ABOUT 2023
Od Arts Festival returned Friday 26 May to Sunday 28 May 2023, and was a packed programme of art and community activity! The festival takes its name from the Od: [Od pronounced Odd] a crooked stream that meanders through the neighbouring villages of East and West Coker, Somerset, UK. Led by Coker-based OSR Projects, Od Arts Festival 2023 – Still & still moving, takes its title from T.S Eliot’s poem East Coker, the second of his famous Four Quartets:
…Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
From sunken lanes and smugglers paths to virtual journeys through computer generated worlds, Od Arts Festival 2023 – Still and still moving explored the movement of bodies through space, both real and imagined.
The festival disrupted the surface stillness of its rural setting with art and creative community activity. It explored the different ways we navigate, move in and connect to the world around us, from ancient way-making and international trade to the almost imperceptible slow motion of plants and rocks.
We would like to thank all that helped make this arts festival happen, with thanks
JACK YOUNG
JACK YOUNG
Writer-in-residence
Writer and participatory artist Jack Young will be spending the festival developing a new piece of writing in response to the local landscape, its people, histories, and more-than-human life. The commission will also be developed through a critical and poetic response to T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets (from which the festival takes its name), exploring its history, ideas and complications. The resulting writing will be developed into a publication following the festival. Expect: folk-horror, experimental poetry, bricolage, queer ecologies, human/more-than-human metamorphoses and more!
Co-selected by Spike Island Associates.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jack Young writes experimental work with a focus on queer ecologies. He also works with young people using arts-based critical pedagogy, with a particular emphasis on multilingual filmmaking, applied theatre and creative writing.
FIND OUT MORE
