8 Miles to Hyde Park Corner: A Sound/Listening walk with Catherine Clover
This sound/listening walk, led by artist Catherine Clover, engages with the lives of common wild urban birds through voicing and languaging. It takes place in Old Deer Park and along the Thames towpath in Richmond on the west side of greater London.
Old Deer Park has been open space for at least 700 years, mostly for the preserve of royalty, and only relatively recently has it been accessible as public space. Through walking, listening and voicing the event will spiral through time and space to consider the site’s troubled relationship with other species. As a way of thinking and re-thinking a capitalist-colonialist past, present and future with the birds and the landscape in which they live, the event will speculate on what the relationship between people and birds might have been in Medieval times, around 1323.
Born and brought up in London, Catherine has spent many years living in Naarm-Melbourne, on the unceded traditional lands of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation, Australia. Australia is a postcolonial society grappling with the violent legacy of brutal exploitative colonialism. In the spirit of a decolonial turn, ideal for an area so steeped in British royal history, the event will draw on the profound relationship to land, to Country, and to all other species in the more-than-human world, shared by First Nations Australians Mandy Nicholson (Wurundjeri-willam artist and linguist) in her public performances and interviews, Margo Ngawa Neale (Kulin Nation/Gumbayngirr academic and writer) in her book Songlines (co-authored with Lynne Kelly, published 2020) and the Gay’wu Group of Women (a group of eight Yolngu and non-Aboriginal writers and academics) in their book Songspirals (published 2019). For First Nations Australians language and landscape are bound tightly together and a deep knowledge of song and language enables people to move through Country. In addition, in First Nations knowledge systems, time is not linear but circular, a spiralling continuum.
The walk is informal and friendly; no vocal or singing skills are needed.
Please note that the walk will cover some uneven ground, please wear sturdy boots and clothes suitable for the weather. There are WC and refreshment opportunities along the way.
