Jajajajaja (recreation): A re-enactment in Welsh yeses and nos of Joseph Beuys' performance jajajajajaj. For New Welsh Art - to celebrate 100 years of Joseph Beuys, the most famous German dead Fluxus artist. With Rhys Trimble. January 2021

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Ffocws cyfres Y Wyddor yw sut mae iaith, diwylliant a’r tir yn rhyngweithio â’i gilydd.  Mae’r gyfres yn edrych ar iaith a diwylliant yng nghyd-destun byrhoedledd, newid ac adnewyddiad. Drwy’r gwaith rwy’n archwilio fy lle fy hun yn y stori, yn cynnwys fy ymlyniad at wrthrychau ac at iaith. Cafodd y gwaith ei ysbrydoli gan y poster a grëwyd tua 1900 gan TC Evans (Cadrawd) o Langynwyd.

The synergy of language, culture and land is the focus of Y Wyddor series. The series looks at language and culture in the context of transience, change and renewal, and in particular, de-colonising of humans and non-humans through multi-lingualism. Through it, I explore my own place in the story, including my attachment to objects and language. The works are inspired by the poster created c1900 by TC Evans (Cadrawd) of Llangynwyd.

 See Y Wyddor film here

 “One lesson is everything, including mountains that are for many integral to concepts of ‘Wales’ is transitory, passing over greater or shorter periods of time into oblivion”. John Barnie*

I continued my exploration of language during my residency at Brisons Veor, Cape Cornwall in November 2015. This included 'Mangling a Brief History (According to Three Alphabets) a sound piece of Welsh, English and Cornish alphabets in which my English tongue struggles with the Brythonic sounds (listen here), and working with stories from the Mabinogi, including the epic chase of the Twch Trwyth from South Wales to the end of Cornwall.

For Merched Chwarel, I used Y Wyddor to explore and structure aspects of our contemporary and historical relationship to quarries, in particular an alphabetical list of all 5,200 quarries and mines of north wales (performed by Rhys Trimble), and alphabets of all the women’s first names in Nantperis. Discovering stories of E (Elin, Eleanor, Ellen) and M (Marged, Margaret) from original sources - census, newspapers etc - to counter the almost total lack of stories of quarry women (cf quarry men).

Bwystori and Crone Cast further explore our relationship with the non-human world through language and listing: collective performance incorporating impressions of shifts in language and consciousness fostered to address the perilous state of today. I am now working on the idea, building on the results of Sgwrs Dyffryn Peris, of holding conversations around the creation of new words, multi-lingually, that describe our current predicament, linked to place.

As Linda Hogan says in ‘Creations’, there is a need for

“new terms and conditions that are relevant to the love of the land, a new narrative that would imagine another way”.

An example might be “Simne Sion”, the phenomenon here in Nant Peris of waterfalls flowing upwards, as an act of resistance.

* From Iwan Bala’s book ‘Certain Welsh Artists’, 1999