Nest:Voices Exhibition

• Main Author: Sarantou, Melanie Augusta Chilion
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: /dk/atira/pure/person/fieldofscience2010/6/13/1; Theatre; dance; music; other performing arts; Arctic
• Online Access: https://research.ulapland.fi/fi/publications/63c27424-e67b-4099-9ca8-3a126f81f873; https://margintomargin.com/2017/12/12/nest/

‘Nest’ is about my dealing with notions of ‘home’ and making (art, identities, home). After experiences of immigration and moving away from my beloved Namibia, themes around seeking a new groundedness and identities have much dominated my creative practices. ‘Nest’ is one of the expressions that deal with these themes, especially now that I travel, work and live between extreme margins from Outback Australia to the Arctic North. I have most of my career moved away from design towards artistic and improvisatory processes due to fears of the planned and restricted. I have become addicted to the making in the moment and the possibilities it offers. Yet, I cannot remove myself from planning and conceptualisation either. It is always there, sneaking in, finding and creating order, maybe not always simultaneously, but it comes back, the analytical to sort out the anarchical mess, working in tandem, but also not. I get obsessed in ‘worlds’ of analysis or impulsive/intuitive making. Then, sometimes, to make it come together I find peace between these two ‘sides’ and find harmony, perhaps a conclusion, a way forward or backward. Nests are such a process. Thoughts slowly process as we dream and live. We create rhizomes that come together in something else that is made one day. When I over-plan I tend to dislike the process as it will stall my journey and instil fear. The process was a kind of soul searching about the meaning of my ‘nest’ (home, love, belonging, life, work, place), my environment, my future and past. The felts I thought ‘just happened’, but the nests happened through many rhizomes that started to grow through thoughts, actions and events. Then, somehow they started to grow and knot together, like a nest in itself, to make ‘Nest’. There is another story entangled in the history of ‘Nest’. In 2014 a nine year old boy who saw me weave seaweed one day brought me a bird’s nest. He told me that he saw me make nests (the weaving I was working on) and that is why he wants to give me the bird’s nest (not that I ...