Becoming Creaturely Collective
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​​What is becoming creaturely?
Becoming Creaturely is an experimental, emerging artivist collective at the intersections of health, justice, and the grotesque. The practice approaches somatic resistance as inquiry, and the body as a political archive, situated within particular material environments. The collective engages social and ecological injustices to raise awareness of invisible violence, through the visual language of becoming creaturely, and micropolitical performances.
Where did becoming creaturely come from?
I first launched becoming creaturely as a concept with @qwcafe in September 2024, framed as an invitation to decenter the human by undermining hierarchies of being through eco-somatic movement and multispecies storytelling, in relationship with the ancient woodland of Queens Wood. I then invited Irene Fiordilino, and her creative practice at the time, experimenting with the architecture of her pregnant body - engaging the themes of metamorphosis, growth, death and decay - for a collaboration, and together we co-facilitated a workshop as a practice of collective care during uncertain times, in response to shifting political landscapes @chisenhaledance in February 2025.
Becoming Creaturely, as praxis, is the creative methodology I developed through my doctoral research in Visual Cultures, incorporating mad activist, ecofeminist, posthumanist, new materialist, and post-structural texts; and autoethnographic-embodied methods or embodied storytelling of ecological entanglements within the cauldron of polycrisis.
Where is becoming creaturely headed?
From September 2024 until September 2025 I researched and developed BC with the advice and mentorship of Director of Applied Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths College, Dr Molly McPhee, as well as artist and producer Cat Harrison, for a socially engaged performance-making project on invisible violence.
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I am deeply grateful for all the support, guidance and allyship received in this delicate seed-planting phase of the project.
We are now looking for partners, collaborators and investors to get involved with the project in its next stage of development. If this sounds like you do get in touch via our contact form or by sending an e-mail to fabienne.formosa@gmail.com
​ The storyline:
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February 2024: Completion of PaR PhD project.
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April 2024: Thesis burning fire ceremony - a micropolitical performance ritual.
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September 2024 - September 2025: Mentorship with Dr Molly McPhee.​
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October 2024: Launched Becoming Creaturely as a concept and practice with Woodland Retreat, Queens Wood Cafe.
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February 2025: Co-delivered a Becoming Creaturely workshop with a focus on collective care in uncertain times with Scirocco Dance Theatre, hosted by Chisenhale Dance Space.
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April 2025: Performed as part of Cath Clover's event at Wild Pansy Press.
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June 2025: Presented with the ERWG at International Federation of Theatre Research in Cologne, Germany.
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August 2025: Becoming Creaturely Collective Micropolitical Performance: Act I with Fabienne Formosa, Liz Tan and Michael Forton (in production)
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Take a look at expanded descriptions of these events and workshops below!
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A central question in my PaR asks: Can embodied research practices perform entangled storytelling to resist or undermine hierarchies of being? For my PhD, I invited a group of artists to engage with a themed solo movement journey and a group reflective practice to research the intersection between the personal and the political when considering the material, social and ecological entanglements in the lived experience of polycrisis. I am now developing this methodology building on histories of collective action in critical mental health to raise awareness of invisible violence through the carnivalesque theme of ‘becoming creaturely’. Hence engaging the shape-shifting and subversive qualities of metamorphosis through micropolitical solo and collective embodied actions that respond to structural injustices in particular material and situated environments.
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You can read more about the project here
Still from Thesis burning fire ceremony video​
Photo credit: Bells Davidson
‘Why did you burn your thesis?’
Shortly after I submitted my thesis in February 2024, the Senior Leadership Team at Goldsmiths College announced a major new restructuring programme and plans for mass redundancy. In a Guardian article published in March, Sally Weale called the job cut plans ‘cultural and social vandalism’. This is not only happening at Goldsmiths but also at 36 other Higher Education institutions in the UK. It is a deliberate attack on certain disciplines and fields of study, leading to the axing of modules and closure of entire programmes.”
I performed this thesis burning fire ceremony engaging my lived experience as a casualised member of academic staff, and the political climate at Goldsmiths, through the embodied action of burning the paper - the flesh of my thesis - in protest and prayer. Through this micropolitical performative act, I sought to raise awareness about the structural assault on the arts and humanities in the Higher Education Sector in the UK in 2024.
I first experienced the ancient tradition of fire as ritual and ceremony through Inti & Waira events, who work with the Wixárika lineage and the indigenous people of Mexico, in 2014. Over time, I learnt to call on the fire serpent to alchemise, sublimate and transmute. I now share this pagan ritual with the burn community in the UK, where each year, we burn effigies in ceremonious, but also hedonistic, celebration.
A special thanks to dear friends and allies for bearing witness and for their active participation. To activist Bells Davidson for the photos, dance artist and researcher Irene Fiordilino for her active presence, visual anthropologist Eleonora Cristin for producing the video, activist and educator Robert Behan for the kindling and fire stoking.
An anti-racist movement workshop I ran in partnership with Queens Wood Cafe and Woodland Retreat in Queens Wood, Haringey as a local micropolitical and embodied action in solidarity with refugees and folkx from migrant backgrounds - in response to the national far-right riots in the UK, August 2024.
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The eco-somatic movement workshop involved a physical exploration of the body as a decolonial tool, a concept I developed from Ben Spatz’s text ‘Blue Sky Body’, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s text ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’, and movement praxis research on ‘becoming indigenous to a land’.
