The Yarmouth Springs Eternal project was originally born out of the context of Covid-19, a more-than-human reminder that we are not just people, but vessels for viruses, bacteria and microorganisms to thrive within and on. The project was centred on the season of Spring, while acknowledging that the predictability of the seasons is becoming more disrupted as a result of the climate and ecological emergency.

Yarmouth Springs Eternal came to life along with a community programme of artist-led walks and workshops with adults connected to the Herring House Trust group for single homeless people, and the GYROS group supporting migrants and culturally diverse communities. The workshop programme was accompanied by a six-week public exhibition and various free events including a conference, a series of artist-led walks, a printed pamphlet, and a resource booklet on creative walking activities.

In 2022, supported by CreaTures, the project took a different approach and started focusing more on the internal co-creative processes within the Yarmouth Springs Eternal community and nurturing of its community roots. The project contributors noted that the CreaTures support particularly helped them to deepen the project’s themes and engage with people in a more equitable way. A new group of facilitators was developed to build a space for unheard voices and for those with an interrupted connection to ‘home’ or place. This group grew out of long-term relationships with people connected, and returning to the project, as well as a group of new participants.

In March and April 2022, the group led by Genevieve Rudd and supported by project assistant Moyses Gomes took part in four workshops facilitated by three visiting artists and a visiting ecologist: Ligia Macedo, Holly Sandiford, Jacques Nimki and Tiffany Wallace. The workshops took place in the Great Yarmouth outdoors and in PRIMEYARC – an arts space, gallery and affordable art studios located in an ex-department store in a shopping centre.

Each of the workshops included an outdoors walk around the local neighbourhood and engaged participants – members of the community with lived experience of homelessness, migration, isolation and mental ill health – through questions about ‘nature’ and what it means to them. The goal was to explore tensions between internal and external perspectives on natural worlds: how are our inner landscapes informed by external environments, what emotions and meanings do we attach to ‘nature’? The visiting practitioners brought in their own perspectives on engaging with the natural world through arts, science and well-being approaches. 

Following the workshops, the Yarmouth Springs Eternal community participants were then supported (commissioned and paid or provided with vouchers as a reasonable expense, if accessing Universal Credit) to design and lead their own events for the public that were organised during the Creativity and Wellbeing Week in Great Yarmouth (May 2022). Four events took place and each of these was free and open-to-all, and leveraged diverse creative and walking practices to highlight the many aspects of the Great Yarmouth springtime and its ‘nature’.

The event’s activities involved slow conscious walking and breathing to notice various patterns in the local environment, mindful eating, collective writing of poems, music appreciation as well as the drawing of diverse shapes and forms to capture participants’ sensory experiences throughout. The group also engaged in ritualistic exercises of ‘making-sharing-offering’ at the local cemetery, and collected multi-lingual words of noticed feelings and objects in Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, Hungarian, Afrikaans and English. This exercise helped to capture and reflect on the cultural differences present in the group: for example, Ligia Macedo noted that in her home country of Portugal, cemeteries are serious and sacred spaces to honour the dead, so she was surprised to see that, in Great Yarmouth, people have picnics in the cemetery.

These events followed a particular rhythm; opening and closing each session with reflective conversations, which were noted down and recorded. A common thread throughout all events was the link between the natural environment, health and wellbeing: the group often spoke about connecting with ‘nature’ as a self-nurturing act, mentioning that it helped them feel calm or energised. Some participants mentioned their concerns about the climate and worries about the future, sharing their observations of plants flowering early or at unexpected times and feelings of anxiety about the depletion of resources.

The group did not come up with a universal definition of what ‘nature’ means to them, highlighting that such definitions might be too exclusionary. Instead, they explored the differences between the local gardened and wild spaces; between valued and neglected areas, focusing on how these distinctions mirror particular local, social conditions. The relationship between participants’ life stories and various self-seeded plants noticed around the town became a symbol of their respect for diverse journeys that we might end up taking as part of our livelihood.

