[Each participant is given a miniature cut-out map of an island. Everyone stands in the wind, on the western shore of Ynys Tysilio, spaced out from each other and facing west.]
We know in these isolated times, that we are not islands. Sant Tysilio came to this island to be alone, and now he’s crowded out by the dead.
But if you were an island, what kind of island would you be? Would you be a barren, windswept rock or a socialist republic with fine rum and an excellent healthcare system? Utopia is an island but it doesn’t exist. Islands are named and colonised but they have many languages of their own, whether human ones or those of birds or whales. Like your body, they are inhabited by millions of different species.
Islands are on the move: 580 million years ago, Ynys Môn was in the Southern Hemisphere. Think of all the islands on the planet. Think of the planet as an island, spinning round other planets, constellations as archipelagos.
Where does your island want to travel to?
[Participants come in turn with eyes shut to pin their island on a world map.]
Presented as part of ‘Island Psychogeography’ at the Surrealist Saffaru, 23rd August 2020, followed by a poetry reading by Fiona Cameron, Lee Duggan and Zoë Skoulding, from the Strait to the shore.
