On Becoming Water Bat: Echoes of an unseen world by Phoebe McBride

Through an imagined transformation into a Daubenton’s bat, ‘On becoming a water bat: echoes of an unseen world’ journeys through rituals of loss and healing to explore how we can find ways to be with grief and crisis. The bat is one of many species that, due to the climate crisis, has been forced into evolution at an unnatural pace. The film looks at this shift as a metaphor for premature evolutions through loss- be that personal, or collective – from the pandemic and climate crisis. Set to the backdrop of Aberdeen’s River Dee and visited throughout by the sound of echolocation calls, the work holds an invitation to converse in unknown languages and to bathe in murky waters. 

Following a screening of the film, there will be a talk and Q&A with the artist, Clyde Muirshiel Regional Park Rangers and the Clyde Bat Group. 

Participants are then invited to partake in a writing and printing workshop with the artist which will begin with taking notes on a short walk around the visitor centre followed by a period of refining and binding the notes into an alternative ‘fieldnote’ journal. There will be an opportunity for attendees to print their own journal cover using the process process of Cyanotype.

Whilst fieldnotes usually contain a detailed amount of information, we will play with these structures, challenging what we can document within a short space of time. What do we prioritise? Is it what we see? Or is it what we hear, feel, smell or even remember? What is present and what may be missing? 

The Clyde Bat group was formed in 1977. Their aims are to protect, conserve and increase the public awareness of bats. They take part in various national bat surveys and do bat walks/talks to promote our flying friends.