TWO local-born artists, Helena Hunter and Mark Wright, both former Stokesley School students, have formed a company called Matterlurgy, which raises awareness of environmental issues through film, sound and poetic text.

Used to presenting live events throughout the world, their work is now presented online during the pandemic.

When researching their project, Sensitives Stream, Matterlurgy worked with environmental scientists Professors Philip Warren and Lorraine Maltby, from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield to understand how river ecosystems are studied. Topics relating to art and science methods, the production and analysis of data, as well as industrial pasts and chemical futures, interlink throughout the site.

It is a profoundly beautiful and magical piece combining film, poetry and sound, taking you inside the river and its flow.

The website offers three distinct journeys. You are invited to (1) dive into the river with two organisms, Caddisfly Larva and Sludge Worm; (2) flow with a collection of text scores; and (3) dwell by listening to audio chapters about the process of cross-disciplinary fieldwork. The project reveals river organisms as both sensitive indicators of change and world-making actors that perform sentience and knowledge in ways that exceed the human.

The project highlights the importance of river dwelling organisms and how their presence or absence indicates broader stories in relation to ecosystems, environmental stress and human activity. Located along the waterways of the River Calder and Aire in Castleford, West Yorkshire, the website unfolds materials from the residency as an online encounter, combining elements of site-based and remote fieldwork, watery media and critical poetics.

To view the website go to: https://sensitives.stream/