Pale Blue Dot Collective (artists Louise Beer and John Hooper) have spent the last four months in residency with Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, to create Of Immeasurable Consequence - an immersive photographic and sound based installation that will be installed in All Saints Church, Aldwincle from Sunday 24th March until Sunday 7th April 2024.

Please join us for a launch event from 6:30pm on Saturday 23rd March, featuring insight into the work by the artists and an informal, interactive telescope viewing with an astronomer from 7:30pm. The event is free however please register your place here.

The artists use installation, film, photography and sound to examine our place within the universe, framing the impact of the climate emergency through the eyes of evolution and the immense time period it has taken for each form of life to arrive at this point.

Funded by Northamptonshire Community Foundation’s Creative Climate Action Fund, the work combines images, sound and light to transport the viewer to an imagined forest environment. With the artists’ interest in the deep time nature of our existence on the planet, they have developed an installation that explores both the fragility and the miraculous nature of life on Earth.

Sound recordings from Fermyn Woods, made with a variety of homemade and professional microphones, are combined with their own archive of field recordings collected from around the world. The final composition transports the audience to a forest outside of our experience. Images taken under moonlight during their residency are installed in the central body of the church, juxtaposed with astronomical imagery that prompts us to consider our own place in the wider cosmos.

* In the event of bad weather the astronomer will deliver a talk inside the church.

** Installation open from 6:30pm. Astronomer from 7:30pm

Artist Louise Beer and astrophysicist Roberto Trotta

Thursday 14th March 7-8 pm (GMT) on Zoom

They'll be discussing their deep interest in astronomy from their artistic and scientific perspectives, respectively, as well as how the night sky, the only truly global commons, can help in facing the ecological and climate crisis, even as itself is under threat from light pollution and a commercial space race.  

The event will allow time for an open discussion on stargazing in all its forms with everyone present, so you are welcome to participate by bringing your questions, ideas, perspectives and challenges from whatever area of work or interest you are immersed in! If you are unable to attend live, but wish to send a question/comment, feel free to do so by hitting ‘reply' to this email.

You can register for the event here (a Zoom link will be provided the day before and the recording will be shared afterwards).

Louise Beer is an artist and curator, born in Aotearoa New Zealand. She now works between London, Margate and Aotearoa. Louise uses installation, moving image, photography, writing, participatory works and sound to explore humanity's evolving understanding of Earth’s environments and the cosmos. Her experience of living under two types of night sky, the first in low level light polluted areas in Aotearoa, and the second in higher level light polluted cities and towns in England, has deeply informed her practice. She explores how living under dark skies, or light polluted skies, can change our perception of grief, the climate crisis and Earth’s deep time history and future.

www.louisebeer.com

Roberto Trotta is professor of theoretical physics at the International School for Advanced Study in Trieste, Italy, where he is the head of Data Science, and a visiting professor at Imperial College London, where he was professor of astrostatistics. His research focuses on cosmology and machine learning. An award-winning author and science communicator, he is the recipient of the Annie Maunder Medal 2020 of the Royal Astronomical Society for his public engagement work. His new book, STARBORN - how the stars made us (and who we would be without them), named BBC Radio 4 book of the week, is out now.

www.roberto.trotta.com

I am giving an online artists talk as part of my GRAIN Projects x Forestry England Photographer in Residency commission on Tuesday 24 Oct 2023 18:00 - 19:30 BST.

Find your free tickets here.

I have had two stays in Cannock Chase during my residency, and was lucky enough to spend time with Forestry England, discussing the plans they have for the future of the forest, and what challenges they face with the climate crisis. Managing a forest is hugely complex task, and one that requires constant evaluation and agility to respond to the rapidly changing world around us.

I also engaged with geologist Dr Ian Stimpson of Keele University, who has shared his endless knowledge about the rhythm of Earth’s changing climates over its 4.543 billion years of history. These two contrasting temporalities form the basis of my work for this project. How can we try and shift our viewing of the forest, to see each living or non-living element as a consequence of the events and processes that have occurred over the billions of years of Earth’s history, and the billions and billions of years of the pre-Earth Universe before that? How can we develop our understanding of the world around us to see this exceptional set of circumstances in our view?

