| Recidency center | |
|---|---|
| Recidency type | |
| Art form | |
| Time of residency | May 2025 |
| Country |
|
| Contact info | francinedulong@gmail.com |
| Definition of artistic practice? | I am a queer interdisciplinary performance artist based in Mi’kma’ki (Nova Scotia, Canada). My main artistic disciplines are interactive theatre making, vocal+movement improvising and applied theatre. The key process of my practice is dialogic relationality with the aim of sharing the intricate magic of the world. Blooming Ludus is my international participatory theatre company dedicated to advocating for climate justice. |
| Title of the investigation at the residency | Invasive Species and Wildness |
| Description of investigations and findings | I have encountered many stories of humans trying to ‘rebalance’ ecosystems when an invasive species is causing too much destruction. I am fascinated by this response and how we view our responsibility as a species in these situations. The many feelings and colonial practices I witnessed in my research prior to arrival at BIRCA led me to think more deeply about ‘wildness’ as a perceived and false distance between humans and nature. During my exploration of my own relationship to the land and beings around me, particularly in the fragile and fertile time of Spring, I turned to touch and sound. I discovered a series of prompts, created an interactive installation/game of touch invitations and tested it with audiences at our public sharing. There were also some beautiful moments improvising with other artists, developing ways of music+sound making that came from touch relationships with the Earth and each other. We performed this practice together (search Méline and Alicja) |
| What are you most curious about or invested in in your own practice? | Horizontal decision making, care and collaboration across disciplines and team members Bilingual/non-verbal work (French/English bilingual, physical theatre background) Interactive invitations inspire play and participation, influenced by context Imagination, decomposition and grief as part of breaking colonial cycles Body based improvisational exploration as the seed for building scaffolding, scores and scripts Making climate issues that feel larger than us more tangible through physical play |
| What questions did you bring to investigate and what questions are you leaving with? | I brought: How can our perception of the felt senses of other beings influence kinship with other than human species? ie: how does a plant pay attention to light and temperature? How does human movement across the Earth influence ‘invasiveness’? Who do we carry with us, to where, when and how? I am leaving with: If wildness is nature, and wildness isn't human, then what is our nature? |
| Transformative, creative moments at the residency | I was deeply inspired by the decomposing chair in the field. It made me think of our relationship with trees, how they are a part of our survival, and how we are disconnected from the total life cycle of the objects we create from them. When Susanne said that she still had the same chairs in the basement, I placed them together, at the border of the field and the lawn, as a representation of the constructed distance European cultures have created between humans and wilderness, aging and death. |
| Keywords for the work done at the residency | Climate crisis, Co-creation, coexistence, Collaboration, Ecologies, More than human, Somatics |
| Research locations | Baltic Sea, BIRCA grounds, Black Space (BIRCA) |
| Further documentation | |
| Photos documenting the research |
|
| Videos of work in progess or reflections | |
| Webside links |
Francine Dulong