At their closing session and a celebratory picnic in June 2022, the group had a conversation about vulnerability and how it can bear a powerful energy but also many uncertainties. While being vulnerable and without necessary resources and support, it can feel very exposing to step up in a social or another hierarchical system; and many members appreciated the support provided by the Yarmouth Springs Eternal project that enabled them to transition from their involvement as participants to become facilitators. The shifting of roles and hierarchies was key to the overall project dynamics: most of the contributors, including Genevieve, were involved both as participants and facilitators, sometimes even simultaneously. 

Holly Sandiford, one of the visiting artists, reflected on the deliberately loose and fluid project structure:

“As artists we often talk about ‘co-production’ and ‘collaboration’ as a way of working, but that’s often offered up as a limited choice by the facilitators. Yarmouth Springs Eternal is not just co-production, this is simply production! It is brave and bold, and puts people at the core of the project.”

The project has helped to uncover what living and working in Great Yarmouth might mean, to whom. It also enabled reflection upon the symbolism of plants growing in neglected, overlooked, bleak places, and how such places can become beautiful sites of abundant life. The Yarmouth Spring Eternal experience has been turned into a short film produced by the filmmaker Becky Demmen of Supporting Your Art:

Leading Yarmouth Springs Eternal is also tightly connected to Genevieve’s perspective of living and working in her hometown and her own lived experience of episodes of severe mental illness. From these experiences, she has drawn the strength and compassion to support the development of others facing similar challenges, acknowledging that it is a complex area of work, where generosity could push boundaries and challenge identities while, at the same time, being rich and rewarding. As pointed out by Genevieve, resources are really key and this work cannot just appear overnight, it takes a lot of time and care.

In June – July 2022, documentation of The Yarmouth Springs Eternal project was exhibited at the CreaTures Festival in Seville, Spain, along with other CreaTures experimental productions. 

The Fallen Clouds project explores the metaphor of a cloud as a way to connect two contemporary issues: the growing expansion of digital infrastructures and the climate crisis, crossed by forms of historical extractivism in certain territories. The project locates the ethico-political tensions between technological development and the eco-social crisis in three critical digital zones and infrastructures in Chile: a submarine Internet cable extended in the coasts of the Pacific Ocean, the new Google data centre in Cerrillos, and the carbonate plants of lithium in the Atacama salt flat. In each territory, the project authors engage with different beings affected by the presence of these infrastructures: from crabs in the submarine bottom to an ecofeminist group in Santiago and Lickanantay women in Atacama.

The Fallen Clouds film

The Fallen Clouds features a film composed of images of these different beings and the diverse processes happening around the digital infrastructures. The film narrative starts with a submarine observation of a new fibre optic cable extending throughout the coasts of the Pacific Ocean in Chile. It then follows the activist actions of MOSACAT (Movimiento Socioambiental Comunitario por el Agua y el Territorio) – an ecofeminist group organised against the installation of a new Google data centre in Cerrillos that would use 169 litres of water per second to cool down its servers. Finally, the film observes the extraction of lithium in the Atacama salt flat from the perspective of a geologist and three Lickanantay women: a girl, a woman, and an elder.

The film sound is recorded using different sound artefacts, from direct sound captures to contact and hydrophone microphones. Experimenting with sound tactilities allows the creation of viscous and electric sound compositions that support the narration of different myths, as told by MOSACAT and the Lickanantay women. From these materials, a ‘cloud symphony’ is born. The symphony is played through floating sound sculptures created with the materials gathered around the three infrastructures explored, including a salt flat crust, water pipes from the lithium extractive sites, dried seaweeds from around the fibre optic cable, and a piece of a fibre optic cable itself.

Each piece is connected to a speaker or to a transductor, generating a vibrating sound composition of The Fallen Clouds. This visual, sonic and material experience allows viewers to immerse themselves in a trance-like journey to break the spell of the cloud, inviting them to take a different perspective on digital technologies and imagine other possible futures connected to circular temporalities as well as interspecies and intercultural affective relations based on mutual care.

Filming & fieldwork

Prior to the film shoot, the authors conducted fieldwork in the three main locations. In January 2022, the fieldwork research took place in Cerrillos, at the territory where the new Data Center of Google will be located. The group worked with MOSACAT on the scriptwriting process in order to better understand their needs, demands, and desires connected to the film.

