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O m e n s
(2018)
video//sound installation
Edinburgh College of Art
Duration:16:44
performers
Florentina Abendstein
Anna Elisabet Thomsen
Alison Wibmer
musicians
Isla Ratcliff
Lissa Robertson
Freya Ruuskanen
Mia Scott
Rob Taylor
O M E N S is a project on traditional magical charms and verses that relate to agriculture and nature. The charms reflect how humans have sought to augur, influence and interpret nature through omens.
Central to the charms is the occurrence of specific plants, birds and trees, all charged with meaning and magic. The charms reveal a time and place where the dependency of the natural world was total and the uncertainty of everyday life and its fickle changes brought forward magical and ritual practices to negotiate our relationship to it. Simultaneously it draws from Norse mythology and the so-called norns ,female goddesses who spun the threads of life and ruled over human’s destiny and course of nature.
This piece draws from concepts of disenchantment of nature and deals with the loss of emotional and spiritual connection to our natural surroundings.
O M E N S attempts to spin a mythology of modern-day ritual, tracing back to the meticulous recording and reading of nature’s signs and changes.
This project is based on archival research on Scottish and Swedish historical seasonal rites with the help of Scottish Studies Library in Edinburgh, The Department of Dialectology, Onomastics and Folklore Research, Gothenburg, Sweden and The Folklife Archives, Lund, Sweden
I heard the cuckoo with no food in my stomach
I heard the stock-dove on the top of the tree,
I heard the sweet singer in the copse beyond,
And I heard the screech of the owl of the night.
I saw the lamb with his back to me,
I saw the snail on the bare flagstone,
I saw the foal with his rump to me,
I saw the wheatear on the dykes of the holes,
I saw the snipe while sitting bent,
And I foresaw that the year would not
Go well with me.