Reclaiming the ground

Reclaiming the ground is an ongoing project of inquiry about how we, particularly as women, navigate spaces, both rural and urban. This project is a combination of my own interests in exploring wild landscapes including mountains alone as a female, and the responses that arise in others when discussing it; ideas of safety, whether we belong, bravery and unknowing alongside the research carried out with Sarah Sulemanji and Professor Jyoti Navare on women walking together. This research again explored women moving through urban and rural landscapes, the safety of such spaces based upon societal and gendered norms and our feelings of safety based on familiarity as well as how we connect with each other in movement through the landscape.

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Both of these experiences lead me to further explore these spaces through artistic, somatic mediums. Where do we fit in the landscape, what ground can we cover, are we at one with the landscape or juxtaposed against it? Through dance, film, fine art, poetry and eco-somatic practice I will begin to delve into these questions and invite you to come with me on the journey....

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“Getting lost was not a matter of geography so much as identity, a passionate desire, even an urgent need, to become no one and anyone, to shake off the shackles that remind you who you are, who others think you are.”

― Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost