Here Now Yma Nawr was a live art project I developed with a group of artists in Wales during Autumn 2020. I wanted to celebrate, honour, and commemorate the people who were born and died during the Covid-19 lockdown and support those whose experiences of birth and death of loved ones had been interrupted to express this. There was a series of individual and small family group workshops, online ceremonies, a live art ritual performance and a film. See the film here.
I wrote about the project in Performance Research Journal Vol. 26 No.3 ‘On Interruptions’.
Extract:
‘The sun is shining. The wind is blowing. I am not alone and I am so grateful for this. I hear their voices as I listen to the river rushing to meet the sea. The sand is cool against my skin. I’m twisting and reaching and grabbing. There is so much effort, I am exhausted. Then the screeching of wild, hungry ghosts whipping and scraping against my eardrums // I feel the light on my face. I feel light. I am light. The hardness in my heart is dissolving, loosening, softening, opening // The wind blows through me. I am no longer only myself. My hair is blowing in the wind. I am blowing, being blown in the same direction as the river, towards the sea.’
You can access the full article here.