REIMAGINING THE GREAT TIDE

Breakwater & Friends of Lesnes Abbey & Woods

  1. 2023
  1. Beneath the Pavement, The Marshes

Artist collective Breakwater (Youngsook Choi & Taey Iohe) led a guided walk and creative writing workshop through Lesnes Abbey Woods, where they worked alongside participants to speculate on human life in the aftermath of a Great Flood in the year 2053.

The walk began with historic readings from eyewitness accounts of the last Great Flood that took place in 1953 when a huge tidal storm swept up the Thames Estuary causing immense damage and loss of life from Canvey Island to Abbey Wood.

Participants then explored the ancient woodland using historic watermarks found on trees as their guides, and searched for the environmental signs of a future flood, before taking part in a creative writing activity where they collectively imagined, wrote and shared their own fictional accounts of being the last survivors from an underwater future.

Breakwater is a London-based Korean diaspora artists duo of Youngsook Choi and Taey Iohe. With a mutual interest in counter-narratives of ancestral/indigenous knowledge and queer methodologies, Breakwater's practice centres around the socio-politics of neo/colonialism, climate justice, and migrants' lived experiences.

Friends of Lesnes Abbey and Woods is the official friends group for Lesnes Abbey Woods in Bexley, and since forming in 2021 it has established walking tours of the site, supported events, held talks, organised litter picking and performed conservation and woodland crafting through its Forest Club.

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