There’s something inherently poetic about dodging north winds and howling rains while chasing the remnants of ancient forests. It’s the kind of madness that only someone like Mechanimal’s Tom Bailey could embrace with a grin and a backpack heavier than his existential dread.
I caught up with Tom via a crackling phone line as he huddled from the weather on the Orkney Islands, preparing to catch a sailboat across the North Sea. “Orkney,” he begins, “would be all the more beautiful if not for north winds and howling rains! I have managed to see a few of the amazing Neolithic sites, though, and they are fantastic.”
Bailey, the creative force behind the award-winning theatre company Mechanimal, is not your average performance artist. His latest venture, “Crap at Animals,” is a solo show that ambitiously attempts to impersonate 48,000 rare animals in under an hour. It’s a blend of humour, physical theatre, and mock virtual reality that explores our fragile relationship with endangered species.
But here’s the kicker: Tom isn’t just performing about the environment; he’s living it. This summer, he’s traversing over 800 kilometres on foot and by ferry, journeying from the Orkney Islands to the Shetlands, and then across the North Sea to Scandinavia. All while documenting the journey through photography and writing. This pilgrimage underscores his belief in a “clown-esque nomadic art” that is as serious as it is playful.
“I’ve been on the road about three weeks now,” he tells me. “I set out just after May, and we’ll wrap this part up on July 20th. I’ve no regrets so far! Obviously, weather plays a big part in how you encounter places—and the weather when I was in the Western Isles and Hebrides was sublime! However, since I carried on north, the weather has worsened! The strong winds do put a dampener on the experience. But I’m still enjoying it!”
The journey isn’t just a means of transportation; it’s a performance in itself. “I’m doing plenty of photography and other documenting of my journey, which I hope will feed into performances at the end of the road, or in the future. Really, I’m playing with the idea of the journey as part of the work itself.”
“Crap at Animals” premiered at the Norwich and Norfolk Festival’s Welcome Weekend in May, and now he’s taking it to Denmark. “I’m taking important parts of the show—specifically the list of extinct species on my back—but I’m not performing the entire show on the road!”
This new show is an outdoor expansion of Mechanimal’s highly successful “Vigil.” “We’re playing with even more species,” Tom explains. “We wanted to respond to new research and themes that have become more present for us over the years. In particular, the interface between nature, art, and technology.”
Tom’s passion for nature isn’t a newfound affair. “My work all comes from a heart kind of place. Nature—for me—has always been a passion. I started reading about man-made climate change at uni. It was such a terrifying thought for me, and that was almost 20 years ago. I thought, ‘This is dreadful—there’s no way I can go into the ‘normal’ theatre, knowing all this.'”
Some shots from Tom’s time on the less-trodden road – Click to embiggen with credits.
He tried his hand at climate concerns and activism for a few years before realizing that perhaps the best way to respond was through what inspired him creatively. “Knowing a little inspired me to read and understand what’s at stake. What is biodiversity? Why is it important? The more I read, the more I felt that evolution itself was an incredibly creative phenomenon.”
“I wanted to approach this work through passion and interest rather than fear and knee-jerk responses. We have to find a new dialogue with nature in this Anthropocene era. It’s my main passion, and it turns out I can find endlessly interesting things to make about it.”
Leading Mechanimal allows Tom to collaborate with others under a unified identity. “Leading Mechanimal offers a stronger identity. Audiences can form a stronger relationship with the company.”
As for the journey itself, there have been plenty of highlights. “Certain landscapes are breathtaking and inspiring, particularly the beaches and mountains of the Outer Hebrides. It opens up a creative space in which I can breathe.”
But it’s not all creative musings and epiphanies. “When I’m on the road, much of my time is taken up with the physical effort of walking and carrying a heavy pack. I’m not being creative every second; I’m simply being. Nothing beats such strong contact with reality.”
“Vigil” did extremely well in 2019, but many dates were lost to COVID. In light of the list of extinct species getting longer and longer, Tom felt they should either update it or make a sequel. “The result, ‘Crap at Animals,’ is quite different, and it allows us to explore different territory. In essence, it’s two different shows touring concurrently—one outdoors, one in. It’s nice, though sad, that the work has only become more relevant with time.”
He believes in shows having a long shelf life if they’re good work and remain relevant. “I think, maybe, with devised theatre, the time and effort put in to make it can be quite extensive. There’s often a significant disparity—you spend weeks, sometimes years to make something, and it vanishes. I’m all for it living as long as possible.”
Next on his journey is the voyage across the North Sea. “I’m looking forward to taking to the waves. I’ve never sailed in a small boat! I’m travelling with the Excelsior Trust, which I fully believed would be amazing right up until I got on the boat from Thurso to Stromness. The sea was quite choppy, and I felt really sick. I hope this isn’t a glimpse of what’s to come.”
“I can’t wait, though. Whatever comes, it will be amazing! I’ve been to Norway before, and it’s quite incredible.”
Tom’s journey isn’t just about physical travel; it’s about tracing the past, present, and future boreal treelines. “It’s meant to be playful and artistic, rather than scientific. It would be nigh-on impossible given how little of the ancient Caledonian and sub-boreal forest remains. I have identified certain points on the walk to let me explore the ‘line’ from an artistic perspective. You can think of it as a tree pilgrimage to places like Benbecula and its fossilised forest from 6–7000 years ago. Now Orkney is all but denuded, but back then it was wooded.”
He’s researching a project he’s hoping to make in the next few years, looking at boreal forests. “I have a couple of residencies in the Baltic region and Scotland ahead, and there are all sorts of exciting links between the two ecosystems. I think there’s a particularly interesting story surrounding the Scots Pine—but this is just the start of that, so stay tuned.”
When it comes to the current global trajectory, Tom isn’t exactly an optimist. “I mean, you’ve got to be a realist; the news isn’t good. I suppose over the years, the fight has been about making climate change part of the public discourse and fighting the scepticism and paid lobbying against it. In that respect, we have shifted the dial somewhat.”
“It’s hard to live with the idea of the climate as a ticking time bomb. I do think the situation is so severe now we’re talking about mitigation rather than stopping something. I think we’re going to be way off our targets in terms of the IPCC recommendations, and I don’t see a pathway to keeping the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees.”
“We simply don’t know enough about what’s going to happen. It seems that there’s always more complexity and unexpected feedback loops. It places us all in this unknowable state. Taking a more Buddhist perspective is something that has helped me through this changing world, as has working with stone and rocks. Rock is different—it offers a deep, deep-time perspective.”
“Part of my work isn’t just saying ‘Oh sh*t!’; it’s also pointing at this strange time we’re living through. What if we took all the transient things away and found a different way to look at the time we’re living through? I try not to think about what’s going to happen and simply focus on the process.”
Tom Bailey’s journey is a testament to the power of art as activism, of performance as pilgrimage. His work challenges us not just to acknowledge the environmental crises we face but to experience them, to walk with them, and perhaps, like Tom, to find a way to simply be.
“Crap at Animals” is touring now. If you get the chance, catch it—and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be inspired to take a walk of your own.
Featured Image: Jack Offord
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