Please click on the images above to see the different events within Afon.
Building on the success of past Maynard festivals, afon celebrates the river, its confluences, its wider connections and fluid presence in the village of Abercych in the lower Teifi valley.
Located performance, dance, film, wild swimming and workshops provide a platform for contemplation and activity around the ways that our rivers shape lives, bodies and identities.
If a river’s movement and its changing states reflect the current world, afon imagines how we might adapt to live by and with these dynamic bodies of water.
A river turns the local global…
Programme:
Friday 13th from 7pm: film screening in collaboration with WOW Film Festival: Stones Have Laws, cafe/bar and Friday 13th offerings by Jacob Whittaker and Kathryn Campbell Dodd, music by Deuair
Saturday 14th from 10am: optional early morning wild swimming (8am), Walking Bodies of Water workshop (10.30am) for all by Joanna Young & Saffy Setohy (see below), performances by Penny d Jones (2-3.45pm), Kip Johnson (during Twmpath), Katherine Hall (4.30pm), Jess Allen (8.33am-3.23pm) and others; films screened throughout the village: Oak Boulder by David Nash, Adam Buick, Will Menter, Eiko and Koma and others, plus 2 Penrhiw installation by film maker in residence Gina Kawecka (11am-6pm), workshops, river readings by Jack Smylie Wild (1.30-3.30pm), a Saturday night full moon Twmpath with Carreg Bica (7.30pm). All day cafe…
Sunday 15th from 10.30am: breakfast, sound installation by Jacob Whittaker (11am), a walk, a performance by Jo Hellier (12.30am), 2 Penrhiw installation of Gina Kawecka’s work Immerse (11am – 2pm) a final swim at Poppit Sands.
Event Details:
Stones Have Laws (12A)
When: Friday 13 September, 7pm
Rich with stories, rituals and song, this beautiful, meditative film explores what it means for natural things, like rivers, rocks and trees, to have rights, rules and needs. Suriname’s Saamaka and Okanisi peoples, or Maroons, are the descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped the plantations to the South American rainforest. There they learned from indigenous peoples and carved out a way of life based on the lessons of ancestors, spirits and nature. In order to survive, they always kept things hidden from colonising forces. But, as the increasing encroachment of mineral and logging firms threatens their community, they agree to find a way to become visible on their own terms. Out of the depths of the waters, at intersections with an immense forest, through sugar cane, rocks and trees, the voices of Maroon wisdom make themselves known.
“a tale of mythic proportions. The common origin at its heart is ecological rather than human… a stunning depiction of the natural beauty and vitality of a world in jeopardy” – Astrid Korporaal
Directors: Van Brummelen & De Haan and Tolin Erwin Alexander, Netherlands, Suriname, 2018, 100 mins
+ Archive film, offering by Jacob Whittaker and Kathryn Campbell Dodd, music by Deuair and Cafe
Immerse
Video Installation at 2 Penrhiw
Artist: Gina Kawecka
When: Saturday 11am-6pm & Sunday 11am-2pm
‘The dream is the aquarium of the night’ (Victor Hugo)
Immerse is a moving image and sound installation illuminating the oft unseen waterscape of Brighton’s female sea swimmers. Shot in the sea using natural light, the camera movement and underwater sound create a mysterious dreamlike environment going beyond documentary into an imaginary aquatic underworld.
Immerse has previously been installed as a projection piece onto three large scale vertical voile screens creating an immersive audience experience (University of Brighton (2018), ONCA Barge (2019)).
For AFON Immerse will be reworked for the cottage environment, offering exciting new challenges and perspectives on the work and its placement.
Artist: Gina is a visual artist working in photography, film and performance. Her performance and dance background continue to influence her work around narrative, image, portraiture and place. As performer/maker, physicality and play are at the centre of her practice.
Photographically she is concerned with the psychological landscapes available within an image, and the unconscious processes that facilitate image making.
Working with individuals and communities offers an energising participatory connection, taking art beyond a gallery space into the everyday realm.
Gina is our artist in residence in the week leading into the festival and is looking to meet local swimmers.
Walking Bodies of Water
Artists: Joanna Young and Saffy Setohy (Part of BOW Collective)
Meeting point: Village Hall, Abercych Walk/event length: 1.5 hours (The walk is over fairly level terrain, including a road, field and riverbed. A good pair of walking shoes or boots is recommended)
When: Saturday 14th September 10.30am
Walk
Walk in silence
Walk like your skin is invisible
Walk and notice water
Walk with the horizon
Walk and listen Walk and breathe
Walk with all the details
Walk in others tracks
Walk noticing the edges
Walk slower
Walk
Walk and notice containers
Walk with what’s underneath you
Walk noticing skinned and un-skinned liquid
Walk
Take a walk with us to the river.
Along the way we will offer gentle guided invitations to listen, touch, see and sense bodies of water. When we reach the river we will mold and craft with clay, drawing attention to ideas about containers and our relationship to the transformative element, water.
Walking Bodies of Water is a result of Joanna’s continued collaborative research ‘Conditions for possibility’, funded through a Creative Wales Award/ Arts Council of Wales, and Bodies of Water, a project by BOW collective (Saffy Setohy, Nicolette Corcoran Mcleod, Aya Kobayashi and Joanna Young). ‘Bodies of Water’ is an interactive performance experience, which premieres at the James Milne Institute in Findhorn on 21st September 2019. This walk is an offering to be with some of this living research.
Bodies of Water is funded by the Creative Scotland Open Project Fund. Supported by Findhorn Bay Arts, The Touring Network, The Work Room, Dansarena Nord, Dansefestival Barents, Platform and Pavilion Dance via Surf the Wave seed generator fund.
Drop in the Ocean
Artist: Jess Allen
When: Saturday 14th September, midday onwards
Drop in the Ocean is a walking performance in concentric circles; the ripples around a drop ((((.)))) Carrying water with a milkmaid’s yoke, I invite anyone I meet to make a wish, moving a stone from the water in one bucket to the other. In between, I ask six simple questions about your memories, stories or senses of water.
Irreverent, quixotic, contemplative, profound: Drop is a quiet acknowledgement of water as a deep point of connection between people, place and planet.
Movements of Care
Artist: Katherine Hall
When: Saturday, 14th September, 4pm
Katherine Hall will be sharing a beautiful solo work- Movements of Care -on the Saturday afternoon of Afon:
‘Looks with satisfaction, gusts of affirmation. Awkward stumbling, attempting the hero, just getting there. Nodding in agreement, nodding in sympathy, nodding in hopefulness, nodding in assurance. Being nodded. Pretending not to be nodded. Taking a moment. Giving a hand. Trying things differently. Imagining new ways of relating. Working with invisible tasks and weight and people. It takes time. But it’s ok. We can share the weight.’
This performance is an insight into Katherine’s current research, exploring care as a moving, choreographic practice and in dance as a practice of care. It will include some excerpts from her solo performance work You Sit There and bookwork Movements of Care.
Performance
Artist: Jo Hellier
When: Sunday 15th September, 12.30pm
Exploring the rhythms at play in the river using ‘un-earthing’ as a process – tuning into what a place holds beyond the first layer of things. Listening to what’s been going on with that place… specifically with the water, what it’s seen and felt on its way to that specific place, drawing focus to the water’s ways, its energy and how it plays about with the things it touches.
FLOW
Artist: Jacob Whittaker
When: Sunday 15 September, from 10.30/11am
A morning stream of sonic interactions, river songs and vinyl.
Collective connective musical memories emerge from an assemblage of old record players, vinyl records, local recordings and sound pictures. FLOW seeks to connect people and places through a process of participation and response.