I am part of the following talk in which participating exhibitors will be reflecting on our work currently on show in the Glacial Movements and the Ghaib exhibition, the research and expeditions that fed into and inspired this work and where it may lead them us the future.

Featuring Melanie King, Saba Khan, Rebecca Huxley and Louise Beer.

Refreshments will be provided.

The event is free but please book a place in advance as spaces are limited.

Artists

Amna Hashmi / Saba Khan / Saulat Ajmal / Zohreen Murtaza / Louise Beer / Melanie King / Rebecca Huxley 

Book your free ticket here

I will be giving a talk during this event:

A Solstice evening for all things lunar, with a focus on the moon and entangled polycultures. Waxing crescent phase - 4.4 days old.

Perhaps the crescent moon smiles in doubt

at being told that it is a fragment

awaiting perfection.

― Rabindranath Tagore

You are invited to a Solstice evening for all things lunar, with a focus on the moon and entangled polycultures of ecological research, art, movement, science and creative technologies.

A new era of lunar exploration has arrived, and with it a new phase of activism. Space agencies and private companies across the planet are engaged in a new space race, with numerous lunar missions already scheduled. As humans return to the moon, how do we tend a different approach to lunar ecologies, one that goes beyond industrial exploitation and extraction, and how does this change our relations to our own damaged earth?

The evening brings together a diverse community of individuals to contemplate the moon's connection to art, imagination, and activism. Meeting the questions on lunar governance, resource extraction, energy generation, and the establishment of international human settlements entails a new phase of ecological feeling, sensing and perceiving. We invite you to join us by the Thames and dream with the moon, as we convene to explore the confluence of art, science, and ecologies of the river.

The speakers engage in a variety of creative practices and research endeavours that relate to the moon and her cycles, engaging with all that is processual, nocturnal, embodied and tidal.

Programme

Rachel Blackman will guide us through an embodied practice to start by opening an embodied connection with the moon and the watery tides of the body.

Louise Beer will show her art project Gathering Light and other works incorporating and reflecting on the moon, as well as her work convening the Creatures network, relating to the moon during the Pandemic.

Devon-based artist Laura Williams and artist, activist and Aluna trustee Lucy Neal—a Greenwich project: a monumental lunar-tidal clock and public space for ecological and cultural imagination. Aluna will be located where time meets tide, at at 0° longitude on the banks of the Thames just across from Canary Wharf.

Kate Genevieve will share performance work about the connection between life on earth and beyond the planet,  relating to research planned for the far side of the moon.

This event is hosted by Ecologies, Technologies and Cassie Robinson at Care and Climate. Created through connections fostered through relations with Dr Mona Nasseri and the students of the Ecological Design Thinking MA at Schumacher College.

This event marks the beginning of a fresh phase of Ecologies, Technologies focusing on cosmo-imaginaries and planetary activism, featuring Bahar Noorizadeh

Please respond by June 18 to secure your place as seating is limited.

Biographies

Louise Beer - Louise lived in Aotearoa New Zealand until 2002 before moving to the UK. Louise uses installation, moving image, photography and sound to explore humanity's evolving understanding of Earth’s environments and the cosmos. Louise’s experience of living under two types of night sky, the first with low levels of light pollution in Aotearoa, and the second with higher levels of light pollution in the UK, has deeply informed her practice. She explores how living under dark skies, or light polluted skies, can change our perception of grief, the climate crisis and Earth’s deep time history and future.

Rachel Blackman - is a Theatre Maker and performance artist, a masterful Improviser and Somatic Coach, trained as a Feldenkrais Practitioner and is currently training in Comprehensive Resource Model.Rachel trained and worked as an actor in Australia before relocating to England - you may remember her as Chara in The Matrix films. Since re-locating her work brings together theatre making and somatic education in many performances, workshops, events and offerings to her online community. Her areas of specialism include creativity, bodywork modalities and somatic movement, and she trains coaches to work with embodied intelligence at The Somatic School.

