Chora is a collaborative enquiry between Sara Barker and Rosie Morris with sound commission by Sally Pilkington. It explores immersive installations and intimate objects as membranes of a ruined body, archiving and transmitting tacit, and complex knowledges of care.

The first iteration of Chora forms a new collaborative public installation for 36 Gallery, Newcastle (Feb–Mar 2026), serving simultaneously as an artistic output and convening live encounters through exhibition, focus groups and workshops. Using the analogy of skin as a semi-porous membrane, projecting, sheltering, shielding and enabling exchange, the artwork takes the form of a vibrant, semi-translucent fabric den, dyed with domestic kitchen waste. Placed inside are small-scale artworks, resembling votives, referring to pieces cut off, lodged, extracted, summoned or enshrined.

As collaborators we draw on feminist spatial theory (Kristeva, Irigaray, Grosz), ecofeminist material intra-action and polyphony (Barad, Wall Kimmerer, Bakhtin, Ozeki), and research into felt-knowledge and co-authorship (Springgay; Brand; Pallasmaa, Gale & Larkin). The installation investigates this as a porous, relational architecture (Ebling) —a container that behaves like a living or ruined body (Bachelard): a host, a skin, a shelter, a site of memory.

As a site to test ethical, accessible, consent-based methods of co-encounter and potential co-creation, we hosted 3 visits and 3 engagement workshops with invited groups, activating the site as a space for collective storytelling, and as a testing ground to inform future co-authorship and dialogues. Groups included interdisciplinary academics from (arts, social science, anthropology and archaeology) from GSA, Newcastle University, Northumbria University and Edinburgh University, Year 2 students from Hotspur Primary School, and Equal Arts, a charity for older people and people living with dementia.

These rich dialogues and exchanges inform our developing practice and methodological frameworks for sustainable, inclusive artistic practices and we hope to continue these relationships through future dialogue and iterations.