“2021 has brought many of us back into lockdown as the Delta variant ravages through our communities. Sometimes when I’m feeling small, I like to put myself in the shoes of life forms that are *really small* – I look to clumps of mosses, lumps of lichens and algae colonies. These lower-order plants are some of the oldest and most resilient lifeforms on earth. Populating every continent on earth in the most extreme and inhospitable environments, their stoicism and persistence is an inspiration to me. As time stretches on in these isolated conditions, it is easy to start feeling like a lonely spore disconnected from the others. I would like to extend some digital and physical rhizomes out to bundle us back in together. By making some small, shared interventions on our lives for just a week, we might be able to come out of this with a slightly different perspective”
The Lonely Spores Club was a project about connection and small novelties in the time of Covid-19. Produced as part of Casula Powerhouses’ digital program, it was a participatory happening Inspired by Solarpunk principles, that took place during Mental Health Month October 2021. I produced a brand, a social media campaign, and a website full of readings to inform four weekly zoom gatherings with participants. They can be viewed here:
With over 100 individual sign-ups, when you joined the lonely spores club you received a series of four postcards in the mail, with different instructions on the back of them. The idea is you try something out of the ordinary every week for a month, and see how you feel at the end of it. Once a week you were invited to join a zoom lecture with myself and Dianne McClaughlin (Casula Powerhouses’ resident art therapist). Participants were also invited to send me some images of the things they created so I could make a personalized individual artwork. I created these with the same ‘contemporary Y2K’ design aesthetic of the overall program – a unique postcard from the pandemic.
This work was presented at Casula Powerhouse, Casula in October 2021
