Home Economies, 2012

newspaper, in collaboration with P. Staff

Home Economies was made to accompany the video Life in the Woods (2011). In the spring of 2011, P. Staff and I invited a group of fifteen participants to live together for a week in John’s Lee Wood, Leicestershire. Borrowing a format from early twentieth-century radical outdoor educational programmes, including the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, the participants engaged in a process of mutual education, based around the activity of making a film together. The group included a historian, a bird watcher, an environmental activist, a self-identified witch, folk dancers, and several former commune members. The newspaper-style publication reflects on ‘back to nature’ movements, identity, group dynamics and the collaborative film-making process itself. It also includes recipes and instructions on how to do it yourself.

Published on the occasion of ‘Plus ou moins sorcières 2/3: Épreuves ritualisées’, Maison Populaire, Montreuil.