The Resonant School is an artistic and philosophical practice in Walthamstow, London that centers on experiencing life as an interconnected, resonant field.
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Introduction.
The Resonant School is a framework for practitioners to engage with each moment as part of a fluid, shared network shaped by chance and connection, blending ritual, art, and presence in order to attune to the hidden rhythms and unexpected patterns in daily life. Resonants understand experience not as a sequential path to be measured or ordered but as a field of possibility—fluid, responsive, and waiting to be engaged.
The core of the Resonant School’s practice is the belief that experience is a collaborative unfolding shaped by serendipity and attunement—a network of moments that overlap, merge, and separate. Members of the school view every encounter, every interaction, as linked, held within a flexible, ever-shifting resonance field. Their manifesto calls for a life oriented around chance, one that embraces multitemporal awareness through rituals that draw out hidden rhythms, unexpected connections, and the layered presence of past, present, and future in each moment.
Ritual is the primary language of the Resonant School, translating experience into gesture and movement. These rituals range from understated acts of waiting and listening to surreal forms of synchronized practice, inviting participants to discover the unexpected in each interaction with the present. Whether through collective silence, variations in movement, or acts that encourage reflection on subtle shifts, each ritual is a journey into the spontaneous resonance of now—a space where each moment vibrates with potential.
Boundaries between mediums are porous in the Resonant School. Artists, writers, philosophers, and musicians weave together practices that disregard strict classifications, creating pieces that are as much about the act of creation as they are about any finished product. Ritualistic, time-based art forms open a channel through which the artist can feel chance as a living conversation with the present, observing shifts in resonance as they occur.
The Resonant Field.
The Resonant Field is a dynamic, interconnected space that lies at the heart of the Resonant School—a concept that lives not in theory but in practice, in the act of engaging with life’s subtle currents. This field is understood by Resonants as the connective layer that binds people, experiences, and ideas through presence and chance. It is a shared space where everything resonates, where each encounter and creation becomes a moment of echo, shaping and shaped by the moments around it.
To be within the Resonant Field is to move beyond observation into an active, participatory presence. Here, awareness is not just a heightened state but a way of listening, sensing, and feeling one’s connection to everything unfolding. The field is alive with the energies of past interactions, fleeting moments, and hidden connections. Each gesture, each word, even each silence, leaves an imprint that lingers and interacts with the resonance of others, creating an ongoing, layered conversation within the fabric of the world.
Engaging with the Resonant Field is, in essence, an art form itself. Resonants train themselves to move with intention, cultivating an openness to chance and allowing life’s unexpected turns to guide them deeper into this shared resonance. In the studio, on the page, in conversation, they bring this field to life, creating art that vibrates with the presence of those who interact with it. Here, the Resonant Field takes on physical form: in a sculpture that shifts and decays, a poem that layers words like echoes, or a performance that invites the audience to become part of the work.
The Resonant Field grounds the Resonant School’s philosophy, giving it texture and weight, shaping a community that moves together in shared awareness. For Resonants, each practice—whether in art, music, literature, or everyday life—is a chance to step fully into this field, to sense the patterns beneath the surface, and to allow chance and presence to reveal their own quiet harmonies. This is not simply a theory but an invitation to feel one’s place in a living, resonant web, where art and life are woven together in the quiet but powerful rhythm of the present.
Key characteristics of the Resonant Field include:
Interconnectedness: The Resonant Field acts as a connective layer, binding together people, experiences, and ideas. It suggests a web-like structure where everything is linked and influences everything else.
Presence: Being present within the Resonant Field means moving beyond passive observation to active participation. Awareness becomes a way of listening, sensing, and feeling a connection to the unfolding of life around you.
Chance: The Resonant Field is shaped by chance encounters and unexpected connections. This suggests an openness to the unpredictable nature of life, allowing for serendipitous moments to unfold and contribute to the overall resonance.
Multitemporality: The Resonant Field is not bound by linear time. It contains echoes of the past, the immediacy of the present, and the potential of the future. Participants are encouraged to cultivate a multitemporal awareness, experiencing each moment as interwoven with other moments across time.
To further understand the Resonant Field, consider the following:
The Resonant Field as a living conversation: The Resonant Field is a space of ongoing, layered conversation. Every gesture, word, and even silence leaves an imprint that interacts with the imprints of others, creating a constantly evolving tapestry of resonance. This emphasizes the dynamic and interactive nature of the field, where individual actions contribute to a collective experience.
Engaging with the Resonant Field through ritual: Ritual practices are the primary means by which members of the Resonant School interact with and experience the Resonant Field. These rituals can range from simple acts of attunement to more complex, chance-based offerings and practices focused on temporal anchoring. They are designed to heighten sensitivity to the subtle connections within the field and cultivate a deeper awareness of the interconnectedness of life.
Artists' interpretations of the Resonant Field: Resonant artists bring the intangible Resonant Field into focus through their creative practices, transforming its unseen dynamics into tangible experiences. Whether working with sculpture, sound, movement, or text, they explore themes of chance, presence, and multitemporality, crafting works that resonate on both a sensory and emotional level. These creations often serve as portals into the field—sculptures that shift with time, performances that dissolve boundaries between artist and audience, or writings that echo with layered meanings. Through their art, they invite others to not just observe but feel the interplay of connection, serendipity, and resonance, making the invisible visible and the intangible palpable.
Pathways to Resonance.
[Welcome the Resonant Field]
See each experience as part of a resonant field—alive, responsive, and interconnected. Move gently within this space, open to the unseen connections that chance reveals.
[Embody Presence]
Cultivate rituals that draw you into the “extended now.” Whether through mindful breath, intuitive movement, or moments of listening, inhabit the layers of the present, allowing echoes of past and future to be felt.
