The Moth Project
textile piece by Katherine Pogson
My friend Katherine Pogson, in the midst of her PhD at UAL, came to see Awakening in Berkhamsted. She was taken by the visuals back-projected onto a linen screen, reminding her of the classic moth-trap - an illuminated white sheet which moths are attracted to after dark.
Moths and butterflies had become central to her research, offering an entry point for exploring an “other-than-human” way of experiencing the world. In the Anthropocene age, and with growing awareness of the climate emergency, this inevitably encounters stories of loss, damage and extinction. However, in taking a moth’s eye view, this piece focuses instead on the requirements for flourishing life - nourishment, procreation and migration (freedom of movement).
We started the collaboration with a view to creating visuals (me) and accompanying words (Katherine) for exhibition. Aligning with the interests of my chamber ensemble CHROMA too, though, it naturally came up as a rich subject to mine for primary school workshops when Stuart King and I started talking to OmVed Gardens in Highgate about collaborating on some programming there.
CHROMA also has a long-standing relationship with Shetland, particularly Fair Isle, whose residents host us in their homes as we go into the school with music and craft workshops, give a concert in the hall, and occasionally have something of a creative retreat in the extraordinary surroundings of the island. We felt the moth project would be perfect as a springboard for textile and composition workshops there.
So the project developed into a multi-strand activity: a film, a concert programme, composition workshops, textile workshops.
Whilst doing research for the visuals - fascinating information about how moths’ eyes work, which colours in the spectrum they respond to, the reasons for the phenomenon of being drawn to light - I was scribbling pages and pages of my notebook. It felt almost like too much, until l realised it was really all about one thing for me: in the urgent need to re-think the way humans relate to nature, this film should simply be exploring the subject with a moths-eye point of view. It needed to work with light and colour in an abstract way to make that leap of imagination.
Katherine had suggested three sections:
- Nourishment
- Moonlight (procreation)
- Wind/Air (migration - freedom of movement)
so I set about creating visuals that gazed on these three ideas, using plant greenery, illuminated water at night and filming during days of strong winds.
I suggested calling the piece Towards Light, everyone was happy with that. We had named our Moth Project.
Work is in progress.
Exhibition: Places to Intervene in a Landscape at Lumen, Bethnal Green, London 2020 "Towards Light" visuals by Claire Shovelton words by Katherine Pogson (postponed from April due to Covid-19)
EXHIBITION: "Places to Intervene in a System" @ Lumen, Bethnal Green 2020 "Towards Light" words by Katherine Pogson visuals by Claire Shovelton www.lumenstudios.co.uk (postponed from April due to Covid-19)