Why did the ancients make cave art?
with Sophie Craven
Tickets: https://ticketpass.org/event/EJXEVD/the-convivial-x-sophie-craven-2
Imagine it: standing in front of the cave mouth. The nothing leading into nothing. Walking in and following the passageway as it becomes smaller and smaller. Contorting your body through foot-wide gaps, heart in your mouth, blood rushing in your ears. You carry a precious and terrifyingly fragile flame through into the heart of the world.
Imagine the squeeze of cold rock against your ribs and soft belly, the constraint of your lungs even as your breath quickens, the scrape of stone against your skin... and then being spat out by the tunnel into a network of chambers deep, deep inside the earth. You pull yourself to your feet, place the wood from your pack on the ground and light it with your flame. The chamber lights up with scores of pattern leading to a flickering painting of a racing animal. You place your hand on the wall, pull charcoal from your pack, and begin to draw.
And the question that we modern humans cannot answer - WHY? Why would they do this?
Anthropologists and archaeologists have posed many possible answers to this question, but the answers are always experimental, never fixed, always shifting. For Sophie Craven, this question is a deeply imaginative one, opening out into many different modes of thinking and feeling - including theology and the study of the sacred, somatics and trauma theory, art and ritual - and forming a tapestry of exploration with multitudinous threads.
Come join Sophie at The Convivial for a session exploring some of these many threads, and imagine together into the why of cave art. We will not come to an answer (because how could we?) but instead use the inquiry to dive backwards through eons and find our way into a mercurial human body, mind, soul and imaginary.
Speaker
Sophie Craven is a writer, artist and facilitator based in Cornwall, UK. She graduated from SOAS university in 2016 with a BA in Arabic and Social Anthropology, and a specialisation in memory, imagination and heritage sites (with fieldwork taking place in the West Bank of Palestine).
She worked in learning and facilitation for seven years, including co-founding The Slow Work Garden, before completing her MA in Poetics of Imagination at Schumacher College / Dartington School of Arts in 2024. Sophie is coordinator and host of The Convivial, and her current research interests include sacred landscape, ritual, mythopoetics and psyche.
What to expect
6pm - arrive
6.30pm - talk begins
7.40pm - dinner (vegan) is served
8.10 - 9pm - Q&A/discussion
9-9.30pm - soft close, socialising
This event is BYOB - please bring along a drink to have yourself and/or to share! There is a SPAR shop just a few meters up the road. There will be a selection of soft drinks available at a low cost.
Tickets
All tickets include a hot vegan meal. Please refer to the following suggestions when booking your tickets:
No spare income - pay what you can! £0+
Low spare income - £5
Medium spare income - £10
High spare income - £15
Supporter ticket - £20+
Tickets: https://ticketpass.org/event/EJXEVD/the-convivial-x-sophie-craven-2