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Cultural Dysbiosis: A Personal Essay by Ruth Kettle-Frisby

Photo: Ruth, far left, looking out at the view from Wennington Church

We invited Havering local, environmental activist and writer Ruth Kettle-Frisby to write a guest blog article on DYSBIOSIS after attending some of our DYSBIOSIS Creative Nature Workshops in Havering this month. 

What is nature to me?

When I first saw the term Dysbiosis – the title of the creative workshops here in Havering by Daedalus Theatre Company – my mind began to juxtapose discordant thoughts that seemed nevertheless to harmonise. Funnily enough, it is this very paradox that encapsulates nature.

Nature functions to such a finely tuned degree that the earth spins on its axis around the precise gravitational force to sustain life; and this mechanical harmony extends to our localised experiences here on earth, which can be beautiful to behold.

There are few things I enjoy more than an enchanted stroll around Warley Place when it’s sprinkled with clumps of dewy snowdrops glistening in the morning sun, sporadically dissected by ancient trees, some even thriving in supine slumber after great storms…or treating fluffy ducklings, flapping feral pigeons, and tame grey squirrels to veritable feasts at Langtons Gardens on a crisp Spring afternoon: scenes of comical unrest annually reverberate from the resident cob, angrily chasing persistent Canada geese from the lake; loss and sadness rippling in the still air as it becomes apparent on returning children’s fingers, that numbers no longer add up, and he’s attacked some of his own cygnets.

Nature continues to inspire artists, photographers and musicians; it provides us with sustenance, shelter, oxygen and medicine; it grinds our remains deep into its geology, and it contains coded messages of hope, regeneration and resilience, much like the Gingko trees that survived after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nature also has the ability to overwhelm with its might, brutality and caprice; blithely indifferent to some of our deepest instincts and desires.

In spite of our symbiosis with the rest of nature – to which we are intimately genetically connected – the dysbiosis we continue to wreak on our planetary ecosystems, with our continued burning of fossil fuels and so on, is destroying the delicate conditions that sustain a rich variety of life on Earth. 

Othering Nature and exploiting others

We often speak of ‘looking at’ nature, objectifying and othering it through a human lens; it’s as though life forms and processes in our ecology existed independently of each other. Although we live off and return to the earth – and breathe the air around us – we have distanced ourselves from assumptive ideas of ‘primitivism’ by disguising our natural interconnectivity in neatly folded plastic wrappers. 

The othering and politicising of nature in our language and our concepts can be found in the work of theologists and other thinkers, including social contract philosophers, who instilled fear of the ‘state of nature’ as something brutish that stands in conflict with civilised state control; contrasting nature with Western human rationality, as if human nature could achieve the paradoxical desire to transcend the rest of nature in order to conquer it. 

Our post-industrialist dependence on colonialist fossil fuel extraction and persistent burning has led big oil companies to maintain a culture of routinely poisoning the air we breathe, and to heat our shared habitat, which causes climate breakdown that is currently most severe in the Global South. This is making migration an increasing necessity for the survival of a variety of organisms, while pathological dysbiosis penetrates at biological levels with essential enzymes becoming denatured by climate change.

The Covid 19 pandemic tore across the globe; conflicts broke out in Kashmir, East Africa, and the Middle East, as well as the contrastingly highly publicised war in Ukraine; and billions of people have been impacted by floods, droughts and wildfires, always targeting the most marginalised people on the front lines first.

We are already struggling to cope with climate breakdown here in the UK. Parts of our local village of Wennngton were completely destroyed; homes and belongings were lost, and beloved pets and wildlife sadly killed. The UK wildfires of the summer of 2022 carried with them truths reverberating from Western colonialism with dysbiotic warnings, however invariably after such tragedies, those in power find ways to move the conversation along. This perpetuates cultural trends: after jolting reminders of our fragile mortalities, instead of becoming galvanised into action, we endeavour to reinter our dampened awareness that nature will transform and humble our own experiences. Keep calm and carry on, like zombies of convenience; living, polluting and voting, while women and girls of colour and disabled people suffer and die at the sharp end of climate breakdown. 

Kant thought that order in nature is the natural effect of our perceptual interaction with it. We are part of nature, and in perceiving it, we succeed in shaping it as it shapes our perceptions of it, creating a natural two-way symbiosis between our perceptual experience and reality. This is an interesting way of un-othering nature, and reconnecting with it conceptually at a metaphysical level, but the cultural story is very different.

