Guddling About is a practice-research project that uses performance to explore human-water interrelations, specifically around rivers and water infrastructure, in diverse cultural and material contexts. It takes the form of an iterative suite of performances, each also described as a score or set of instructions. In Guddling About performance is understood as a more-than-human practice: something that humans and other-than-humans do, and do together in ways that are complex, entangled and in flux.
Guddling About is devised and realised by (human) artist-researchers Minty Donald and Nick Millar, with water, rivers and many more other-than-human collaborators.
Guddling About asks:
- What might performing with rivers and water infrastructure reveal about the potential of more-than-human performance as an ecological practice?
- How do the performance tactics employed engage with the paradoxes of more-than-human performance: the inescapability of human subjectivity and corporeality, persistent recourse to human communication systems and values?
- How might performing with rivers and water infrastructure enable attentiveness to, and enhance understanding of, both the commonality of human-water interrelations and the singular characteristics of human-water inter-dependency in diverse contexts?
- How might this enhanced understanding of human-water interrelations at local level address humans’ implication in water-related environmental issues, such as flooding, drought, and pollution?
Guddle. Scots. Verb.
1/ To act in an undirected or improvised way. To mess about.
2/ To catch fish by hand, groping under rocks or riverbanks where they lurk.
Guddle. Scots. Noun.
A muddle, tangle or confusion.
Guddling About 