The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop. Together, we will find the hope beyond hope, the paths which lead to the unknown world ahead of us. (Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto)
Each month, on the evening of our workshops, we invite you to join us for The Village & The Forest, a meeting place for a wider network of artists searching for ways to engage with the realities of climate change.
This is an open event, hosted by the members of the Dark Mountain Workshop, reflecting the work we have been doing together that day. It’s a chance to hear from our guest artist, to meet the rest of the group and to meet each other.
Entrance is free, but please use the RSVP links below to let us know that you are coming.
4 April – with David Abram
In April, our guest is the philosopher and ecologist David Abram, author of ‘The Spell of the Sensuous’ and ‘Becoming Animal’. The roots of David’s work lie in his experiences as a sleight-of-hand magician. This led to an early collaboration with R.D. Laing around the application of magic to psychotherapy, and then to a journey to Nepal and Indonesia, where he lived and studied with traditional magicians. Through his writings, David draws our attention to ‘the more-than-human world’, ‘the breathing commonwealth’ of which we are a part.
18.00 – Kägelbanan, Stockholm
Entry: Free
RSVP at this link
2 May – with Maddy Costa
Our final guest is the British theatre critic Maddy Costa. It feels appropriate that we bring this journey to a close in the company of someone whose work is to reflect on theatre, performance and music. Alongside writing for places like the Guardian, Maddy is critic-in-residence with Chris Goode and Company, and is one of the initiators of Dialogue, bringing together conversations around theatre.
18.00 – Kägelbanan, Stockholm
Entry: Free
RSVP at this link
Previous events
7 March – with Billy Bottle & Martine
In March, we started with the question: what will survive of us? What does art look like in the kinds of future that may lie ahead, as the consequences of our current way of living catch up with us? And what can this tell us about the kind of work that is worth making today?
To lead us into this territory, we were joined by British psych-folk duo Billy Bottle & Martine, whose music ranges playfully across genres, from recording a jazz symphony of Thoreau’s poetry, Unrecorded Beam (2013), with their eight-piece band, The Multiple, to reworking Snap!’s 90s rave-rap anthem The Power. Billy spent three seasons touring with Giffords Circus, made an album with Caravan’s Dave Sinclair, and is pianist for renowned big band leader Mike Westbrook. The duo are also longstanding collaborators of The Dark Mountain Project, curating the Woodland stage for the Uncivilisation festival in 2011 and featuring on the second collection of music by Dark Mountain artists, Reading the Ashes (2015).
Throughout these workshops, we’re trying to figure out how we live and work as artists – and as people – with what we know about the depth of the mess the world is in. If we are headed into a time when our ways of living are turned upside down, then our current cultural forms are hardly likely to survive intact. Yet the needs which culture meets are deeper and older than these ways of living.
18.00 – Kägelbanan, Stockholm
Entry: Free
RSVP at this link
15 February – with Monique Besten
In February, our guest was Monique Besten, a Dutch artist who makes long walks across Europe, collecting stories and embroidering them into her walking clothes. In autumn 2015, she walked from Barcelona to Paris for the COP21 summit.
With her help, we mapped the languages we use to talk about the mess the world is in, the obstacles we meet as artists trying to make work that responds to these realities, and the networks within which this work is (or could be) embedded.
18.00 – Kägelbanan, Stockholm
Entry: Free
RSVP at this link