In February 2022, the group traveled to San Pedro de Atacama to attune to the local territory and generate collaborative bonds with local communities (who were previously familiarised with the project). These encounters involved a meeting with Karenn Vera Tito – a Lickanantay woman and educational mediator, and Juan Carmelo – a traditional environmentalist educator and a fellow friend of Karenn from the same indigenous community. The Fallen Clouds authors made a ritual of asking permission from the land and the ancestors to start developing the project and visited the land of their ancient abuelos (great-grandparents).

In April 2022, the group worked at the Lickanantay school of Río Grande with Ashley, the only ten-year-old student of the school, and her teacher Isabel Tito along with the traditional educator Juana Anza and artist Andrea Vera. Together with Karenn Vera Tito who acted as the educational mediator of the process, they applied different ludic dynamics to create a myth connecting the idea of the ‘cloud’ and its local socio-environmental resonances with the Lickanantay cosmovisions.

The filming continued in the Atacama Desert, starting in San Pedro de Atacama, a town located 2,408 metres above sea level. The work involved members of the Lickanantay community of Río Grande in the Chaxa lake, a place characterised by a rich and unique ecosystem and a sacred site for the local indigenous communities (the site is currently administered by the Toconao community, who kindly allowed the access to film in this place). The filming then continued in the centre of the Atacama salt flat close to the lithium extractive sites.

Film editing & installation

In May, the group followed the installation of the new submarine fibre optic cable Prat owned by the local telecommunications company, GTD, and recorded sounds at the seashore of the Pacific Ocean to capture the audio textures of places around the submarine cable. The film editing started in June 2022 and was followed with the construction of the final atmospheric installation.

During the fieldwork and filming process, the different materials that make up the ‘cloud’ were collected – algae, salt flat crust and water pipes used for lithium extraction. Different sound artefacts were used to create the vibrant cloud composition, including speakers of different sizes and transducers, accompanied by diverse fabric materials and other equipment to hang all the objects and speakers to create the final immersive art installation.

The installation including the film was exhibited at the CreaTures Festival in Seville, Spain (June – July 2022) and at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria (September 2022).

The idea of DOMIE goes against gentrification; exposing the ‘ruin’ that resulted from the Polish transformation after 1989 – the rapid change of systems, neglect of memory and responsibility. In such conditions, there is a need to support the weakest groups and enhance ideas of solidarity. View from the Window focuses on building neighbourly relations across difference, by hosting picnics, creating an urban garden together, moving away cars and making a safer space to spend time together. The aim is to establish relations through social and creative exchange with an environmental focus.

DOMIE is a single standing house in the yard of Św. Marcin – the most famous street of Posnań city. After 1989, the building and the yard were abandoned and became a ruin. The building was previously an important cultural site: for instance, it hosted a Fotoplastykon or Kaiser’s Panorama (an early precursor to cinema). Since 2018, an artist collective has taken over the building, creating a social, artistic, economic and architectural experiment in collective and cooperative care. The artists and youth of DOMIE are considered a foreign element in the neighbourhood, a threat to the old order and regime.

The View From the Window project aims to help create a dialogue between the local neighbours and the new inhabitants of DOMIE, since they may not have the tools to acknowledge that they can gain something from each other. Both communities deal with traumas, poverty, and loneliness. Creative engagements in overcoming the obstacles together and treating them as opportunities can help build such bridges and cultivate a sense of trust. In 2022, the war in Ukraine has brought a new context to the project, as many refugees have become new members of the neighbourhood.

A series of weekly Sunday picnics in the front yard of DOMIE was started in March 2022, inviting all local neighbours to come share a meal, spend a Sunday afternoon together, and get to know each other. Printed posters and an online DOMIE group invited neighbours to spend some time together eating cake and drinking coffee. During the picnic meetings (March – May 2022) a conversation was started about the possible futures of the DOMIE yard, which is currently in terrible condition: it is a disorganised parking lot full of trash, with an uncontrolled toilet, and a place of daily alcohol use. It was discussed how to turn the yard into an urban garden together, move away the cars, and how to create a safer space for spending more time together. The neighbours brought in various ideas and engaged in work for the benefit of the common yard, helping to build the emerging community.

