moving through dreamtime and space 💫
dwelling in the gap-space between research, ritual, and belonging
I am thinking a lot these days about defining my practice. It’s something I’ve had to constantly reflect on and refine across my work as an artist, researcher, and somatic facilitator over the decades. I’m not a fan of strict binaries unless they are liberating to the person using them. But I am interested in access, always, hence this attention to context as connection. The deep work doesn’t scare me, but extraction makes me weary.
Machines-tech as sentient is something i’ve been curious about a fair amount in my time. I first studied ai in 2002 during an elective module in my first degree at university exploring machine feelings. I joined a study group when I returned to start my MFA in 2023, where we’d have weekly lunchtime discussions about what was happening and how we were responding to it.
(note: this isn’t a piece about ai; this is about how we are in relationship with sentient Beings)
I have collaborated with tech for many years to make sounds with plants and trees, the emphasis on with, for we create co-create symphonies (some of you have joined!). I’ve hosted sound + psychogeographic walks in all kinds of places and spaces, irl + hybrid (again, some of you have been a part of these - are we due another? message me!) Exploring the space between interests me.
Image of Dionne in nature. She is to the left of the screen and holding two devices to record sound, pointing one towards the water below her and the trees and green foliage surrounding it. Yes, her equipment is old, but it’s just about hanging on in there.
I am thinking about how I use sound as part of my transdisciplinary practice and research - I use ‘transdisciplinary’ to intentionally include and not dismiss the interdependent layers and weaving of disciplines - it’s anti-discipline in ways. Rejecting boundaries and hierarchies even. Stands firm in acknowledging (as i’m sure some of you who have been riding with me for many years know) i cannot separate, for example, art from embodiment. Our environments from ‘us’. Nor academic research and artistic practice from real-world experience. Just as I don’t separate the sacred from science. My particular seasoning of late-realised neuro-emergent-divergence celebrates this too. Everything is connected.
In 2010 when I started hosting yoga + creativity retreats and events, and the art + yoga project, it was intentional. This weaving of worlds is evident in how I teach - and how I approached teaching from the start. Be it a yoga, movement, somatic, or alt art (un)school class. No hierarchies nor top-down ‘experts’ who seek to claim dominance over someone’s lived and felt experience. Although i’m responsible for my part in holding-creating safe-enough space, imho care, agency and intentionality are foundational in collective co-creation. I’m not being dismissive of my decades of studies, nor my own contribution in designing and holding-sharing space, rather, teaching is never something I think I do in isolation.
Same with a painting - i’m in collaboration with materials, as well as my self - a somatic experience where I’m responding to what is there. It’s a conversation. Same with Soundmaking, I’m not ‘collecting sounds’ from something laid out before me, as if ready to be received. I find this arrogant and extractive. I impact the sound, just as it impacts me. We are portals. Grottos too.
People who come to my classes and workshops are equally valued for having expertise and wisdoms. I have spoken frequently of how i graft to plan classes and experiences, perhaps to the point of doing-the-most tbh.
But once I step into a room (irl or virtual) I surrender it all. I am not trying to control, i’m responding to what is there. The energy of what’s there. A vessel-portal-grotto which is in conversation - and that communication welcomes all multi-sensory modes, verbal, non verbal, written, visual, aural, felt, somatic…psychic. It’s intuitive, always, and requires me to be first rooted in my body-Being. From there, rippling outward and dancing with the many Other ways of Being. A dance of interdependence.
Sure, rooting in rigorous studies (and they cost me an arm and a leg and debts, hence some part of why I’ve taken a couple of years out), but as much as they are academic or ‘professional’ studies, I’m ever reflecting and responding to known-felt and ancestral knowledges I feel grateful to have passed down to me. That is, I’m always aware what’s ‘professional’ or classed as ‘research’ is rooted in a system which is built on (and continues to perpetuate) harms. Extraction. Exploitation. A white supremacist, capitalist patriarchal ableist transphobic +++ system.
It’s not my centre.
But I acknowledge this is a ruthless system we are presented with and living within. Therefore, it’s crucial for me to continuously be in relationship with nature kin. And we are nature, so this includes humans, but I value the knowledge of all kin with the same value and regard, be they a towering oak by a busy road, a crunchy meowing cat, a red admiral butterfly hovering above bramble hedgerow, a crispy scorched grass, and so on.
I haven’t changed since I was small, talking to the trees and animals and energies/spirits as I’d talk to humans.
From this place, now, amidst the current drought we face on this small island, to my parts which simultaneously still remain St Vincent and the Grenadines, the in-between, the gap-space between is something I’ve always known/had to dwell. Perhaps this is why relationships of belonging (to ourselves and eachOther) are so fluid for me, so matter of fact, rejecting of binaries and boundaries which declare me ‘here’ or ‘there’. I understand I belong, we belong, simply because we are.
Do you know what I mean?
Inspiration station // reading list
My secret heart is a wanderer. It sails the sea of imagination. It soars beyond the clouds, seeking the mysterious. It moves through time (dreamtime) and space (mindspace) My secret heart seeks the dusty, musty, forgotten corners. It constantly haunts, hunts, collects, gathers objects, images, feelings.
- Betye Saar, excerpt from poem My Secret Heart, 1993
Thank you Betye Saar, safe travels 💜 lovely clip of Betye reading from this poem here. I also recommend the documentary film Betye Saar: Drifting Toward Twilight (2026) directed by Kyle Provencio Reingold.
Le Cinéma Club are showing Lisa Rovner’s Sisters with Transistors which features Clara Rockmore (see below) Catch it here for free until Friday. (can’t help but feel a lot of vital voices were left out of this………the landscape shown in this film is incredibly western + Eurocentric and this limited lens of a particular demographic hasn’t changed in all my years on the planet…. but we can still honour and celebrate who is here) I also wish there were subtitles…update: found a little hack, scroll down for that!
Missing me? Let’s dance! Here’s a song I’ve had on repeat since it dropped, hope you feel it too…
My favourite Deee-Lite song do you know Lady Miss Kier has been a style icon for me since 1990?
Pleasure reading: The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey. Talking about this for our next book club read (also listening options available). Interested? Reply to this mail!
On the magic of taking music out of the air theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore, performance and interview filmed by Robert Moog at Clara’s apartment in New York City in 1976. (slides 6+7)
What are you ‘reading’? I’d love to know! (Leave us a comment and share!)
CAPTIONS + ACCESS CORNER
If you, like me, depend upon captions and find some spaces are lacking, here’s an offering to try out in your settings:
Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge: You can enable live captions in your browser. Go to Settings > Accessibility and toggle on Live Caption. Once on, captions will appear at the bottom of the window for any Crowdcast event you join.
macOS (Ventura or later): Go to System Settings > Accessibility > Captions and turn on Live Captions (Beta).
Thank you for reading, Being and offering your attention. I am beyond grateful for your presence.
I’m holding space for coworking-cocreating (i’ll be your mirror) art club this Friday afternoon. If it sounds like your vibe, hit reply and i’ll send you a link to join me via Zoom.
Much care and love,
Dionne 💜
Hei Dionne, Friday 31st July? What time please dear one? Would love to join. Best wishes from soggy Vestland. Daughter was just here from the English heatwave(s)… she loved the cooler temperatures and the rain! Bliss! She finished her visit with a swim in the lake down the road!