The Silversnake Project

As our relationship with the world around us becomes more fragile and unpredictable, more paraded and more desperate, the role of ecogothic literature is to give voice to some of the growing fears and deepest feelings we have about our environment and climate change. The three ecogothic novellas in this collection show us individuals and societies coming apart at the seams in the face of an eerieness that is often hiding from us in plain sight. The toolkit at the end proposes walking, hypnagogic and ‘new ritual’ practices that draw on the novellas and invite refl ection and reconnection. The whole book was written and devised as part of Phil Smith’s groundbreaking research as a member of the School of Society & Culture at the University of Plymouth (UK).

About the Author :
Dr. Phil Smith is a performance-maker, writer and academic researcher, specialising in work around walking, site-specificity, mythogeographies, web-walking, somatics and counter-tourism. With artist Helen Billinghurst, he is one half of Crab & Bee, who have recently completed an exhibition and walking project called ‘Plymouth Labyrinth (funded by Arts Council England), a short walking project in the Isles of Scilly and a residency at Teats Hill slipway. They recently published their book, The Pattern (2020). In his most recent book, Living in the Magical Mode, (an edited collection of documents surviving from a discontinued book club), Phil starts from the insistence that "Magic is not a power or command over nature, but a relationship with nature" and goes on to explain his view of everything. With Tony Whitehead and photographer John Schott, Phil recently published Guidebook for an Armchair Pilgrimage. He has also developed a ‘subjectivity-protective movement practice’ with Canada-based choreographer Melanie Kloetzel, published in January 2021 as COVERT: A Handbook. With Claire Hind and Helen Billinghurst, he co-organised the 2019 ‘Walking’s New Movements’ conference at the University of Plymouth - on which Walking Bodies is based. As company dramaturg and co-writer for TNT Theatre (Munich), he most recently premiered ‘Free Mandela’, co-authored with TNT’s artistic director Paul Stebbings, about the end of apartheid in South Africa. Paul and Phil have recently written a book about TNT Theatre’s transformation from tiny experimental theatre company to global touring organisation. ​ Phil is a member of site-based arts collective Wrights & Sites, who published The Architect-Walker in 2018. As well as Walking Stumbling Limping Falling (2017) with poet Alyson Hallett, Phil’s publications include Making Site-Specific Theatre and Performance (Red Globe/Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Rethinking Mythogeography (2018) (with US photographer John Schott), Anywhere (2017), A Footbook of Zombie Walking and Walking’s New Movement (2015), On Walking and Enchanted Things (2014), Counter-Tourism: The Handbook (2012) and Mythogeography (2010). He is an Associate Professor (Reader) at the University of Plymouth.