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The last days I have felt quite empty and scattered - the strong experiences of the past few weeks feel like fragments of myself that I look at from a distance, unable to bring together. I am familiar with this particular kind of melancholy and emptiness after holding big things, but meeting it anew always leaves me a little uneasy and lost. Then I remembered sojourn - an artwork my dear colleague Carolina made - and it brought me the sudden remembering that to the Earth I can never be lost. That the fragments, even if fragments, are placed on the canvas of myself, which means they are inevitably connected and part of the whole. What a relief it was to let go of the pressure to try to hold it all together and simply let the fragments float. The past weeks have contained a lot. We held the second edition of ROOTED festival, with all its living, multifaceted complexity. Gathering artists, dreamers, grievers, weavers, curious ones and plants in what felt like a two day ritual of remembering the kinship with plants, remembering the power of art to move and connect, remembering what it feels to be truly alive in this world. Sacred work, deep connections, love, awe, also some disillusionments and heartbreak - all was there. A lot to be processed still but the deep reverberations of these days are rippling strongly. We also, for the first time, during ROOTED, opened the doors to the House for Homeless Grief dreamed and woven by Katrine Faber and me, and enlivened by so many amazing collaborators, including a Crying Choir. House for Homeless Grief is an immersive installation that explores the grief that has no obvious place in our everyday lives - the grief that comes with loss, crisis, and change, in our personal lives and in the world around us. We created a temporary "house" - a space where this grief was welcome and honoured through music, voices, stories, sound, rituals, video, and support of plants. So much happened and opened there, and I feel strongly this is “just” the beginning of this work to be continued for a long time. Both of these - ROOTED & House for Homeless Grief - felt like islands in a way, with their own strong contours and edges, holding their own worlds, their own depth, their own weather. And now I have arrived on another island - the very tangible and beutiful island of Bornholm and BIRCA residency, where together with five other artists, each coming from their own walks of lives and lineages, we are exploring the relationship between ritual and performing arts, and the role of ritual in our life and work. I am learning a lot in our exchanges and explorations. And as you are reading this, we are preparing for holding a solstice ceremony both for ourselves and those who will be here to join us in a very special place on the island to honour the sun, our ancestries, and this land. How are you going to celebrate solstice?
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