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ENTER LIVE SCREENING VENUE

THURSDAY 29 APRIL
21:00 – 22:30 BST

Join us for a live opening night performance by Natasha Ruwona – a current Alchemy artist-in-residence.

Natasha will deliver live adaptations of the writings locating maritime memories: bodily movements, bodily moments (Grin: Expectations of Generosity) and the ocean will always remember (MAP Magazine). These writings were part of their year-long process of research surrounding water, which informed the moving-image film UMBILIC.

Beginning in 2020, incidentally the Year of Scottish Coasts and Waters – now continued into 2021 – UMBILIC is an offering: forever incomplete. What can we learn from water? Fluidity, impermanence, ease of movement, care, methods of listening, softness – to liquify ourselves, and look to water to guide us, provide answers, inspire questions, find new worlds…

This performance features a new work by Khadea Kuchenmeister reflecting on the relationship between clay, water and mourning, both departing from and braiding together connections of both land and sea. Clara Hancock has created a new soundscape to accompany the performances.

Following on from their initial conversation for the premiere of UMBILIC with HubCAP gallery in February, Khadea and Natasha will engage in a dialogue about the works.

Content warning: discussion of racism, colonial violence.

NATASHA RUWONA
Natasha Ruwona is an Afrofuturist dreamer interested in thinking from an apocalyptic perspective that considers the uses of hauntology and counter-memories in understanding contemporary Black identities. 

Natasha’s work explores Black Geographies through Scotland’s Black History using a Zimbabwean Diasporic lens. They are currently an artist-in-residence with Alchemy Film & Arts researching the legacy of Hawick-raised Tom Jenkins (1797 – 1859), Britain’s first Black schoolteacher, towards the development of a new moving-image work. 

KHADEA KUCHENMEISTER
Khadea is an artist and producer living in Edinburgh, exploring histories and storytelling through the use of creative workshops collaboratively with groups, as a way to encourage space for self-exploration centred on lived experience.

CLARA HANCOCK
Clara is an artist and writer based in Glasgow. Working across sound, video and digital design, they are interested in the ways that systems of power play out across the built environment, and the role of dreams, imagination and natural healing as alternative forms of urban knowledge. They are currently studying an MSc in Urban Design.