The incoherence of selective narratives of dysbiosis

Stripping this down to logic, if nature is all that there is, then can it be ordered or disordered? Surely in the absence of any natural standard of orderliness beyond the socially constructed characteristics, disorder can only represent our perception in terms of reductive binaries that simply reveal truths about us and what we value. We separate flowers from weeds – or pets from pests and livestock – as wheat from chaff … nondisabled human worth from disabled lack of worth. This dehumanisation of people is a dangerous consequence of prejudiced perceptions of dysbiosis; fuelled by sustained, historically embedded power structures, they dominate the narrative to such a degree that they are sewn into the fabric of our basic, often unconscious assumptions.

My eldest daughter is six years old and has CDKL5: a neurodevelopmental genetic condition that is often referred to as ‘CDD’, standing for ‘CDKL5 Deficiency Disorder’. Non-disabled people taking for granted the working protein that was truncated for children like her does not justify the association of ‘deficiency’ and ‘disorder’ with human beings. When something is broken, we tend to fix it or throw it away; when children are labelled as ‘disordered’ by medical communities, nondisabled people with power tend to try either to fix disabled people according to nondisabled standards, or they marginalise them, compromising their worth and their safety in society.

We have spent centuries segregating people. Great thinkers, whose ideas endure today, pronounced some natural functions as ‘natural’, equating arbitrary ‘order’ with goodness; while perceptions of natural dysbiosis were labelled ‘unnatural’ and denigrated to ‘disorder’, abnormality, and sin.  

Here we find ourselves in dehumanising territories of supremacist political, religious and social ideologies throughout history. The Nazis persecuted and systematically murdered hundreds of thousands disabled people along with millions of Jews; white supremacist scientific practices fuelled by racist confirmation bias – with no biological basis – were used to justify, propagate and embed pernicious claims of ‘racial inferiority’, and the ‘biological disharmony’ of children of mixed background. Queer people throughout history are dismissed as dysbiotic ‘abominations’ of nature, and continue to live in fear and to suffer humiliation, harm and discrimination.

Intersecting racist, ableist and queerphobic prejudice is designed into all aspects of society, and a culture of worthlessness persists in public conscious and unconscious bias, evidenced throughout history: from celebrated figures such as Virginia Woolf, who described disabled people as ‘imbeciles’; to the ableist comments made by politicians today that betray the lack of humanity, dignity and value that they often feel entitled to attribute to disabled children.

Untangling cultural dysbiosis

The artists at Daedalus Theatre Company have inspired me to question ingrained tropes of dysbiosis that exist in scientific, religious, political and other cultural contexts, that have led us to ultimately minimise, disguise, or even deny the rights and expressions of marginalised people.  

How do we emerge from pernicious, supremacist cultural narratives of dysbiosis that have created marginalisation, engendered fear and bracketed off all forms of divergence? They have made their way into violence against women, girls and nature, upholding Western ideas and white coat medicine, widening the gulf between humans and other aspects of nature.

Nietzsche’s philosophy of aesthetics likens traditional human understandings of natural harmony with Apollo – god of reason, order and beauty; and chaotic disorder to Dionysus – god of ecstasy and insanity. Inspiringly, he thought that while we need both principles, we should use our wills to surrender our sense of self to nature in an intoxicated embrace of dysbiotic creativity!

I suspect it to be neither possible nor desirable to consistently bear (let alone affirm) nature in all its dispassionate, destructive revelry. However, I think we have a duty of care to ourselves, each other and our environment to openly question cultural mirages of socially constructed harmony based on harmful misappropriations of ‘nature’, and to find the courage to celebrate radically inclusive expressions of interdependent identity. 

Can our propensity to care overcome our impulse to dominate?

Can our propensity to care overcome our impulse to dominate? I don’t know, but I am pinning my hopes on our willingness to unlearn dysbiotic practices of entitlement. I hope we can continue to build momentum for climate justice, and learn to renature ourselves in our surroundings in more sophisticated, forest-inspired, collaborations so that future generations – and as many species as we can hold on to – can dance, play and work together to nature’s rhythms.

In the art world, there are interconnecting shoots popping up that teach us to embrace dysbiosis in all its divergent variety, offering us active opportunities to cultivate creative abandon, and loving acceptance from the grassroots.