Kate Genevieve - London-born artist and researcher Kate Genevieve, now residing in Aotearoa New Zealand, entangles embodied and virtual realities, performance art, and dreaming technologies to deepen understanding of planetary and ecological communication. Currently collaborating with Schumacher College on Ecologies, Technologies, an experimental hybrid programme on creative technologies and the new commons. Her work is rooted in a sense that embodied, relational, creative life feeds activism and transformation in real ways.

Laura Williams - Laura is an artist, musician and farmer working on a agro-ecological producer cooperative and regional food network in Devon. For over 25 years she has been developing Aluna with a multi-disciplinary team towards construction on the Thames, bringing together the arts, community engagement, lighting, ecology, science and engineering. The first capital element - a 554 panel solar array - was installed by South East London Community energy just as the country locked down in March 2020. Post-pandemic, Aluna now reawakens for its final development and construction phases.

Lucy Neal - Lucy is an artist, writer and co-director of Walking Forest, a ten-year public art work inspired by forest ecology and the undertold stories of women Earth-defenders. A theatre-maker at heart, she was co-founder director of the LIFT Festival (1981-2005) and enjoys creating space for stories that act as a catalyst for change. Co-author of The Turning World - Stories from the London International Festival of Theatre (Gulbenkian) and author of Zero Carbon Britain’s The Great Imagining, she is a founder ‘declarer’ of Culture Declares Emergency and a director of Forever Fishponds reclaiming flourishing green habitat in Tooting, South West London where she lives. She is a Trustee of the Aluna Foundation.

Image description: Rachel Blackman performing in chroma.space's Heliosphere, under a 360° projection of the moon.

Register for my auction here.

Art on a Postcard (AOAP) will host its fourth International Women’s Day Auction in March, announcing an entirely new format for this year. AOAP have invited seven female curators, including Beth Greenacre, Louise Fitzjohn (Liminal Gallery), Bakul Patki, Lee Sharrock, Mollie Barnes (She Curates) Sandra De Giorgi and Carrie Scott to each curate a show comprising of 20/25 female artists. Each show will run as seven concurrent auctions, all raising money to support The Hepatitis C Trust’s work with women affected by the criminal justice system both in prison and local communities. 

Beth Greenacre, whose clients have famously included David Bowie and more recently the all-female members club Allbright in Mayfair has put together a brilliant show, including rising star Caroline Zurmley who depicts moments of luxury using nail polish, alongside mixed media artist Catherine Achaintre, whose work is held in The Tate.    

Curator, Art Consultant and TV presenter Carrie Scott works closely with artists to build their profiles and sales. Her ten year collaboration with Nick Knight saw sales of his fine art photography soar alongside groundbreaking Museum exhibitions of his work, while she programmed the SHOWstudio Shop. She has curated exhibitions internationally for 20 years for both established artists like Kim McCarty who will also exhibit in Carrie's AOAP auction and emerging artists such as Walter & Zoniel and Bindi Vora who the curator has also chosen to feature in this project.

Lee Sharrock runs her own arts PR and Curation consultancy, and is also a writer for publications including FAD, Artlyst and Creative Review. Most recently she has curated a charity art auction at Christie’s, a solo exhibition of Yurim Gough at APT gallery and a group show at 99 Projects. Lee’s auction highlights include British sculptor Abigail Fallis, known for her commentary about over-consumption and consumerism, printmaker and Royal Academician Anne Desmet, the magical works of Icelandic born artist and illustrator Kristjana Williams, and Korean ceramicist Yurim Gough. 

Arts and culture curator and producer Bakul Patki is featuring multi-award winning Nina Mae Fowler who is known for her highly detailed, large-scale drawings and installations, Australian artist Jasmine Manbridge who works in sculpture, large-scale public works and intimate paintings for private collections, and French filmmaker and visual artist Cécile Davidovici, who creates tactile works with thread. 

