Event: Wild Ones at the Wellcome Collection

The Crick Crack Club storytelling group is hosting a night of Wild Humanity at the Wellcome Collection in central London.

Do you know where your wild side hides? And how do you respond when wildness makes its presence felt? On 3 February 2017 storytelling promoter The Crick Crack Club beckons you into a world of clanking bells, flying fur, fairy tales and folklore, for a wild late night spectacular at Wellcome Collection.

The Crick Crack Club will bring together story, song, music, film, art, foraged food and an all-female urban tribe to explore both the archaic and contemporary figure of the Wild Man. This mythical and often menacing carnival creature can still be found all over Europe and is the untidy grandfather of Santa Claus. We all seek a place to be wild, and for one night only, artists, speakers and roving wild men will help you venture further into this exciting, intoxicating and alarming world.

The soundtrack to the evening will come from the inaugural concert of ‘Wild Company,’ a group that brings professional storytellers together with an untamed community choir to remix fragments of folk legend and contemporary pop songs. In the presence of five newly constructed Wild Men, both performers and the audience will be challenged to question the presence of a wildness within themselves.

Although the Wild Man is a masculine archetype, visitors will also encounter a modern day all-female urban tribe of wild women, Haus of Sequana. Dressed in spectacular costumes, the tribe seek to escape from typical gender identities and visitors will find themselves ‘interrupted’ by the tribe or involved in their rituals. Wild Folk are often covered in hair or dressed in bizarre and colourful rags, disguises which allow them to cross the borders between human and animal, civilised and uncivilised.

From tales of the goat-riding princess, Tatterhood, to Bearskin and Iron John, performance storytellers will transport visitors on a journey of folklore, metaphor and imagination. Expert talks will probe the existence of wildness within our modern society, with discussions on feral children, a personal story of yetis and an introduction to the neuroscience of fear and the fascination with monsters. Visitors can also roam the galleries and quiz experts on bearded women and the anthropology of homelessness – a lifestyle that, like wild men, challenges cultural norms.

If all the wild food, songs and talks aren’t enough to lure you to your wild side, artist Sophie Herxheimer will illustrate visitors’ most wild experiences. Cult drawing salon, Art Macabre will host a ‘death drawing’ session - a twist on the usual form of life drawing - that celebrates the gothic and dark side of life using a gloriously hairy Mary Magdalene model as inspiration.

Crick Crack Club’s Artistic Director, Ben Haggarty said: “Through this late night event at Wellcome Collection, the Crick Crack Club is embarking on a celebration of the re-emergence of the Wild Man as a truly dynamic icon. We want to provoke our audience to explore both the attraction and repulsion that human wildness evokes, and to question our relationship with the presence of this within ourselves.”

This is a special late-night event with a bar running all night. The majority of activities are drop-in but some talks and activities require booking. Online booking opens on Friday 27 January at 11am.

The building might be busy and space is limited, so entry is not guaranteed. Wellcome Collection’s major winter exhibition, Making Nature: How we see animals, will be open throughout the night.

Details:
Date: Friday 3 February 2017
Time: 7pm until late
Entry: Free, but some events must be booked in advance (booking opens 27th Jan)
Info: https://wellcomecollection.org/events/friday-late-spectacular-wild-ones
Wild Man Introductions: #WildRollCall

Image credit: Mamuthones from the WILDER MANN series, 2010, Charles Fréger