Artist Spotlight: Paul Burgess

This month’s spotlight is on DYSBIOSIS designer-director and director of Daedalus Theatre Company Paul Burgess, who conceived the project back in 2020 before recruiting a team of creative practitioners last year to delve deeper into social constructions of Nature using a queer and interdisciplinary lens.

Tell us about yourself and your creative practice.

I’m a set and costume designer by training and self-taught in video and interactive digital, which I use in both performance and visual art contexts. I teach on the side, mainly English as a second language, at my partner’s tutorial school, Angkriz, though I’ve also taught on theatre and theatre design courses at various universities. Both feed my creative practice by challenging me in different ways. I also have various voluntary roles, mainly in the area of sustainability. These also feed into my creative work, and include being the coordinator of the Society of British Theatre Designers’s working group on sustainability and a co-director of Ecostage. I’m also on the Environmental Responsibility Subcommittee at Queens Theatre, Hornchurch, where we’re working on DYSBIOSIS. For fun, I play the violin, most often with The Black Smock Band, which connects with the music and storytelling we do as part of our EAST project. It all adds up to one interconnected creative practice.

What does ‘dysbiosis’ mean to you?

I suggested this as a working title for the project, and it seems to have stuck, so I suppose I need to explain myself!

It came initially from I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong. Having defined dysbiosis as ‘breakdowns in communication between different species – host and symbiont – that live together, ‘ Yong goes on to say: 

Our planet has entered the Anthropocene – a new geological epoch when humanity’s influence is causing global climate change, the loss of wild species, and a drastic decline in the richness of life. Microbes are not exempt. On coral reefs or in human guts, we are disrupting the relationships between microbes and their hosts, often pulling apart species that have been together for millions of years.

I had already been thinking about the way we use Nature to talk about society, often in ways that are divorced from the reality of the natural world,  such as the notion of the body politic, or economic competitiveness being described as Darwinian, or the absurd claim that LGBTQ+ people are unnatural. But what if the metaphorical body politic is suffering from metaphorical dysbiosis?

Were any aspects of the project new to you and, if so, what did you expect coming in?

I’ve never worked with so many directors and writers! I don’t get to do many designer-director-led projects. When I do, I usually work with people who are primarily there as performers, even if many of them write and direct on other projects. We also have lots of creative contributions from local residents. I was a little nervous that we’d have too many proverbial cooks. But our core group has wonderful chemistry, and the work with residents is producing some fantastic stuff. I think we’re going to end up with far more material than we can use, but that’s a good problem to have!

How did you find doing a second week of R&D after some months have passed?

The first R&D week was all about getting a feel for the themes and working out how to collaborate. The sharing at the end was a great first step, but it was essentially a collage of lots of bits of writing with a simple framing device – a lecture going wrong – to hold it together. It was incredibly useful, however, because in the second R&D week, we hit the ground running, and it was an amazingly creative and fruitful experience.

In your own words, what is devised theatre? And how did it apply in this project?

I’d say it’s basically about creating the work as a company rather than having a writer create a script. More personally, I think it’s also about questioning the hierarchies normalised within theatre-making, with the writer and director sometimes having tremendous power over other people of equal talent.

I also think a designer-director can bring something unique to devised projects. I would say that, of course! But it’s an observation I’ve come to through over two decades of experience. My design process puts careful research and dramaturgical integrity ahead of spectacle. My goal is to find the ‘logic’ of the piece, which the director may or may not have already established, and then to create the right frame to hold and enable that. In devised work, finding the logic and its corresponding frame is the key to making a coherent piece of work and to creating a rehearsal room situation where people can experiment and pursue their own lines of enquiry. I could talk about this for hours, but if you want an example, A PLACE AT THE TABLE is where this connection between the design process and the kind of devising I wanted to do really clicked into place.

How did you find working collaboratively with creative practitioners from different disciplines?

I love it, especially when the roles are fluid. It creates a genuinely creative space. It’s not always easy. Sometimes, you need to draw a line because you have to respect people’s expertise. For example, I might suggest a sound idea that a composer knows won’t work. So it has to be managed carefully. But as long as you get the balance right, it’s great.

I’m currently doing an MSc in Green Building, and one of the fantastic things about that is being with lots of people from very different backgrounds. It made me realise how much time I spend with other people who work in the arts, and I’ve had some great conversations with people from backgrounds ranging from sheep farming to architectural technology. Interestingly, some of my devising experience has come in handy for course group work, as I know how to create a situation that’s conducive to collaboration and co-creation.