AOAP is also delighted to welcome back Mollie Barnes (She Curates) and Louise Fitzjohn (Liminal Gallery) who have both curated AOAP auctions in 2021. Mollie is bringing with her Slade Graduate Sara Berman and abstract artist Bethany Czarnecki, while Louise has engaged Flora Bradwell whose playful practice revels in the generously grotesque.

Finally, AOAP’s very own Sandra De Giorgi joins the line-up, cutting her teeth on her first curated show. Her thoughtful and impressive list includes Slade graduate Diane Chappalley, emerging talent Yaya Yajie Liang, Mizuki Nishiyama who creates raw, vivid, multifaceted paintings that explore the fragile human condition and the Chinese Scottish artist Elaine Woo MacGregor.

Exhibition opening

Surveying the ancient River Roding, students from Beal High School have been working with Arup, super/collider and the River Roding Trust to explore the impact of the built environment and the choices we make on the natural world.

This exhibition presents the photographic, film, written and audio evidence collected by the students during a series of workshops and visits to the river. Together, they invite visitors to consider the way in which we interact with the world around us, both individually and collectively. 

Click here to RSVP 

With thanks to Arts Council England, River Roding Trust Arts Associate Andrew Brown, River Roding Trust and Beal High School.

We are pleased to announce that our biodiverse/earth commission created with Jenna Lawson and John Hooper will be shown again at Imperial College London as part of Imperial Lates.

Our biodiverse/earth commission by Imperial Lates explores human impact on the forests of Costa Rica. we present biologist Jenna Lawson’s findings as an immersive audio-visual experience, journeying from tropical rainforests untouched by human hands to disturbed plantations of palm and teak, where a haunting silence exists due to the loss of life as natural forest ecosystems are removed.

It is our hope that from this experience, you can better understand the sheer diversity of life in our world, and the startling loss when we destroy these incredible ecosystems for everyday products that we all use, while immersing yourself in the sounds of the natural world. The results from Lawson’s research will be used to understand the threats that exist and guide the protection and restoration of native forests, connect forest fragments and increase populations of the spider monkey.

I will be performing 3 x live broadcasts as part of Talking Place online symposium on 02 September.

Book your free ticket here.

‘We are a group of women who are excited by place. It happens that we’re all writers, but this isn’t only about writing – we want to have conversations with all women who find inspiration from their environment, whether for acts of creativity, philosophical debate, or as a guide for day-to-day living. This relationship with place may bring with it a feeling of connection, but may also be problematic. It happens in countryside and city, and the places in between. We would like this forum to bring ideas and provocations, preoccupations and challenges, all rooted in the way women talk about place.

Miranda Ward says that ‘(how) we write about place…is ripe with meaning and power, and that power works as a force both for understanding place and for creating it.’ The act of writing pins a moment, a mood, an attitude, onto the page, and has an effect, in consequence, on how the reader will view the place triggering the description. There are questions here to be asked about responsibility, about bringing a balanced perspective. We need as many voices as possible sharing their experience of place.’

Last verse, a film I made with John Hooper for our BigCi BigCi Environmental Art Award Residency 2022 will be on display at BigCi Open Day on 14 August. Please email me at louise.j.beer@gmail.com to rsvp.

BigCi is an independent, artist run, not for profit artist residency program focusing on artists’ professional development and facilitating their projects.

BigCi has been established and run by Rae Bolotin, a practicing artist, and Yuri Bolotin, environmentalist and wilderness explorer.

‘BigCi is situated on the edge of Wollemi National Park within the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Greater Blue Mountains, one of the world’s top biodiversity hotspots. Due to the location and the knowledge base of their team, many of the resident artists are particularly interested in projects that explore environmental or ecological issues, although many others use our outstanding natural surroundings as a source of creativity for a variety of different artistic pursuits.’

Pale Blue Dot Collective will display the film Under the Fading Light at the Encounters with the Urban Night Conference at the National Museum of Estonia in Tartu, Estonia, followed by a Q&A.

