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Gardening the Mind | Sowing Seeds: Study Session 2: Sean Roy Parker

Archive Shelf Location BALTIC2021M
Publication Date 10 Dec 2020
Description

A free series of online study sessions, open to all, that consider beginnings, process, participation and bringing ideas together. Each session develops from a seed of a text, written or otherwise, which is significant to the host.

Approaching the 20th anniversary of Mary Midgley's radical pamphlet 'Gaia, the Next Big Idea', artists Verity Birt, Sean Roy Parker and Clémentine Bedos explore 'Gaian thinking' and it's imaginative and holistic potential through their practices.

This is a series of three study sessions, but each of stands alone.

Session 1: Verity Birt
Wednesday 9 December

The first session with artist Verity Birt will begin with an introduction to Newcastle based philosopher Mary Midgley (1919 - 2018) and her challenge to patriarchal-capitalist values of individualism, competition and selfishness.

Session 2: Sean Roy Parker
Thursday 10 December

This session will be hosted by Sean Roy Parker. Through considering how his own eco-anxiety manifests as interspecies praxis, Parker make a case for decarbonising art practices by actioning a more environmentally-responsible approach to being in the world as an agent in a wider ecology.

Session 3: Clémentine Bedos
Friday 11 December (this session was not recorded)

Hosted by Clémentine Bedos, this session leads us through visualisation, breath work, movement and sound to awaken our six senses, the conduits through which we connect with nature.

Artist Biographies

Verity Birt lives in the North Pennines and is a funded, practice-based PhD researcher at Northumbria University and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (BxNU) in Newcastle. She has an MA from the Royal College of Art (2015) and BA from Goldsmiths University of London (2011). Situated in intersectional Feminism, Birt’s practice of writing, performance, sculpture, sound and film-making seeks to materialise enchanted encounters and meaningful intimacies between each other and the more-than-human world. Her PhD is currently titled: 'Re-enchanting the World; a Feminist Sympoiesis' and experiments with collaborative processes of making-with, in search of a recuperative and reparative aesthetics.

Sean Roy Parker is an artist, environmentalist and cook in London. His work examines the lifecycle of materials, complexities of civic responsibility, and problem-solving through collaboration. He practises traditional approaches to craft and art-making, using leftover or abundant items of nature and artifice to explore feelings of eco-anxiety in late-stage capitalism, and redistribute resources through flexible care structures. Recent projects include "Slow Yield" at Rupert, Lithuania (2020), "Changing our planet, changing our minds" at Wellcome Collection, London (2020), "Towards an Eco-Responsive Curriculum" at Haberdashers Academy, London with Freelands Foundation (2020), "Fermental Health" self-initiated, nomadic (ongoing).

Clémentine Bedos is a transdisciplinary performing artist based in London. They studied Philosophy and Law at La Sorbonne in Paris; Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London; and then at the Royal Drawing School in London. Unfolding questions about identity and articulating relations between mental health and gender, their grandmother’s legacy, the art of the so-called ‘outsider’ Jeanne Durand, led them to study drawing as a means of revealing the body and the different regimes of power that cross and construct it. This ultimately led Clémentine to research Tantra, a sacred and transgressive philosophy.

Gardening the Mind - Events Season

This event is part of Gardening the Mind, a new season of online events focusing on mental health, conceived through the metaphor of the mind as a garden that we all need to collectively and continuously tend to.

Format Zoom recording
Related Artists Verity Birt, Sean Roy Parker, Clémentine Bedos
Month December 2020
Related Event Gardening the Mind (A season of online events 2020-21)
Related Gallery BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art

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