How have you found it working in the Outer East London/South Essex area?

I’m keen to anchor the work in the place where we’re making it. I’m from Harlow, in the west of Essex, and now live in the East End, where my Mum’s family lived for several generations after coming from Eastern Europe. So I feel right at home even though I’m not actually from either South Essex or Outer East London. There’s a kind of shared identity, formed from the movement of people out of the old East End to the suburbs and beyond. My dad is from Mersea Island on the Essex coast, which is a different kind of place in many ways, but I was vividly reminded of its landscapes when we visited Rainham Marshes. 

What are you currently excited about creatively? 

I’m pretty excited about how queerness is being brought to the fore in Daedalus’ work. We’ve been creeping around the edge of this for a while – there was definitely a queer aspect to MOBILE INCITEMENT, for example – but we’ve not previously made it central to our creative approach. In DYSBIOSIS, we’ve embraced it fully, and the lens of queer ecology has brought about so many fresh perspectives. These come partly from questioning the way we impose our heteronormative, binary-gendered assumptions onto Nature (which is, of course, full of non- and multi-binary queerness – especially fungi!). But they also come from thinking about how much more there is to Nature, in all its joyfulness and abundance, than just passing on genes. I’m trying to get my head around more abstract ideas too, like Timothy Morton’s claim that queer ecology is in opposition to individualism and Donna Haraway’s assertion that ‘We are compost, not posthuman; we inhabit the humusities, not the humanities. Philosophically and materially, I am a compostist, not a posthumanist.’ (Humus is soil produced by decayed matter, in case you don’t know.)

Can you recommend a book that relates to the themes in DYSBIOSIS?

I’ve been doing a lot of reading for this project, including Morton and Haraway. I have to admit I find them pretty difficult, although worth the effort. But here I want to mention the books I most enjoyed reading for research, and I’m sorry I can’t pick one! Ed Yong’s I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life is a fantastic book on the world at microscopic level. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants explores her journey to connect Western science with indigenous knowledge and is a modern eco-classic. And be warned, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake may turn you into a fungi obsessive!


Top image: photo by Rehan Jamil

Paul filming lichen in a Dysbiosis R&D at Queens Theatre, Hornchurch. Photo: Hannah Davis

Artist Spotlight: Fran Olivares

Our latest Dysbiosis team spotlight is on Chilean performer, director, translator, tutor and theatremaker Fran Olivares. When Fran isn’t busy bringing thought-provoking theatre to life, she is also a proud mother to a 2-year-old who keeps her on her toes and gives her a whole new appreciation for the power of imagination and play!


Tell us about yourself and your creative practice.

I’m Fran, a theatre person from Chile, now based in SE London. My work spans directing, performing, translating, writing, and facilitating, all focused on themes around identity, marginality, and the female experience. Dysbiosis addresses the urgent and dreadful impacts of global warming and neo-capitalist exploitation. Personally, these issues are not abstract for me; they’re part of the reality currently affecting South America, and as a mother, the future of our planet weighs heavily on my mind.

I’m driven by the belief that making even a small difference in our corners of the world can lead to a brighter future. So, for me, my work is more than just putting on a show for entertainment; it’s also about using my body/voice as a tool for communication, a way to build community, and a platform to shine a light on the issues that matter.

What does ‘dysbiosis’ mean to you?

To me, ‘dysbiosis’ is about imbalance, and not just in nature, but in how we interact within our communities. It’s as if everything from the ecosystems to our social structures have fallen out of harmony because of the way we treat each other and our planet. 

Callout: East Music – a new project

Musicians! You’re invited to East Music: Song and Tune Exchange Session at Poplar Union on Saturday 23rd March, 4PM-6.30PM

Bring your instruments and voices along with songs or tunes from across the world to play, sing and share.

This is a free, friendly and inclusive session for players of all levels of experience – Global Majority* and LGBTQ+ music makers are particularly welcome. The session will be led by East musicians Andy Bannister, Michele Chowrimootoo and Paul Burgess.

This is a new strand of our East Storytelling project, and we hope to extend it to further sessions. All being well, there’ll also be an opportunity to share the results with a live audience later in the year.

DYSBIOSIS: Creative Nature Workshops – call for participants

Calling all Rainham and Wennington residents!

Our latest community programme is now live for DYSBIOSIS: Creative Nature Workshops. 

