A circle, a whole, a sun, a meeting / 2025 

An installation and performance of sound, sculpture and light. A week long series of events taking place at Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Art in October 2025.

Giant sculptural ear trumpets point toward the ground, encouraging us to listen to the subterranean with our ears and our imaginations, and they are Earthworms erupting from the soil in frenzy. The circle aligned with the movements of the sun is an interface for our relationship with the land and the sky, inseparable from the production of our food. The calendar laid out in stone and stars determined seasonal routines and the realities of abundance and scarcity. Something we have forgotten, whilst we eat on borrowed time. As we face the degrading of the soils and our detachment from the fundamental laws of life, we look back to the last time the planet warmed, to the dawn of farming and the modern world. In order to understand our changing climate and see more clearly into the future.

We make predictions through scientific analysis and divination. Lines of connection join these attempts to further our understanding. Each merges with the next, now and in our past and future. We regurgitate layers of culture back and forth between devices, mouths and bodies, in a hall of mirrors devoid of natural light.

Our particular relationship with birds is poignant in reflecting our belonging to the natural world, through multifaceted means, from science to myth. Their conspicuousness means they have always been close beside us, but despite this have maintained their otherness and wild nature. They are not like us, the only thing we share is a spine. Yet we are a reflection of each other. A vocal composition made as a memorial to the birds in decline becomes the dawn chorus of an unknown landscape.

‘A circle, a whole, a sun, a meeting’ blurs the boundary between performance, installation and workshop and leads the audience into a participatory session that explores our interconnections with birds, soil and wider ecologies of people, agriculture and technology. Drawing on collaborations with scientists in ornithology and soil research, The Circle invited participants from across disciplines, including academics, scientists, artists, farmers and land practitioners to experience, discuss and imagine how we belong together within these systems - past, present and future. The work was also shown for the general public and students of Lancaster University.

The sound piece accompanying this work is an evolution of a vocal composition composed and recorded by Elizabeth for her installation ‘HARBINGER’ and it includes recordings made with children from Torrisholme Community Primary School mimicking bird sounds and a recording of a Starling mimicking human sounds.

This work is part of the Morecambe Bay Coastal Commissioning Programme founded by Deco Publique and theCOLAB which explores the development of the local cultural ecology. With support from an AHRC Impact Acceleration grant this aspect of the programme looks to investigate the opportunity for dialogue between artists and arts practice, and academics and the academic institution, drawing on research by Dr Nathan Jones at Lancaster University.

Photographed by Robin Zahler