The Mount
In The Open — Equine Crafts & Highland Landscapes
The Mount is a developing artistic research and residency project exploring historic relationships between humans, horses and upland landscapes through movement, embodied practice and Eco-Somatic Felt Thinking.
In the Open – Outdoor Arts Initiative by Dunami – Movement Arts Wellbeing CIC
About the Project
The Mount
Equine Crafts & Highland Landscapes
The Mount is a developing artistic research and residency project exploring historic relationships between humans, horses and upland landscapes through movement, embodied practice and Eco-Somatic Felt Thinking.
How can historic relationships between humans, horses and upland landscapes contribute to artistic knowing and ecological thinking?
The project investigates the cultural and embodied knowledge held within traditions of horsemanship and their relationship to Highland landscapes. It brings artists, movement practitioners and equine practitioners into an extended process of observation, movement, encounter and exchange, exploring what contemporary artistic practice might learn from these longstanding relationships.
Particular attention is given to the physical intelligence of the horse and the ways in which human–equine relationships have historically depended upon attention, balance, responsiveness, trust, rhythm, touch and embodied communication.
The proposed residency will connect upland landscapes with equine heritage through movement-based explorations, walking practices, encounters with horses, studio-based Eco-Somatic Felt Thinking and interdisciplinary artistic exchange.
The research is intended to develop into a documentary/artist film and written publication, alongside new artistic material emerging from the residency.
Rather than treating the landscape as a backdrop, The Mount approaches it as an active participant in the process: a place shaped by generations of human–animal relationships and a living environment through which questions of belonging, stewardship, labour, heritage and ecological connection can be explored.
Status: Developing project / awaiting funding
Format: Artistic residency · embodied enquiry · film · publication
Location: North-East Scotland / upland landscapes
Focus: Human–equine relationships · horsemanship · Highland landscapes · embodied knowing · ecological thinking · Eco-Somatic Felt Thinking
