on ēglond
performance work in progressscript / performance prompts /
documentation and photography
Chelsey Cliff (photographer)
Mimi Donaldson (designer)
Rowan Evans (writer)
Eli Lower (dramaturg)
‘On Ēglond, On Ōþerre’ was a project undertaken during my time as a creative fellow at University College London in collaboration with poet and composer Rowan Evans in 2020/2021.
The project responds to the animistic poems and nature magic of the Old English Exeter Book and ‘Nine Herbs Charm’. Our approach to these sources is transhistorical, exposing how the translation and weaponization of early medieval culture inform current attitudes to place and environment. These are politically contested sites of knowledge, as medievalist accounts of the British landscape frequently orientate themselves around a myth of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ – a white supremacist term first popularized in the 19th century by eugenicists such as Louis Klipstein. The lineage of this fascist worldview continues to shape the racist and exclusionary rhetoric surrounding rural ‘Englishness’, nativist environmentalism and its antipathy towards the ‘urban’ and ‘global’, as characterised by the contemporary writer Paul Kingsnorth and his withdrawn essay ‘Elysium Found?’ as well as his Guardian article ‘England’s Uncertain Future’ (Kingsnorth).
The project responds to the animistic poems and nature magic of the Old English Exeter Book and ‘Nine Herbs Charm’. Our approach to these sources is transhistorical, exposing how the translation and weaponization of early medieval culture inform current attitudes to place and environment. These are politically contested sites of knowledge, as medievalist accounts of the British landscape frequently orientate themselves around a myth of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ – a white supremacist term first popularized in the 19th century by eugenicists such as Louis Klipstein. The lineage of this fascist worldview continues to shape the racist and exclusionary rhetoric surrounding rural ‘Englishness’, nativist environmentalism and its antipathy towards the ‘urban’ and ‘global’, as characterised by the contemporary writer Paul Kingsnorth and his withdrawn essay ‘Elysium Found?’ as well as his Guardian article ‘England’s Uncertain Future’ (Kingsnorth).
2020 –
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