Miranda Whall

The second phase of crawling with an oak tree along the promenade in Aberystwyth, intended for the 4th Global Be- coming Tree Online Live Art event in April 2021, was sadly cancelled due to Covid restrictions. So I crawled around the empty lounge in my new house instead..

It was hard to hear that I could not crawl the prom for Be- coming Tree, I had not anticipated that a silent, solitary, peaceful performative action would be viewed as a potentially dangerous crowd gathering, law breaking, public event. I guess because the last time I did it, most people rolled their eyes, laughed and walked on past me, only a child and a group of women actually stopped to watch. It threw up strong reactions in me, mostly deep frustration around the many contradictions, anomalies, fractures and complications Covid has presented us all with..2 days later the crawl would have been allowed as we moved to level 3!

It was wonderful to receive Jatun Risba’s supportive words after the event, she summarised so well what I had tried to evoke by crawling round and round a domestic space for an hour. She said that my performance was “a loudspeaking variation – on theme of the original performance, a potent testimony of current times, its paradoxical (fascist) regulations and the creative urge of artists to react, reclaim and cultivate a space of freedom. She said the performance managed to convey much of the indescribable angst and frustration of the current zeitgeist and overturned it into a healing and transformative experience for many”