I offered prompts, invitations and provocations I developed from my own practice encountering the wood as a movement partner, which participants used as entry points to play with, mould, resist or reject to follow their own sensations, impulses and desires as they unfolded. The event was open to all; no prior experience in somatic movement was required to participate. Following the movement exploration, we then shared lunch at Queen’s Wood Cafe.
This movement philosophy emerged from my doctoral practice research on the body as a decolonial tool focusing on 'becoming' and 'fostering relationality with the more-than-human' as a way of cultivating indigeneity. The movement experience offers embodied practice that seeks to undermine dominant discourses in global mental health, an understanding of indigeneity that focuses on nomadic theory, and the ‘here and now’. Through this movement philosophy, I seek to centre the experience of survivors, refugees and migrants who fled violence in their migration journeys, advocating for the right to forget and starting anew, as well as honouring lineage in decolonial discourses on embodiment.
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You can read more about the event here
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Another eco-somatic practice sharing I ran in partnership with Woodland Retreat London and Queens Wood Cafe in Queens Wood, Haringey.
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I facilitated an embodied experience exploring being in relationship with the ancient woodland and becoming creaturely through slow-somatic movement and performative play. I offered prompts, invitations and provocations developed from my practice encountering companion species as movement teachers, as entry points for participants to play with, mould, resist or reject to follow their own sensations, impulses and desires as they unfolded. No prior experience in somatic movement was required for participation.
This movement philosophy emerged from my doctoral practice research on becoming more-than-human in response to the question: Can embodied research practices perform entangled storytelling to resist or undermine hierarchies of being? Companion species, a term I adopt from Donna Haraway’s text ‘The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness’, played a key role in the collective and entangled storytelling practice research on living in uncertain times.
“From the snake that taught us how to honour life transitions through shedding its skin, to the bear that encouraged us to reflect on hibernation and the importance of rest, and the koala bear that gracefully stumbles as it loses its balance. This embodied movement practice offers entry points into thinking with the body, as Haraway proposes, as a fierce response to the violence of Capitalist ideologies and Anthropocentric thinking so we can consider possibilities of recuperation both on a personal bodymind level and multispecies environmental justice.”
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You can read more about the event here
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Becoming Creaturely:
Artivist tools for collective care during uncertain times
A Creative Movement Workshop hosted by Chisenhale Dance Space
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A collaborative workshop I co-facilitated with Irene Fiordilino and Scirocco Dance Theatre. The event invited anyone with a shared interest in movement, the felt-sense, ecologies, health and social justice. The workshop was created in response to shifting political landscapes and global events in late 2024. We sought to host a space where we could come together as both a form of collective care and an act of resistance, exploring artivist and creative tools to navigate troubling times, and the various states of embodiment and disembodiment they may come with. Building on the previous becoming creaturely workshop with Woodland Retreat, this workshop blended principles from eco-somatics, movement and clowning, invoking various creatures through imaginative play and involved extended thematic explorations focusing on shapeshifting, malleability and growth as playful processes of metamorphosis forging intimacies with self, others and more-than-human environments.
You can read more about the event here​​​
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The Acoustic Commons of the East Atlantic Flyway: Migratory songbirds arrive in Cloudesley Square - Performance Event
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​​A participatory performance as part of Cath Clover's residency at Wild Pansy Press, where I guided the audience on a journey and an encounter with an Italian folktale called “pizzica pizzica” or “bitten bitten”, and the myth of the spider women. The embodied journey wove in a multispecies entanglement into the event’s theme of songbirds through the guided imagery of a spider weaving a web, prompting subtle somatic movement. The experience was followed by the spoken word piece Severed Roots evoking a polyvocal storytelling of migration.
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You can read more about the event here
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Becoming Creaturely: Emergent Artivist Practices within the Cauldron of Polycrisis.
For IFTR 2025 conference: ‘Performing Carnival’ I presented a participatory performance lecture focusing on my current investigations of this work in applied theatre and performance through movement scores engaging the theme ‘becoming creaturely’. Thus, responding to the conference’s theme and its rich interweaving of carnival and its ekstasis, subversions and metamorphosis through embodiment and embodied practice.
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You can read more about the event here
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Becoming Creaturely: Act I, Untitled. A still from a micropolitical performance in production.
This piece engages embodied storytelling of oppressive norms, the invisible violence of cisheteropatriarchy, and the ways in which gendered hierarchies of being fetishise non-normative, queer femmes. The material and situated storytelling draws from lived experiences in shared housing environments in London. This site-responsive performance speaks to the hidden history of Queens Wood as once a marginal site due to the folkx (and the creatures) known to inhabit it.
In this piece, we seek to create a liminal environment with the embodied actions and slow somatic movement of walking and crawling - to trouble power relations between human-environment, human-human, and human-animal. Using the plural body as medium, we toy with dominant ways of being in everyday spaces and invite you - our audience - to re-imagine with us other ways of becoming through the creaturely form of the hybrid ram.
Performed & co-devised by Fabienne Formosa and Lizzy Tan
Filmed by Michael Forton
Co-produced with becoming creaturely collective
Creative direction by Fabienne Formosa
Do you have lived experience of invisible violence that you would like to alchemise through the process of embodied storytelling? And to make visible through the visual language of becoming creaturely?
We are particularly interested in co-producing work with global majority heritage, queer and neurodivergent artists. If this sounds like you - get in touch via our contact form or by sending an e-mail to fabienne.formosa@gmail.com
We’d love to hear from you!
In feminisms,
fab x