We are Natasha Machin and Eve
Houston, two BA Theatre students
at Dartington College of
Arts in Devon.
Eve and Natasha performing at the Theater Forum Kreutzberg, Berlin. June 2003
Our role
at Steward Community Woodland
is as collaborative artists in residence during a six week period between
the 15th October and the 1st of December 2003. The woodland has three
public walks which we are exploring for performative and participatory
arts. Our audience are the woodland community and the wider community.
We are engaging with the everyday tasks of living and learning about how
to assist the community with their practical tasks to sustain their land
and life.
Steward Community Woodland is an ongoing project. The members are people
who are dedicated to empowering themselves to live together, practicing
how to live sustainably in environmentally low impact dwellings. They
are organising themselves to educate, promote and inform themselves and
the wider community to find inspiration for affecting their lives in a
non violent and non hierarchical system for a sustainable lifestyle.
Natasha Machin
My personal journey and education is based on an approach of looking at
things from different perspectives, through the arts and philosophy engaging
with, science, ecology, sociology, anthropology and spirituality.
Since being at Dartington I have become focused on an arts practice that
engages with environment and social justice and realised that living my
life creatively is where I am at mentally and physically.
The constant bombardment and
the destruction of the interconnected environment, culture and society
in the name of economic growth for capitilism and globalisation by unsustainable
use of land, energy and resources of the earth benefits only a few violent
rich and powerful people. These are reasons for me to engage my arts practice
with Steward Community Woodland. They are proving by the way they are
living, that capitalism, and globalisation are systems that have been
created and that they are not natural concepts. There are other ways to
live and all the possibilities have not yet been practiced.
I have looked at and participated with the relationship activism has
with the arts and found that it is a symbolic and direct approach of
using
politics within the arts such as Agit Prop, Independent and Guerilla
Media and forms of dialogue influenced by Augusto Boals; Theatre of
the Oppressed;
Forum Theatre, Invisible Theatre. There are many levels and forms of
expressing politics and social justice within an arts practice.
I have learned from these experiences and research that I want to be a
bit more subtle with the arts and politics. To do this I am finding ways
to have a more specific approach to an arts practice that engages people
with their environment; using site specific and ecological principles
as frameworks for investigation and research. I have learned that engaging
with a physical context provides a rich dialogue for both arts practice
and society.
"environments ecological or theatrical can be imagined not only as
spaces but as active players in complex systems of transformation. Neither
ecological nor performance environments are passive. They are interactants
in events organically taking place throughout vivified spaces."
Richard Schechner
The arts are a key aspect of society, and that it should remind itself
that artists are affected by the problems in the world, and have the power
through their way of communicating to affect social and environmental
justice, for the good. At the same time having the ability to embrace
artistic integrity.
Eve Houston
I want to be a responsible citizen of earth as
an artist, a daughter, a friend and as a human being.
Our planet has become ill and is heading towards terminal tragedy.
Most of the time I don't believe this. I see earth, the natural world
that we are part of as the most amazing, beautiful and vital reality I
have any hope of beginning to understand in this universe.
But I do worry about the effect that we, the human race is having upon
the balance and diversity of our planet. It saddens me when I know about
the pollution, exploitation and destruction of the planet and it's people.
But what do I do about it?
Read, witness and learn more about why, how and who is making these tragic
mistakes? Well, I am part of that.
What then? What can I do to change that?
I could shout, rage and protest against it all, tell everyone about how
things need to change.
But first of all I need to change my part of the system that prolongs
the suffering of the planet.
I am going to change the way I live. I am going to live in a more simple
way. To live only from what I need, not greed.
I also want to reconnect with nature to remind myself that I as a living
species, am as much a part of the natural world as a tree, a bird and
the soil. If I learn how to communicate with nature I am learning how
to communicate with myself.
This project I have engaged myself with is about an attempt to address
these issues through the way I live, think and communicate with the world.
I want the art I create to reflect the relationship I have with the environment
I am in with simplicity and sensitivity.
