Blanc Sceol

We are Blanc Sceol (Stephen Shiell and Hannah White) an artist duo who work in the expanded fields of sound, listening and performance. We instigate participatory gatherings to foster a reciprocal relationship with ecological communities. Our compositions, interventions and performances express our experience of place, anchored in what we find in a landscape and re-imagined into new terrains. We create encounters to connect both materially and energetically to our surroundings.

Some of this work happens site specifically with the Channelsea river in Newham, where we co- founded Surge Cooperative in 2018, to build affordable moorings and advocate for river rights. Our regular practices with river are invitations to ourselves and others to gather, listen, observe and learn through a variety of containers, from workshops to walks, to listening circles, live transmissions and collaborations.

We're part of a growing network of international artist activists embedded in watery places, recently coming together through Margarida Mendes’ ‘Catharsis’ exhibition for Porto Design Biennale, and ‘RadioActive: on water’ podcast series, curated by Meira Asher and Stephen Shiell. We recently studied with the New School of the Anthropocene, a radical non- hierarchical gathering of teachers and learners with an interdisciplinary ethos.