Mycelium Sky explores the poetics of mycelium and its power to perform transformation, both as a system and as a material, in humans’ individual and collective spheres.
Fungi have a core role in most biospheres. They perform decomposition, making space for renewal. Mycelium, fungi’s root-like structure, forms an expansive ‘intelligence’ connecting many organisms. The hyphae, threadlike filaments structuring mycelium, generate and transmit information through their branch formations. Their tips produce electrical current as they forage and transfer nutrients.
Mycelium’s potential is increasingly researched in new areas (beyond nutrition and medicine) such as architecture, wearables, and the biodegradation of pollutants.
People will find an immersive shelter here, to be experienced both from outside and inside. Cellulose threads incarnate hyphae. The human craft and the organic interweave. Fibre provides a matrix for mycelium’s growth, which benefits from disturbance. Expressions emerge across these oscillating membranes, evoking recognition, empathy and sensitivity.
What remains through disintegration? Memory, stored in constellations of threads beneath the earth. Let us conceive an inversion and allow these palpable constellations to be the firmament we look towards.
it is my Honours graduation work from the Glasgow School of Art, 2021.
The short film ‘Wood Sprite’ utilises video and stop-motion, as well as performing techniques from marionette to shadow puppetry and life-size, embodied puppets. In the form of a tale, it depicts the origin journey of a wooden puppet to the forest. The sentient woods absorb this being into the night, allowing her and the puppeteer, in a mirroring game, into a realm of dissolution of all forms, matter and spirit. This film honours the union of nature and culture, and the porosity attuning human and more-than-human creatures, at a time where the stillness of the theatre stage forces us to enquire outwards – or, truly, inwards.
Fabrication, Puppeteering & Filmmaking | Ella Josephine Campbell
Pine Sprite Performance and Dance | Solene Schnuriger & Ella Josephine Campbell
Music | ‘ I’ll Read You a Story ’ by Colleen, Written by Cecile Schot (SACEM), Used Courtesy of Cecile Schot
The Human Cave is a nomadic, site-specific and immersive installation. It embodies a spirit whose belly you can enter, and whose translucent, woven and felted skin acts as the theatre for shadow play and video projection. Its head is composed of four faces looking inwards, and roots soaring up; it is a circular being with no back or front.
In the Human Cave’s mind, addressing an ecological crisis concerning all species goes hand in hand with grasping, in perspective, what it is, and how it feels, to be human.
The visuals which are projected in this installation are partly from the short film ‘Wood Sprite’.
