Bidston Observatory Artistic Research Centre

Our upcoming Annual General Exchange is taking place. A yearly moment of reflection, engagement and shared enquiry into the activities on Bidston Hill. A chance to look back, to share our current focuses, and to shape the organisation moving forwards.

Here's our skeleton schedule, and descriptions of some of the workshops already proposed - as always, our AGE is about sharing practices: gaps in the schedule wait eagerly to be filled!

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Interbeing session

To see interbeing is to see that nothing can be itself without everything else. You are not you without your mother, your friends, and your worst enemy, your past traumas, intimate hugs and the vast cold of outer space. And none of these things are what they are without each other. Interbeing is, in de Saussure's observation, that all words only mean anything by implying what they are not.

But all that is easy to say, and when it comes to identity, the truth of it is hard to feel. In this embodied inquiry we'll explore how the mystery of interbeing might deepen our passion for honoring all identities and yet raise questions about the terms of contemporary conversation about identity.

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Feral Mask Making

Sanitisation, hygiene and separation have been recurring themes in our everyday lives for the past years. This mask-making workshop aims at wildness and grubbiness, an escape from domestication and a scurry towards the nonhuman animal. We’ll use our feral creations around the bonfire on Saturday night.

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Beekeeping

On Saturday, we’re introducing a beehive on the grounds at BOARC. Knowing that pollinators are incredibly important for continuation of vegetal and animal life on this planet, as we welcome the bee-human relation onsite, we look at how we can best support this symbiotic relationship.

Colony collapse disorder has multiple suspected factors: pesticides, pathogens, invasive species - what seems certain is that bees have become vulnerable in their proximity to modern human agricultural processes. Alternative beekeeping strategies ask how humans can become vulnerable to cohabiting with these (sometimes spiky) nonhumans.

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If you're interested in staying, please email us at enquiries@bidstonobservatory.org

Places usually fill up fast so get in touch.

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November 3rd to November 6th

3 nights fully catered

Subsidised £96 (£20 per night, £12 daily food)

Standard £126 (£30 per night, £12 daily food)

Funded £156 (£40 per night, £12 daily food)