Join Daedalus Theatre Company for some fun and relaxed drop-in workshops and contribute to a collaborative artwork that will be displayed at Rainham Royals and Queens Theatre Hornchurch. Sign up via Google Forms here. If you need support with the form email tasnim@daedalustheatre.co.uk or if you prefer to do it on the phone, call Tasnim on 07942 476053

Location: Rainham and Wennington, East London

Dates:
Session 1. Saturday 24 February 2024, 11AM-2.30PM
Nature Walk at Rainham Marshes, Purfleet
Meeting point: Rainham Library, 6 Celtic Farm Road, Rainham RM13 9GP
Session 2. Friday 1 March 2024, 6-8.30PM
Creative Workshop, Royals Youth Centre, Viking Way, Rainham, RM13 9YG
Session 3. Friday 8 March 2024, 6-8.30PM
Creative Workshop, Royals Youth Centre, Viking Way, Rainham, RM13 9YG
Session 4. Friday 15 March 2024, 6-8.30PM
Creative Workshop, St Mary & St Peter’s Church, Wennington Road, Wennington, RM13 9DX 
Meeting point in Rainham for those who need transport to Wennington TBC.

Plus follow-up sessions later in the year! 

You do not need to attend every workshop.

Be part of a fun and relaxed project to explore how we relate to nature and the natural world. Havering is one of London’s greenest boroughs! It’s rich in nature and history. For example, did you know that 400,000 years ago, the Anglian ice sheets reached as far as Hornchurch, forcing the Thames into its present course, or that if you’re lucky, at low tide, you can see the remnants of an ancient forest from the Neolithic age?

This is an opportunity to explore your creativity with the support of interdisciplinary arts professionals from the Dysbiosis project. You’ll be guided through the process of making a personal creative response to the theme, then work with the rest of the group to make an installation that combines everyone’s work. The work will then be showcased at Rainham Royals and Queens Theatre Hornchurch. No experience necessary. 

Who is it for? All residents of the Rainham and Wennington area are welcome. Aimed at adults but children are welcome if supervised by an adult.

For more information, email Assistant Producer/Director Tasnim at tasnim@daedalustheatre.co.uk or call 07942 476053

Organised by Daedalus Theatre Company in partnership with Havering Changing and support from Queens Theatre Hornchurch and Arts Council England. 

Check out the Daedalus website and sign up for the Daedalus newsletter for more about the project Dysbiosis, the company and the latest Dysbiosis project updates or follow us on Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter) and Facebook.


Creative workshops at Poplar Union, Tower Hamlets, for a previous project: Mobile Incitement

Daedalus Theatre announce new partnership with Havering Changing

Date: 16 January 2024

Daedalus Theatre Company has been awarded Creative Community Support by Rainham Change Makers, the local Havering Changing steering group in Rainham, to deliver creative nature workshops in Rainham and Wennington this Spring 2024.

The creative nature workshops are for local adults in Rainham and Wennington with an interest in nature and a curiosity for visual arts. Together, we will work on a collective response to probing questions about nature and local green spaces that will be showcased as a mobile installation. The project will also experiment with sustainable materials and look at ecological ways of thinking. Work with the group, along with the Queens Theatre Hornchurch young company programme, will feed into our next iteration of the DYSBIOSIS project. 

The new work-in-progress project DYSBIOSIS began with an R&D at Queens Theatre Hornchurch in April 2023. Supported by Arts Council England, we delivered an R&D at Queens Theatre Hornchurch in Autumn with a group of exciting creative practitioners such as Zia Álmos Joshua and Havering local Kathryn Webb. The project seeks to explore our relationship with nature in the global north through a queer lens. 

Artist Spotlight: Zia Álmos Joshua

Our fourth artist spotlight is on Zia Álmos Joshua [X] (neutral pronouns) who has a unique position on the Dysbiosis project as the only member of the team who has joined remotely for both R&D weeks. Currently doing their PhD in Texas, Zia has been our academic consultant and human encyclopedia on the project.

Photo credit: Milo Miller (insta: @milo.z.miller)

Can you give us a quick intro to yourself, your research and your creative practice?

I am a researcher, educator, writer, performer, and activ-ish, born and raised in Brixton, London, UK, currently studying for a PhD at Rice University, in Houston, Tx, USA. My research is focused on posthumanism, and the social, political, and philosophical dimensions of taxonomy, ecology, biology, emergent technology, and consciousness, with these also shaping my creative work (autotheory; poetry; prose; performance art). I am dedicated to teaching and education, and spent the 6 years prior to my PhD at the Linnean Society of London and Wellcome Collection, working in science communication and public engagement.

