Cultivamos Cultura Residency | 2023
The Mira River is 90 miles long and it’s name is dated further back from the Romans, from research it mentions that the name Mira was the same Celtic origin of the old city Mirobriga. The history that has fascinated me the most is that local tribes at the time (called Celtici by the Romans) believed that there was a god who was devoted to protect the waters, called Mirobieus. Any artist knows that when you find a nugget of information like this, it sends you down a rabbit hole, and I’ve got to say, this rabbit hole was incredible! Let’s talk about the clay, it was probably the nicest clay I’ve ever worked with, so easy to move and to shape. Using clay has been a recent addition and it is slowly but surely becoming a key part of my practice.
Week One
I usually draw to realise an idea and I realised I hadn’t painted for a long time as in my day-to-day, painting seems too time-consuming, and I have to be in a relaxed state to paint, so I used my time during Cultivamos Cultura to slow my process down and revisit an old technique that I am going to continue.
I spent a long time deciding on what shape to create, I didn’t really have an idea until I started painting. When you do a residency at Cultivamos Cultura, they ask for a piece of art that is made on the residency for their permanent collection so I really wanted to make something related to my project but also combining the history of the River Mira. I found some fascinating histories about the local River …
River god - Mirobeius
I found it difficult to find much information about the local river god 'Mirobeius', luckily I have a brother-in-law who teaches ancient classics at Canterbury University (Dr Christopher Burden-Strevens) and he found out some amazing facts for me, not easily I may add. He searched in dictionaries and German encylopedias, and found nothing, but then he found a book in Portuguese ‘Religiões da Lusitania na parte que principalmente se refere a Portugal’ which he has translated to say; Mirobieus was known from very few ancient inscriptions carved on stone. “I, Abruus son of Archius, born in [place], set up this inscription to Mirobieus”. The inscriptions, I found on my explorations, have been carved by the ancient tribes of this area of western Hispania, about 2,000 years ago or more, historians call these people Lusitanians, the Romans called them Celtici. The find-spots of the inscriptions are fascinating and suggest that people believed that the god WAS the river, or lived within the river Douro in 1900; the river was in spate, so at it’s shallowest point, and the inscription was found five paces from the shore. This means that the slightest flood would submerge the inscription, so it is possible that the local people put up shrines to Mirobieus right next to the river.
Mirobeius must be aquatic, it isn’t clear whether he was believed to be human-like in form and therefore live within the river (like Ancient Greek river nymphs) or whether they simply believed that the god was the river itself. Mirobeius is indigenous and interestingly the god is mentioned in inscriptions found beyond the Mira River, finding this out, would suggest that Mirobieus gave protection not only to the Mira River but the other rivers too, and was a general river god of ancient tribes, not only the Mira River.
Hydrophones: I realised that there is so much more to a hydrophone than just dropping it into the water and pressing the record. Hydrophones are contact mics, they are extremely sensitive to sound, and even movement from the recording device would pick up sound. Finding the right levels for the environment was much trickier than I thought, and I spent a lot of time listening to myself clicking buttons on the device rather than the sounds in the water. I really enjoy a challenge and this was definitely a big challenge for this residency, understanding hydrophones and entering a new realm, SOUND!
The Ear of Mira
The final piece from my residency will be exhibited in Portugal, Cultivamos Cultura in August 2023 as part of the exhibition 'Expanse'.
Week Two
I took my 3D printed ear around with me during my residency with Cultivamos Cultura to every place that I managed to record sound. Over the last 3 years I have been quite obsessed with ears. When this project started to develop, it was just before lockdown started, so anyone who visited, I would ask to cast their ears. I now have a box of ears cast from various people as well as running casting workshops for the pupils from Palm Bay Primary School. The reason I became obsessed with ears is because I suffered from a symptom called Pulsatile Tinnitus (PT) which is a type of tinnitus that takes the rhythm and sound of the internal body, this is a common and debilitating symptom of Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension (IIH). I have been developing artwork which communicates this symptom which will be on display at Phoenix Art Space in Brighton in october 2023.
