Lisa and Catherine met in 2014 at a festival in Berlin

After this Lisa invited Catherine to the VARIA Festival in Gothenburg Sweden.

Later on in Melbourne, Catherine presented a show responding to, among else, imagery by Lisa Larsdotter Petersson.

Following this Catherine and Lisa continued to communicate, with thoughts of meeting again.

With the arrival of Covid pandemic their connection grew and evolved into an online based shared practice of improvised movement and spoken word

alongside thoughts about human impacts on the environment.

Here the native trees Ash (Sweden-Ask) and Gum (Australia-Eucalyptus) became an “influential source” and a platform from where the work evolves.

This page is one of the seeds for the new project “ASH and GUM”, where the artists among else are planning for an exchange between their art and their countries in 2023.

Examples of writings/text from practice

(Catherine writes after Lisa moves)

A breath in a room so far away

A breath in a room makes me gasp back into the present moment

She is moving way over there

So near and yet so far

Long line curve, leaning back

Long line curve, leaning in

Blood circle carpet

There’s something primal, tribal, ritual and always there are creatures

Who’s voice is she hearing, there in her red frost room scape

She flaps and flings the space about, her invisible bedspread of distrust and rejection

Stepping, prancing around the fire she’s telling stories

Old and true from far away, her dancing comes to me.

(Catherine writes after Catherine moves)

It’s raining hard outside - the night sky pouring

Heavy, full, hard - a downpour

She’s listening for the easing, the receding

The lessening. …then the quiet

Small trickle drips and a delicate ping in the chimney flu

She remembers the sodden earth of the swamp and heavy feet in the splat of mud.

She remembers tendrils climbing up the dead trunk

Emerging through the dark earth

Twisting, entwining

She wraps herself around herself

Ears and skin listening to the rain fall

Her whole body listens out

To beyond the walls

(Lisa writes after Catherine moves)

slow tree trunks leaning at one another / heaviness and light meets on the middle

gravity do not bother them / they have large freedom in their roots

when evening arrives they all sing songs / that cud be mistaken for lullaby’s

the walls are made of paper / i am paper / i will lift my wings and soar over you

until you are silenced / and still / still i am

(Lisa writes after Lisa moves)

stones and rocks still came and went like sharp objects from a book without poems

a government without any reason for trust / to trust / the following clown berrie

naked skin where wind sweeps away / and make way / for monsters

stainless the afterworld yawns / allowing the fall to be a fall / and falling still