Germination Activation
Falmouth Degree Show, May 2019
Collaborative Exhibition with Olivia Brelsford-Massey
Germination Activation marked the end of my BA (hons) in Fine Art at Falmouth University. I collaborated with fellow student and friend Olivia Brelsford Massey on my final show.
We created a multifaceted landscape of sensory stimulation which included musical instruments, a working interactive compost wheel, reinterpreted cooking equipment, sound, video, live fermentation and large sculptures. It was a varied material landscape and collage of metal, wood, plants, vegetables, bread, leather, wool, straw, ceramics, spaghetti, electronics and naturally dyed textiles.
My heavy sculptural and textured work interlaced with Olivia's electronic experiments and object making formed at the time, a narrative heavily inspired by the work of Donnor Harroway and new perspectives on the Anthropocene and symbiotic communications and relationship between human and more than human beings in a world undefined by category and culture.
This birthed a new and germinating environment that encouraged questions about belonging, origin, history, biology and ways of knowing in a modern, technologically advanced world. A western world that not only seeks the knowledge of its indigenous communities living closest and most honestly along side nature but also to incorpoate the ever developing use of electronic technologies in parallel to our most ancient ones.
What is ours? Who are we? How many are we? Who lives in our guts, on our skins? How many colonies do we home in and on our bodies as humans? How many communities do we belong to? What is community and culture, and is this forever? How and who is colonised? Should we decolonise? How can we commune as one large body or being with all others? What and how can something be an 'other'? Who are the plants, the spices and who is the food we eat? How should we relate to the food we eat? Spices and seeds, what do they represent and how can we learn from their sensory offerings?
'Germination Activation'
Digital, green screen, collage and 16mm film
By Maya Ronchetti
Videos of gestures and experiments explored in the studio during my degree prior to final show. Performative and interactive, collective engagement with material and the senses to deepen and further connect and awaken to the vibration of material and matter.