MUD Collective is a sedimentology–art–sound research group collaborating across Iraq, India, France, and the UK.
Between us we are currently exploring thinking with, through, and about mud, in consideration of shifting ideas around human and more-than-human, organic and inorganic intra-actions, and towards a real geopolitics for today: geosphere-biosphere.
Combining a transdisciplinary approach that entangles creative practice, pedagogy, and scientific curiosity, we create work that questions our relationality to earthly systems and forces, to promote kinships, healing, reciprocity, and response-ability.
Members
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Iraq/France
“This work is a reflection of the thoughts and memories which I have been living with most of my adult life after living through war in Iraq in 1990 and coming to the UK seeking asylum with my family as a teenager.
Iraq never left my mind and my only way of expressing this past is through art. Drawing, writing and singing, provide ways for me to visit my memories of Iraq.
Taking part in this mud project made me realise how much I am connected to the Iraqi soil and earth, how the sense of homeland is so important to me and to my existence. Mud contains roots of things and so I am connected to my roots through Iraqi mud.”
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UK
Kelcy is a transdisciplinary researcher exploring embodied thinking practices in formal educational contexts.
As part of MUD Collective she explores live encounters with mud, vibration, low frequency sounds, colours, textures and smells, towards a radical retheorisation of (revolutionary) subjectivity today.
As a UAL Foundation Art & Design teacher, and an Associate Lecturer, she seeks out opportunities for empowering learning experiences through an experimental and responsive practice-based approach.
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UK
Sally Stenton creates work that connects with the senses, bringing the body into conversation with the earth, catching people unawares and interrupting familiar journeys.
Sometimes digital media jostle with tactile materials and bodies, and her work can take a variety of forms including writing, walking, textiles, moving image, voice, site-specific installation, and participatory performance.
She is also part of Experimental Space Collective [esc], and was an initiator of Project Potpourri, an Open Call reaching out to other Artist Collectives.
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Iraq
Nawrast's current research is focused on the stratigraphy and climate change record of the Mesopotamian marshland and certain archaeological sites, during the Quaternary Period, with a special interest in moving beyond specific scientific paradigms to philosophical enquiry.
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India
Farah Mulla is an artist based in Mumbai. Her artwork explores the varied possibilities of human experience in relation to time, space, the visual and the aural.
Mulla’s background in science is not only reflected in her approach to her practice but also in her experimentation with different media – from installations to sound recordings.
Excited by the varied possibilities of the listening experience her work often tries to bring the viewers attention to the aural through multiple modes of perception.
website / other
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UK
Sarah Strachan is a transdisciplinary artist, based in Cambridge (UK), where she completed an MA in Fine Art following a career pivot to focus on her art practice.
She senses environmental changes through 'conversational drift' with people, places, the land and the materials and objects associated with these. Her interest lies in how our perception of being in, knowing and belonging to the world affects our ecological awareness and thinking.
Sarah has exhibited her work across Europe, USA and online. She was selected as one of the top 25 emerging ceramic artists in the UK in 2021 and awarded the Sustainability Art Prize in both 2021 and 2022.
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UK/Cyprus
(sound :: environmental humanities :: pedagogy)
William's practice finds its foundations in the environmental humanities, sound art, and radical pedagogies, working with field recordings, text scores, improvisation, writing, and communal sound-making to ask how sound can build knowledge with our more-than-human contexts, and how this knowledge can develop communal pedagogical tools fit for our age of climate crises. This work thinks about how sound enables embodied encounters with others, and how these stand as a radical act of co-working.
William is currently a PhD student within the Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice (CRiSAP) department, at London College of Communication: University of the Arts, London, under the supervision of Dr Mark Peter Wright and Prof Salomé Voegelin.
Additionally, William lectures at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, in sound/music studies, media & communications, film, and fine art.
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UK
Environmental artist James W. Norton blends creativity and research to explore human connections with place through the intersections of art, science, and storytelling. He explores landscapes and communities in transition focusing on the transformative effects of time, climate, and memory to create narratives that interweave science-fact/fiction, lore, mythologies, history, and earth sciences to create alternative pasts and speculative futures.
He augments his artistic skills in digital art, filmmaking, soundscapes, XR, and installation art with meticulous research and co-creation methodologies to craft site responsive and immersive experiences. James believes in the power of art and narrative to cultivate community imagination, promoting adaptivity, evolutionary resilience, and sustainability amidst geological and ecological change. His work, exhibited globally, involves collaboration with academics, curators, and creatives to highlight the stories etched into our landscapes and to encourage post-human and post-growth action.