Drop in the Ocean.
“I couldn’t get you to the ocean,” she said. “But there was nothing stopping me bringing the ocean to you” – The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
Drop in the Ocean (2013-19) was a long-distance walking performance in widening concentric circles around a focal point typically performed over 4-6 days: the ripples around a drop ((((((.)))))). Carrying water with an antique yoke and buckets, I invited the strangers I met to make a wish by taking a stone from the water in one bucket and placing it in the other. Before making their wish, as they held the stone in their wet hand, I asked them six questions about water for their silent contemplation: from memories and experiences, to senses and sounds. At the centre of the walks was typically an interactive installation of playful provocations, including giant circular mazes made from local river/sea shingle around which visitors were invited to walk while listening to soundscapes of water.
"Your work is such a great ambassador for value of environmentalism in performance, and for the opportunity that arises when people find themselves interacting with the unexpected and beautiful” - Kate Gathercole
“You have a gift: you are able to engage a complete cross section of the general public with an integrity that is neither threatening nor contrived” - Jane Lloyd Francis
”This was magical work” - Robert Pacitti
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SPILL Festival of Performance, Ipswich 2018
AFON Festival for Maynard, Abercych 2019
Gas Gallery, Aberystwyth 2015
h.Energy week, Herefordshire 2013
With installations at:
All Saints, Hereford 2013
Gas Gallery, Aberystwyth 2015 -
This work was originally devised as part of a PhD funded by a President’s Doctoral Scholarship from the University of Manchester, with additional support from Herefordshire New Leaf. Later iterations supported by Gas Gallery, SPILL OPEN and AFON Festival.
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Playing for Time: Making Art as if the World Mattered(2015) ed. Lucy Neal, Oberon Books, London.
Allen, J. (2021) ‘Drop in the Ocean: on Walking with Water as Affective Activism’, in Affective Movements, Methods and Pedagogies, ed. Harris & Holman Jones pp. 25-40.
Allen, J. (2019) ‘Tracktivism: eco-activist walking art as expanded choreography in rural landscape’, Choreographic Practices, 10 (2), pp. 175-195.
Allen, J. (2018) ‘Tracktivism: walking art as eco-activist performance in rural landscape’, Interartive: Walking Art / Walking Aesthetics
Allen, J. (2018) ‘Tracktivism: on Walking a Neologism into the Field (of Activist Performance) Living Maps Review -
Video by:
SPILL TV
Pete Telfer/Culture Colony
Mark Jickells
Photos by:
Guido Mencari for SPILL Festival
Sara Penrhyn Jones -
This work would not have been possible without the input and collaboration of:
Mads Floor Andersen
Sara Penrhyn Jones
Bronwyn Preece
Jane Lloyd Francis
Annie Morgan Suganami
Paul Richardson
Richard Gott
Janey and Alastair Thompson
Tamsin Davies
Simon Whitehead, Stirling Steward and Maynard Abercych
Ray Jacobs
Robert Pacitti, Bron Belcher and SPILL Festival team
Anna and La Tour Cycle Cafe, Ipswich
Ali Lochead and Gas Gallery, Aberystwyth
Cwmni Theatr Arad Goch
Amgueddfa Ceredigion
All Saints Church and Cafe, Hereford
Herefordshire New Leaf
The title of the work is a reference to its choreographic aesthetic – the circular walks as ripples that form around a drop – but also to its ecological ethic. The circular shape of the walks are crudely emblematic of the repercussive ripples on planetary ecology that emanate from the thrown stone of our everyday actions in our local environment. Somewhere in that rippling is lost the connection between our abstract understanding of ecological problems, and our embodied responses to them. How might we begin to reconcile them through a sensory (re)engagement with water?
“Beautiful, clever and inspired” – Jules (audience-participant)
”I was enchanted. What you were offering felt very real, a precious gift. I was surprised by the strength of this transaction. It felt strangely profound” – Carol (audience-participant)
”A very beautiful moment on the street outside my house, I think I will never forget it.”– Daisy (audience-participant)
”There is an element of fairy tale about the experience the I find difficult to put into words and it is probably better not to try…” – Jane (audience-participant)
