Demian Shipley-Marshall
To See Yourself, See Me
This collaborative project was created in response to seeing the regalia of a Mesolithic female who was buried in what is now Bad Dürrenberg, Germany at the British Museum’s World of Stonehenge Exhibit. The artifacts reminded me that Northern Europeans. have a past tied to their environment before we became the colonizers. I wanted to tell the story of this transition and remind people of Northern European decent of this past in hopes of adding renewed perspective to our modern society.
Modern archeology attempts to develop a more complete view of history through understanding the individuals by their artifacts. This idea inspired me to create objects of different stages in history to tell the story. I was initially inspired to create with Mesolithic techniques. I foraged my environment. This included natural materials, old creations, and manufactured materials. Eventually, this led to old and new methods and tools to create. An old leather belt was cut with a sharpened stone, jute twine bound laser etched plastic talismans, and photosensitive resin created Anglo-Saxon patterns. When I placed them on Julia Haro (Model), the pieces gained life. We did a photo shoot and I asked Julia act as though she was conducting a ritual. A story began to emerge, here I saw our spiritualistic past inside all our achievements. She never left, and through time she was offering us something, light. I asked my mother (Deb Shipley) to write a poem to capture this sentiment.
...when animals could talk
This collaborative project started as a way to get back to the heart of my motivations. I wanted to shatter modern ideologies and rebuild with the influence of the old. This influenced me to start working with shattered, mass-produced, terra-cotta gardening pots. For me this represents an older way of life corrupted with a modern industrial motivation. I wanted to shatter it but make something new in a way that acknowledges the process. This led me to Kintsugi, but mostly the philosophies behind the practice. Wabi-sabi, which calls for seeing beauty in the flawed or imperfect. The feeling of mottainai, which expresses regret when something is wasted, as well as mushin, the acceptance of change. I built several sculptures using 3D printed structures as a base to adhere the shattered pots. The process inspired a lot of creative potential, but the figure was not communicating my message.
I decided that what I needed was for these creations to speak. Eventually this lead me to developing the idea into making costumes for performers to tell the indigenous stories that I felt could reshape modern perceptions. For my own story I was drawn to the figure of Cernunnos, but while there was such a figure, it was hard to find a story of him. I was then reminded of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This is an odd story in the King Arthur anthology as it does not contain the usual Norman re-writes of the original Welsh stories. Many scholars believe that the large, green, and immortal figure that visits Arthur’s court to challenge the knights of the round table at Yule was originally Cernunnos himself. The embodiment of nature comes to the greatest hall of man to remind them that they are not the master of nature, they are merely tolerated. I worked with photographer Camille Meisner to bring the creation to life.
Monumental Bullshit
Video Proof of Concept
Digital Video
Duration: 5:35 minutes
2024
This was a collaborative project with Daniel Leyland, Suilven Hunter, Lydia Bell, Nicolà Borrer, Pon Chanarat, and myself. Each of us foraged for stones ranging in measurements of 5x5 cm to 20x20 cm length and width. We then designed false and humorous pieces of information to be laser etched on the stone and placed them back into the world. Through our project we were satirizing how people receive information/ misinformation, how they determine it to be true, and how they spread it.
We saw this as a gentle intervention, one that we hoped would provoke some amusement, but also some thoughts around our individual relationships with the information surrounding us in this contemporary landscape.
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I collected, designed and laser etched 4 stones in total and hid them in locations around the county of Essex, England for this project. I also created the final video. I continue to create more Monuments to Bullshit and hide them in undisclosed locations for future discovery.
The Way Is Back
The Way Is Back
This story is inspired by a scene from the tale ‘The Lady in the Fountain’ from the ‘Mabinogi’. In this story, the protagonist comes out of a dark system of caves to see an antlered humanoid figure surrounded by animals sitting on top of a sidhe, a burial mound. The protagonist plucks up the courage to ask him the way out. The figure obligingly points him in the right direction. I have been working with writer Deb Shipley, to create an animated experience with Unreal Engine to create a modern interpretation of this story. The audience begins their journey lost in the woods; they make their way to a clearing where they find Cernunnos on a sidhe surrounded by animals. They ask for help only for him to remind them that they have had this conversation before. This time Cernunnos is frustrated and dismissive as he reminds the audience that he helped them once only for them to forget what he taught them. As such, the only thing that can be done now is to try to go back to the old ways.