The Travelogues are fictitous narratives being written as sixty stories for the Lost Volumes. This Travelogue to the Copper Mountains is a retracing of the Simon van der Stel expedition of 1685 narrated from different perspectives. It is a work of return and repair.
This, the second Travelogue of the Wandering Womb, Her Fantastic Encounters and Strange Utterances: To the Copper Mountains, is an ongoing work that will eventually have a series of manifestations in Namaqualand, South Africa. Since travel has been impossible in 2020 and 2021 the work is developing vicariously both in exhibition form and as narrative in the Lost Volumes. In 2020-21 it was a part of the exhibition No One Would Have Believed, Netwerk Aalst. Mariske Broeckmeyer and I created a second audio work, again a quadrophonic piece, this time using both of our voices and introducing the voice of Michele Burgers. The circular bed was again at the centre of the installation.

To the Copper Mountains is the first leg of a return to Angola. On Signal Hill above Cape Town the Wandering Womb invokes Maaij Claesje as the spirit-being !midwif and, following the high ground, they set off for the Kamiesberg, Namaqualand. On the ground Orlando, as illustrator, apothecary, botanist, journal keeper and preternaturalist, is part of the 1685 expedition of the governor Simon van der Stel to the Copper Mountains. Muriel, as Emissary to the Past and the writing hand, is (re)working the archives. Together with Ear – who listens for the Unsaid – Wandering Womb, Orlando, Muriel and !midwif make up the Company, a constellation of organs and entities.
Procession of Contraceptive Plants and Forgotten Midwives / video
The Procession is a part of Nothing of Importance Occurred, a project of recuperation of…
Artistic Research Project at Middelheim Museum / Discussion between Wendy Morris and curator Pieter Boons
In residence at Middelheim Museum, Wendy Morris is exploring how knowledge of plant-based contraception has…
Journeywomen / Procession
Photo’s by Aldo Smith, student at LUCA School of Arts Brussels, of the Journeywomen passing…
Installation / Radio Hush Hush / Middelheim Museum
Summer installation Middelheim Museum Radio Hush Hush was accompanied to het huis pavilion at Middelheim…
Procession / Return Retrace Replant / Middelheim Museum
Performative Procession of Contraceptive Plants, Forgotten Midwives and Herb Women / Middelheim Museum On Saturday…
Belly Full of Blind Highways
A Letter by Wendy Morris / commissioned by KAAP and artist collective Dear, The third…