

Regional rewilding in the Greater Côa Valley, Portugal, working with rural communities.

Upland farming+heritage site in Wales (connected to an artist-residency with Elan Links)

Forests and coasts via the Satoyama Initiative & Satoumi (traditional approaches, Japan; dialogues with CCRI)

Historical practices in Ireland (Meitheal, Turbary, Land League legacies etc.; creative research)


The primary programme funder was Arts Council England

(individual artist residencies had additional funders)


The lead artist, Antony Lyons, is an ecological artist and creative researcher based in Bristol, UK. His video, sonic and sculptural works engage with ecological, social and landscape futures, with a deep-time lens. Creative 'geopoetic' responses are based on long-term connections with territories in flux, focusing on ecological coexistence and eco-social healing.


New stories, new voices:

In this experimental project, he reactivated a previous association with the CCRI - as ‘artist-in-dialogue’ - addressing braided themes of ‘shared eco-commons’, community sustenance, ecosystem recovery and restorative agriculture. Bridging diverse perspectives and agendas, the focus ranged from the deeply local to global interactions. Coexistence and re-connection are core themes.


Outputs included a series of individual ‘film portrait’ migrant stories; creative, poetic documentaries; work/play-shops with young people; & printed works.


A follow-on project is planned to happen in 2023/24 - titled 'Symphonies of Coexistence'.



As well as the residencies listed above (Portugal & Wales), the project aimed to investigate and assemble material across three connected themes:


Ecological Reflections & Memories

Diverse personal cross-cultural stories and reflections (with invited participants) on perception of home, commons, migration, community, freedom, protection, belonging, in-between-ness etc. Production of a series of short films, forming individual subjective 'film portraits'. The first two in this series were screened at the CUBE in Bristol in 2022.


Cross-Cultural Research & Learning

Creative dialogues with academics, ecologists, activists and others, producing an assemblage of imaginative responses to inspirational international models, solutions, indigenous knowledge and grassroots movements. Cultural practices & landscapes; community management of resources (co-operation and anti-monopoly resistance); adaptations to land abandonment; agro-ecology, regenerative agriculture, rewilding and the multi-species commons; linkages to folk traditions (via music, song, poetry).


Landscape Imaginations past/present/future [Terrains Vagues]

Speculative videosonic explorations of connection/togetherness and disconnection/  alienation - via concepts of dark ecology, deep-time, entanglement, collective unconscious (symbolism, psyche, shamanistic, animistic), liminality etc. This aspect of the project is anchored in three specific landscape settings:

- Orford Ness (Suffolk), site of an artist residency by Lyons in 2018-9 (Sensitive Chaos).

  1. -Cornwall Clay-Mining zone, site of an artist residency by Lyons in 2018 (Limbo Landscape Lab)

  2. -Avebury/Silbury (Wiltshire), an ancient mound; a pastoral landscape. What undercurrents do we find?


In all three research strands, the aim was to venture beyond the rational and perceptual, allowing space for the emotional, affective and imaginative registers. The geopoetics of art, science and place.



Follow-on project in preparation 'Symphonies of Coexistence'.




FIRST EXHIBITIONS & SCREENINGS: 

SPRING-SUMMER 2022


Summer 2022 blog & news updates:

https://antonylyons.blogspot.com/2022/06/coa-valley-symphony.html


https://www.endangeredlandscapes.org/wild-coa-symphony/



PROJECT CONTACT: antonylyons@mac.com