A day with microscope, practicing some lab techniques taught to me by my original collaborator Professor Mark Clements. I collected some seaweed from a local beach to look at and collected plant specimens from the residency gardens.
Looking closely
Using microscopes was what inspired me to work with the invisible world, over 10 years ago. My work has taken different directions recently so I had the opportunity at Cultivamos Cultura to sit down with 4 microscopes, and experiment and study specimens like I did when I was a younger artist. Sand is always amazing to look at. This sand is from a beach called Odeceixe, in Algarve, Portugal.
Summer School
Mellissa's Workshop
I ran a 2 part workshop, in the first I taught participants how to make microscopic slides with water samples I had collected throughout my residency. I then taught the summer school how to use their phones to capture images from their slides.
The second workshop was focused on cyanotypes, the workshop was in collaboration with Cultivamos Cultura’s Anna Isaak-Ross, we shared our very different approaches to the cyanotype technique and laughed at how different they were.
When teaching the cyanotype process, I always say to practice with leaves first to see how the exposure times can affect the blue colour & then to try the digital negative.
Maro Pebo and I decided to recreate an 1881 method of culturing bacteria, on slices of potato, done by Robert Koch and explained in his paper ‘Zur Untersuchung von pathogenen Organismen’. Speaking with Maro about Art and science was incredibly inspiring & meeting artists as excited about the invisible world as I am has got my brain thinking about new Bioart ideas, I’m excited to develop these in the future with the hope of new collaborations.
‘His discoveries ushered in a ‘golden age’ of scientific discovery and a new era of public health. Today, his postulates are part of the medical vernacular and his techniques of microscopy are used throughout the world. Almost every step in the development of bacteriology bears his mark, from artificial culture to disinfection and sterilisation.’
- ScienceDirect
Marta De Menezes is one of the most inspirational artists I’ve ever met, as well as being incredibly kind and generous with her knowledge, she gave many talks throughout the summer school which made my brain hurt (in a great way) she helped me to answer some questions I had been thinking of for quite some time, some about setting up a lab space for me to continue developing work on Bioart, as well as giving phenomenal talks about immunology, CRISPR-cas9, being an artist in a lab and teaching participants how to do experiments in a lab environment. All the talks and conversations have given me so much inspiration.
After collecting sea urchins we returned back to the lab and started the fertilisation process. It was fascinating to watch each creature move and watch the magic of fertilisation happen under the microscope. We had a task as a group to keep the eggs alive, and it lasted a few days, however, we failed the experiment by letting the water dry overnight and we all felt quite sad, but what we saw over the 2 or 3 days was incredible and I hope we can make the experiment a success next time!
Maro Pebo’s workshop Votive Offerings for Trans-species, was a great opportunity to learn about Maro’s interests and fascination with organisms such as Lichen and translating these organisms into sculptural pieces. I’ve learnt so much from Maro and feel a collaboration brewing between us.
‘Created collectively as the result of Maro Pebo's workshop of the Cultivamos Cultura Summer School, this collection of small lichen arrangements, sourced from the local Ithaca ecosystem, serves as a token of appreciation for the intimate trans-species relationships that sustain life through endosymbiosis. Lichens are organisms that can only survive through a deep partnership between a fungal refuge and a photosynthetic partner, a cyanobacterium or microscopic algae, and other microorganisms that work together as a single unit. Pioneering biologist Lynn Margulis noted that these collaborations are central and essential to evolution. Amidst our current environmental crisis, endosymbiosis can be a key factor in promoting climate resilience. Votive Offerings highlights the importance of these partnerships, celebrating instances of collaboration and interdependency.'
Being in a lab with a group of artists was incredibly inspiring, I am used to being the only artist surrounded by scientists. As soon as I made my first set of plates I was excited to make more, and felt that fire in my belly to develop more Bioart projects.
Click below to see the Cultivamos Cultura summer school blog: