Heuldro was a collaborative event created by Cadw, Tin Shed Theatre and Tactile Bosch at the Neolithic site of Bryn Celli Ddu, that sought to interrogate landscape, ritual, and the celebration of archaeology through creative interpretation. Four artists-in-residence (Manon Awst, Tess Wood, Teddy Hunter, and myself) were commissioned to respond to the site in different ways including performance, sculpture, sound and poetry.
{ LISTENING , SPEAKS }
Having heard that human ear bones were discovered (amongst other things) at Bryn Celli Du during excavations in 1928, I began thinking about the site as an echo chamber, a sort-of circular horizon where narratives meet. The duration of a voice and its lifetime is a mysterious thing (all stories connect in some shape or form). Who speaks to you? Who speaks for -or with- you? Who obliges you to listen? And how can we hear beyond what is immediately perceived?
Considering the borders of ourselves along the contours of tradition, I began recording conversations with friends and encounters, and playing them out into the burial chamber. Stories of oral navigation, songlines, iridescent fish and the tails of telescopes were joined together with the implicit, the indirect and the delayed.
This was an opportunity to reflect upon ideas of excavation, belonging, and deep listening. That is, listening deeply to our environments and to each other as a means of relating, caring and belonging to our world.
A film documenting the event made by Ffilm Bach & Mawr