What does ‘dysbiosis’ mean to you?

Dysbiosis to my mind is a complicated term; it technically means a dysregulation in the/a microbial community (the microbiota or microbiome) of the human body, one that we ordinarily live in a mutualistic-symbiotic relationship with, but for whatever reason is out of wack, and so the health of the body is compromised. How I like to think about it, is imagining the Earth and its ecosystems as kinds of bodies with well-regulated mutualistic-symbiotic relationships, and that we are presently entering a stage of existence where a lot of human-related activities and processes have pushed the boundaries of what those various bodily entanglements can tolerate, and the planet itself, or various parts of it, are entering into dysbiosis, ecosystems out of wack, spiraling out of balance.

Reflections on Dysbiosis R&D sharing by Olivia Catchpole

Theatremaker and writer Olivia Catchpole joined us for our R&D sharing at the end of the second week of R&D at Queens Theatre Hornchurch on Friday 1st December 2023. Read on to hear her thoughts on the project and her own interpretation on the meaning of Dysbiosis in relation to her own political standpoint.


Dimmed lights lend an air of expectation to the scene as we come cautiously into the room, wondering what’s in store for us. I’m wondering what “dysbiosis” means and how it might be shown. Coming in from traffic-ridden streets, I’m instantly soothed by the space that has been created, bowls of Mehndi (commonly known as henna in the West) and turmeric paste sit on the table in front of us along with offers of tea and a glimpse of treetops through the skylight. Scripts lie on the technician’s table, ready to be used.

Captures from a movement piece which depicts live video projection of organic materials and video footage by Paul Burgess onto Yael Elisheva

We’re here to see DYSBIOSIS, a piece in development by Daedalus Theatre Company in collaboration with Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch. The project brings local artists together with a group of mostly queer, East-London-based practitioners from a wide range of creative disciplines, to explore stories of queer ecology, colonialism and the Global North’s relationship to nature. As far as I can tell, such projects are thin on the ground in London and Essex, so I’m especially excited to see what they’ve come up with. Perhaps, I hope, the show will alleviate some of the tension I feel thinking of our collective disconnect, even disregard, for nature’s processes at such a vital time. A time of biodiversity crisis, striking the creatures which hold up the basis of our existence. A recent survey led by the RSPB found that flying insects have declined by 60% in the UK in the past twenty years. One fact in a seemingly endless stream of dire warnings. I wonder, with the familiar frustration, whether I need to explain the gravity of this situation. Not only bees are pollinators- every insect lost is the loss of a vital element of the system. Trees, plants, and animals too, are immeasurably more than just a pretty luxury. 

Artist Spotlight: Yael Elisheva

We met up with the Dysbiosis team again for a second week of R&D at Queens Theatre Hornchurch two weeks ago. Our third spotlight is on theatremaker, physical performer, drag artist, drama facilitator and many more things Yael Elisheva. They often work in Jewish spaces and use their artistic practice as a means of examining Jewish culture and religion.

Photo: Hannah Davies

What is your relationship with nature?

In my work, I play with found objects and explore how they can be used unconventionally and with multiple purposes. I grew up observing the sabbath, which gave me a strong connection to nature and rest and play. In today’s Western society – our relationship with rest is often viewed as lazy. I’d love to challenge that and offer rest as a means of rejuvenation for our planet.

How do queerness and nature intersect?

When I first heard of different animals and plants that are constantly changing genders like oysters and mushrooms, I felt so validated in my own gender expression. 

How does your heritage influence the way you view/value nature?

As a jew, I have rituals and prayers that revolve around nature and gratitude for nature. I have been specifically interested in how the Jewish sabbath embodies an attitude of rest which allows nature to rest as well. 

Were any aspects of the project new to you (e.g. devising collaboratively, doing an R&D, working with a designer-led company) and if so, what did you expect coming in?

Dysbiosis R&D Part 2 – A Quick Glimpse!

We have lots more to say about this, along with some exciting news about how we’re working with local residents. But, in the meantime, Nabeela Zaman came along to our end-of-R&D sharing and made this lovely reel.

If you want to know more about the first part of the R&D, back in March, you can read about it here.