Postponed until 12 January 2023 1700-1815
Amanda will facilitate a participatory performance, The Herbs of the Commons Became Weeds, the Women of the Commons Became Witches to explore and celebrate the wild plants that women would have used as food and medicine. Together participants and host will infuse hot water with rosehips and imbibe the brew whilst reflecting on the relationship to our bodies, the land, and wild plants, their nourishment and healing.
Through foraging, food preparation, drinking and discussion, the workshop aims to unearth, revive and disseminate knowledge lost by our being severed from the land and our ancestors of wise women who were persecuted, tortured, and killed during the witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries, to make and re-make the commons.
The wild rose, a thorny clamberer of the hedgerows, with its ‘hip’ fruit that is potentially still available in November/December, symbolises the problematic and challenging times that we find ourselves in as well as these dark histories. Through the creative act of making and drinking the herbal tea we might absorb the knowledge of the rose as it infuses and flows through our bodies enabling the stories of our kinship to plants, land and healing to pour out in the safe space ‘sub rosa’.
Prior to the seminar, you will be invited to forage for some rosehips, or to request some foraged and prepared by Amanda*. Your rosehip tea can be made from fresh or dried hips. During the session, you will need a vessel to boil water in and a vessel to drink from.
*If you would like to receive some dried hips in the post, makes sure to email Amanda at amandajcouch@gmail.com with your address by lunchtime on Tuesday 6 December.
Bio:
Artist, curator, researcher and senior lecturer in Fine Art at the University for the Creative Arts Farnham, Amanda Couch researches, reinterprets and reimagines histories, myth, ritual and embodied knowledge weaving the theoretical, personal, and material processes. Her work straddles the domains of performance, sculpture, photography, print and the book, food, the everyday, participation, and writing.
Alongside Catherine Morland, she co-curated The Commons: Re-enchanting the World (2020-22) at The MERL, University of Reading; performed online (2021) and in person (2016, 2019) at the Wellcome Library, London; performed and exhibited at the Royal College of Physicians, London, (2020). She had a solo show and performed at Ivy Arts Centre, University of Surrey (2018). Her work is in public and private collections, nationally and internationally and her writing is published in journals, online, in books and as part of her artist book publications. She convenes a Commons Feast Virtual Monthly Meet Up on the third Tuesday of the month, to share foraging and commons knowledge framed as participatory performance.