Red Vein / Faengoch (2025)
Two-channel video with sound, 12’00
Red Vein transforms the slate-scarred landscapes of North Wales into a rhythmic exploration of resilience, memory, and
imagination. Rooted in Dyffryn Nantlle - a rural Welsh-speaking valley shaped by centuries of slate extraction - The work reimagines quarries not just as sites of labour and loss, but as places of potential, creativity, and collective transformation.
In the 1990s and 2000s, these post-industrial spaces became unlikely gathering grounds for free parties - “temporary
autonomous zones” where people resisted hardship through critical hedonism and connection. These moments of rebellion and joy marked a reclaiming of land once carved by exploitation, revealing how pleasure can be a form of protest
and renewal.
Weaving together archival fragments, personal memory, and Welsh-language oral histories, Red Vein layers images
and sounds of industrial labour with intimate materials: hand-drawn rave maps, photographic archives, hazy
recollections. In doing so, it explores how histories - both inherited and lived - are carried through the body, the land, and
the collective imagination. Through this layered lens, the work asks: how do we remember, resist, and remake the places we inherit?
Soundtrack: Crwban
Voices: Sandra Jones, Jo Clark, Emma Lewis
Archive material: Gwynedd Archives Service, National Library of Wales Screen and Sound Archive, Jo Clark, Fi Pheeva
Commissioned as part of NG200: Triumph of Art, a national project by Jeremy Deller.