Six picnics at DOMIE

The first picnic gathering was attended mostly by elderly people and people in alcoholic crises. They brought their flatmates, family members and friends. Time was spent talking about the yard: telling each other who we are, how we ended up here, what is the status of the neighbourhood, and what do we expect from the Sunday picnics series. One neighbour came and brought sweets. Many people who came to attend – Janusz, Halina, Daniel, Bogusław, Felicja, Wilku and Maciej – kept coming back for further picnics throughout the series and stayed through to the end of the process. The basic bond was created during the very first meeting. 

During the first picnic, Martyna handed out postcards mentioning that she would be thankful if the neighbours could send pictures of DOMIE taken from their window/balcony, so that they could be used in a public exhibition situated inside of DOMIE. By collecting diverse local views of the ruin, the hope was to support the process of building trusted neighbourhood relationships.

This idea was inspired by the DOMIE’s unique architecture: When photographed from above, due to the unusual shape of its roof, DOMIE visually resembles the first photography ever taken by Nicephore Niepce in Le Gras (France). By playing with the visual connotation of DOMIE in relation to the local neighbourhood context, there was a desire to cultivate the feeling of something dear and beautiful: something connected to memories and storytelling, portraying the house as a place that should be taken care of and treated as a treasure that belongs to all in the neighbourhood. In the following week, Martyna collected several first photographs that were sent via messages and email. 

During the second picnic meeting, more people appeared, including those from Ukraine and other places abroad. Mirek, Daniel, Vasylj, Marta and others were there and took part in a mapping workshop led by Marta Węglińska from the KOBALT Migrating Platform. Together, they created a map of ideas, functions and needs concerning the yard.

For the third meeting, visualisations and plans for the yard were brought along. This had been prepared together with an architectural studio and reflected the ideas shared by locals at the previous picnic. During the picnic, participants shared reflections and experiences: Janusz told the group that he missed them, he claimed they appeared in his dreams over the week, Mirek spoke a lot about his brother in jail and he also offered to help renovate parts of the DOMIE building. Maciej proposed the idea of painting a DOMIE sign on one of the house walls; he was also very interested in the Fotoplastykon story connected to DOMIE – he had gotten himself a book about it and shared various interesting facts about the place and its history. We planted a rose together that was brought during one of the earlier picnics. 

Sadly, no one from the old group came for the fourth picnic but many new people appeared including new friends from Ethiopia, Abdi and Tebarek, and immigrant neighbours Ramzi and Rauf. During the fifth picnic, DOMIE was hosting an exhibition by 17 refugee girls from Lviv, Kharkiv and Kiyv (Ukraine). Neighbours who came for the picnic joined the exhibition, and the exhibition artists later joined the picnic. There were musicians from the DOMIE neighbourhood playing live music and the picnic lasted until late. New forms of engagement emerged, connecting the cultural production inside the DOMIE space with the picnic events.

The sixth picnic welcomed more newcomers from local cultural institutions and grassroots initiatives. Neighbours came to the picnic to grab a coffee and spend their time working on the forthcoming exhibition showcasing their ‘view from the window’ photographs of DOMIE. 40 pictures of DOMIE were collected altogether. These were taken from various windows and balconies: some by the local inhabitants, and some by Martyna as several locals (Rauf, Antonina, Michał and Ramzi) invited her to visit their homes and take pictures.

Exhibitions & Zine

Based on these pictures a map was co-created. This documented where the picnic participants live and helped to nurture and establish new relations. The map was presented as part of the DOMIE exhibition and in a zine publication that was printed on a risograph and released in Polish and English translations (100 copies in total, released in June 2022).

Along with all these activities, the View From the Window project helped to establish and maintain new, friendly relationships and bonds within the local neighbourhood – one that is commonly considered as a divided and ‘problematic’ area. The neighbourhood picnics and conversations about participants’ childhood memories of the place uncovered interesting moments from the history of DOMIE (such as those related to the Fotoplastykon) and provoked a collective repair of the ruined building. The project managed to create a sense of shared local space and shared neighbourly futures, where the local community enacts collective care. 

Aside from the DOMIE exhibition, the View from the Window project, including photo documentation and the printed zine publication, was also exhibited at the CreaTures Festival in Seville, Spain (June – July 2022).