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Posted on January 31st 2025
Club Alt Imagines Alternative Realities
Our final closing event for Club Alt, our artist in residency for 2024, happened at the South London Gallery on 17th December.
Artist Nazneen Ayyub-Wood collaborated with the students over the year to produce a series of alternate realities reimagining new ways to co-exist with plant and animal species.
Work developed during after-school Club Alt was shared by students from Years 9 -11: Blessing, Nana, Alyssa, Maud, Asha, Ava, Maxima, Davida and Zaidat.
Using the premise of the Umwelt (the German word for ‘environment’, defined by Baltic- German Zoologist Jakob von Uexhill) Club Alt members explored the perceptual world of animals by initially processing and exploring within their own Umwelt. They shared three immersive encounters produced as part of the residency.
- Roosting invited the participant to experience a group resting practice inspired by the break in migration of the Monarch butterflies, who travel 3,000 miles from their breeding grounds to New Mexico to rest during winter. The roosting is where they hang motionless, semi-dormant, in their masses.
- ‘Fortune Teller’ is a reimagining of our world with plants and animals. Originally, a form of Japanese origami, fortune tellers – as the name suggests – can tell someone’s future based on their combination of choices. Participants play the game to consider a life more entwined with animal companions.
- Maud has speculated the future of George Orwell’s Animal Farm – a fable about a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer to create a society where they all could be equal. In the tabletop encounter, Maud invites the participant to crawl under a dark cover sheet and kneel on a cushion. Under the cover they will encounter a barnyard diorama whilst facing a veiled presence. The cardboard diorama visualises the ‘showdown’ scenario: the pig agriculturists seated around a long table staring at the human farmer who is standing alone. Maud has skilfully vocalised a snort-sounding morse code in the audio. Words such as ‘Hi!’, ‘What?’ and ‘Go!’ are escalated creating a sense of despair and chaos.
Thank you to Nazneen for supporting our young artists, the South London Gallery for their continued support and to all who attended the event.
Students shared three immersive encounters produced as part of the artist in residency.
Artist Nazneen Ayyub-Wood pictured with members of Alt Club.