The two-day conference is hosted by the Estonian National Museum and open to the public. The conference is organised around a combined schedule of panels and screenings to stimulate discussions which engage with the themes of alterity, identity, transformation and sensoriality in the context of the nocturnal. The conference will expand upon the residency theme by exploring further the many ways of encountering, perceiving, representing and reformulating the alterity and threshold-crossing character of the dark hours, as well as the special identity-giving forces and phenomenological elements of alterity within the urban environment, as conceived by an array of researchers and creative practitioners.

This event will be online and at the museum.

More info and registration here.

Join me on 27 January at 7PM GMT for an online live broadcast of my sound piece, A Memory of Darkness.

Book your free ticket here.

Audience members are invited to wear an eye mask or scarf over their eyes for the event, and listen through headphones. On the day of the event, a Mixlr Live Player widget will appear on this page.

‘As the sun sets over the enormous volcanic landscape of the remote Hinewai Reserve in Aotearoa New Zealand, the sky begins to reveal an infinite display of stars and planets, appearing like heavy lights against a pitch-black sky.

As a result of light pollution, many of us across the globe have lost our night-time view of the Milky Way, which can have a philosophical impact on the way we see our ecosystems. When we can no longer look outwards and see our galaxy, we lose a sense of the scale of the emptiness, the expanse of the darkness, and by contrast, the sheer magnificence and fragility of our natural world.

The short live broadcast, A Memory of Darkness, comprises a sonic piece created using field recordings of bird song from Louise’s experience at Hinewai Reserve, in her native Aotearoa New Zealand. Alone, looking outwards over the Pacific Ocean, as the warm breeze rustled the native trees nearby and the Ruru (Morepork owls) sang out into the night, the artist experienced overwhelming feelings of both wonderment and environmental grief in equal measure.

The artist invites participants from across the world to join her to collectively listen to this new sound piece and recall our own memory of the darkness, considering its significance.’

A Memory of Darkness was developed during Louise's UK associateship at Delfina Foundation as part of the science_technology_society programme, in partnership with Gaia Art Foundation, and on her residency at the Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora, Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand.

Memories of the Milky Way
Share you Memories of the Milky Way with me after the event here.

Telegram
Please join our new A/ T/ N/ C group chat on Telegram where we will be chatting after the event.

You can join the group here.

Immerse yourself within the sights and sounds of a forest ecosystem under threat with this digital artwork created by art collective super/collider.

Biodiversity/earth is an immersive audio-visual experience that explores humanity’s impact on the forests of Costa Rica. It was created by art collective super/collider working with Imperial College London ecologist Jenna Lawson, who is working to save the endangered spider monkey. Taking Jenna’s field recordings, the artists created an immersive journey that conveys the beauty in the diversity of life and what we lose when we destroy these incredible ecosystems.  

At the Great Exhibition Road Festival, you can experience biodiversity/earth for yourself as well as hear from its creators in conversation amongst the sights and sounds of the forest. 

This event is taking place in South Kensington and will also be live streamed so that you can tune in to watch live online from your home. When selecting your ticket, please be careful to check whether you have a ticket to join us at the event in South Kensington or to watch along online.

Get tickets here.

super/collider will be participating in “Expanding Dialogues: Arts and Engineering” at Brighton CCA.
Our talk will be Sat 02 October from 1.15 to 2.15pm. See booking information here.

Exploring the question, What if artists taught a module to engineers/ what if engineers taught a module to artists?, we have designed this collaborative event to explore cross-disciplinary teaching methods between arts, engineering and design.

The programme consists of four keynote lectures and three artists/ engineer collaborative workshops across the two days. Find out more on the Brighton CCA website.

This event is a collaboration between Brighton CCA and Advanced Engineering Centre, University of Brighton and has been generously supported by the Advanced Engineering Centre, University of Brighton.

Nan Shepherd in Space: Writing the Earth and Cosmos in The Living Mountain
Wed, 29 September 2021
19:00 – 21:00 BST
Online Event - Tickets Here

When Nan Shepherd wrote The Living Mountain, she was poised between two moments in earth and human history. Her geological imagination was shaped by scientific discoveries into the deep age of the earth and the forces that shaped mountains, carved valleys and brought living species into being. But she was also writing on the cusp of a new age: one in which human activity would leave traces on this seemingly eternal landscape and begin to disrupt wider global natural systems, from the hydrological system to the carbon cycle. In this talk, I'll explore Shepherd 's temporal and planetary imagination - from the marks mountain industries were leaving on the Cairngorms, to the attempt to imagine the earth and cosmos as one integrated, living whole.

Dr Samantha Walton is Reader in Modern Literature at Bath Spa University, where her research focuses on links between nature and mental health, and the environmental humanities. Her latest books are The Living World: Nan Shepherd and Environmental Thought (2020) and Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure (2021)

Main Image: Eilis Garvey

Wed, 15 September 2021

10:00am – 11:00am BST
*Please note – this is a morning talk if viewing from the UK

Book tickets

In 2017, humanity observed the merger of two neutrons stars for the first time. In order to understand the stars that resulted in this violent encounter, we need to understand the stars that lived nearby, and in this talk , Dr Heloise Stevance will talk about how we can use state of the art simulation and data analysis codes to infer the full story, from the birth to death of these exotic explosions.

Originally born and raised in France, Heloise moved to the UK to study Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sheffield. After working as a support astronomer at the Isaac Newton Group in La Palma for a year, she obtained her Masters of Physics in 2015. She subsequently started a PhD studying the 3D shape of Core Collapse Supernovae, and earned her title in Spring 2019. In July of that year, she joined the University of Auckland as a Research Fellow to research the evolution of massive stars to better understand how they die and produce Supernovae and Kilonovae.

Join us online for super/science episode 13: Finding Asteroids with Dr Maggie Lieu

It's believed that an asteroid 10km in size wiped out the Dinosaurs. As of April 2021, there are over 25,000 near-Earth objects and many of these are a potential risk to life here on Earth, but in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, there is believed to be over 2 million asteroids, some of which can reach 1000km in size! Scientists are actively searching for new, and tracking known asteroids. Often, they won't know for sure where an asteroid will hit or how big an impact it will make until a few days before the collision. When so much is at risk, how can scientists ensure that we are safe from a fate just like the dinosaurs?

Dr Maggie Lieu is a research fellow in Machine Learning and Cosmology at the University of Nottingham where she lectures the Machine Learning in Science MSc program. Prior to this, she worked at the European Space Agency in Madrid on the Euclid mission, a space telescope that is due to launch in 2022. Her main research interest is in clusters of galaxies and their role in helping us understand the Universe and the nature of dark matter. Besides academic research, Maggie is an avid science communicator who runs the science youtube channel Space Mog.

Image Credits:

Above - NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona; Writer Daniel Stolte, University of Arizona

Join us online for super/science episode 12: Dialogues with the Substrata with Sophie J Williamson

Matter, with a necessity inherent in its nature, constantly engenders thinking creatures […] thought is an intrinsic property of matter.

– Cosmology of the Spirit, Evald Ilyenkov

Infinite in time and space, the recycling and resurfacing matter of our planet creates sentient beings time and again. In the ground below our feet, geological underworlds offer a space to consider a shared planetary consciousness: the sentient and non-sentient; organic and mineral; the living, dead and those of the future.

Sophie J Williamson explores entangled ancestral voices amongst ever-turning geological matter. Reading deep-time narratives secreted amongst the permafrost, geological strata and celestial dust of outer space, how might our dialogues with deep-time redirect our futures?

Sophie J Williamson is a curator based in London. Since 2013, she has been Programme Curator (Exhibitions) at Camden Art Centre. From 2009–13, she was part of the inaugural team at Raven Row, and previously worked on various international biennales. Her writing has appeared in frieze, Art Monthly, Elephant and Aesthetica. She was Gasworks Curatorial Fellow (2016) and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity Curatorial Fellow (2020).

Her anthology, Translation (Documents of Contemporary Art, Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press) brings together writings by artists, poets, authors and theorists to reflect on the urgency of building empathy in an era of global turmoil. Her current independent research project, Undead Matter, is focused on the intimacy of dying and its dialogue with the geological.

This event will be accessed via Zoom.

Image: Dirk Spijkers