[Create in Conversation]
Approach creation as an open dialogue with the resonant field. Each gesture, mark, or sound is an invitation for experience to respond, to reveal itself in unexpected ways.
[Discover Hidden Rhythms]
Attune to the subtle rhythms beneath the surface of the everyday. Let your practices—wandering, writing, mapping—reveal patterns of resonance, where the familiar and the unknown meet.
[Honor Process Over Outcome]
Value the unfolding journey. The art is in the experience itself, in allowing moments to take shape and dissolve without need for finality.
[Invite Serendipity]
Be guided by openness rather than expectation. Embrace chance as an artistic medium, trusting that resonance will emerge in its own form and time.
[Live in Exploration]
To be a Resonant is to be in a state of gentle inquiry, at home in the unknown. This school exists to deepen our awareness of experience as a resonant field, a continuous unfolding of presence and possibility.
Ritual & Practice.
The following modes guide Resonant practitioners to embrace chance, presence, and multitemporality as interconnected pathways to a fuller engagement with the resonant field, where all experiences are held in relationship.
Key Modes in Resonant Ritual
- Attunement Exercises: Practices that heighten sensitivity to connections within the environment, helping participants feel a part of the resonant field by noticing relationships and patterns in the everyday.
- Chance-Based Offerings: Rituals that invite randomness to reveal hidden connections, using chance to spark unexpected encounters that feel linked by resonance rather than reason.
- Temporal Anchoring: Rituals that mark natural shifts in time, connecting participants to multitemporal rhythms and helping them experience each moment as woven within a larger, interconnected temporal field.
Attunement Exercise: The Listening Walk of Connections.
This exercise is designed to open awareness to the resonant field, encouraging participants to connect deeply with their surroundings and uncover hidden relationships.- Begin in Silence: Set out on a slow, intentional walk, tuning into sounds, textures, and sensations around you. Walk without a set destination, allowing yourself to be guided by instinct.
- Notice Connections: As you walk, look for subtle connections between elements—a bird’s call echoing off a building, shadows cast that link objects together, or shifts in temperature with each step. Imagine each sensory detail as part of a larger web of resonance.
- Pause to Reflect: At intervals, pause and consider the connections you’ve noticed. Feel how each sensory element is woven into a larger, interconnected field, attuning yourself to the subtle links that bind the environment together
Chance-Based Offering: Draw of the Resonant Object.
This ritual invites the resonant field to reveal itself through chance, creating spontaneous connections that feel both random and meaningful.- Gather Objects of Resonance: Collect a variety of objects, phrases, symbols, or images that carry personal or symbolic significance. Place them in a shared space or conceptual container.
- Draw with Intuition: Without looking, draw an object from the collection, allowing chance to guide you to an item that resonates in the moment. Trust that this selection holds potential for connection.
- Reflect and Act: Spend time with the object, allowing it to evoke an insight, memory, or creative impulse. Respond by writing, drawing, moving, or sharing it aloud with others. Notice any unexpected connections that arise, embracing the object as an offering that bridges you to the resonant field.
Temporal Anchoring: Cycle of Light and Connection
This ritual emphasizes the interconnected rhythms of time, connecting participants with natural cycles and layered moments.- Choose a Place of Shifting Light: Find a location where light and shadow change naturally throughout the day—such as a sunlit room or an outdoor space.
- Mark Each Transition: Sit quietly and observe as light changes. When you notice a shift—such as a shadow stretching, colors deepening, or new reflections emerging—mark the moment with a bell, a breath, or a gentle gesture. Imagine each change as an echo within the resonant field.
- Reflect on Interwoven Moments: As you witness these transitions, consider how each change is connected within the field of time, weaving past and future into the present. Embrace the feeling of multitemporality, where all moments converge, and allow yourself to feel rooted within this web of connections.
- In There is a Strange Eloquence to
Flailing, Mira Harlan explores the interplay of color, form, and chance within the resonant field of glass. Employing a fusion of stained glass and kiln-formed techniques, Harlan creates panels that echo the fluidity of paint and the unpredictability of light itself. Each piece is a study in fractured harmony, where colors drift and merge within the glass as if suspended in motion. Light becomes an active participant, shifting through the panels to reveal hidden depths, casting ephemeral shadows, and transforming hues as the day progresses.
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There is a Strange Eloquence to
Flailing, 2024
- In Confluence in Still Motion, Lina Voss channels the Resonant School's ideals of process, presence, and multitemporal connection, feeling out sculptural forms that envelope algorithmic uncertainties and organic resonances. Each piece is the result of an intricate process in which Voss collaborates with generative algorithms, allowing patterns to emerge and evolve as guided by the resonant field itself.
The mosaic details shimmer across the textured surfaces, catching light at varying angles, evoking the layered nature of time and inviting viewers to engage in a dynamic, shifting perspective. The works pulse with subtle connections, encouraging a presence that is attuned to both structure and flow, to the unseen harmonies within seemingly static forms. Voss’s pieces offer an invitation to experience multitemporality through matter—where each curve and contour reflects the timeless dance between structure and spontaneity, between what is fixed and what is in flux.
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Confluence in Still Motion, 2024
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Let It Centrifuge, 2024
she said, almost to herself.
"Flowing currents don’t wait.
They spin, they fold,
they carry you past
the things you thought you knew.
Even the windows know this—
wooden frames sailing,
moving regardless."
I stopped walking,
but she kept going,
gesturing faintly,
as if to draw the shapes
of the things she couldn’t say.
"Let it centrifuge," she murmured,
"spin into itself.
You can’t fight the flow."
And as she faded into the distance,
I stood still,
the thin wind curling around me,
wondering if I’d ever
catch up.
- Sophie Thorne’s When I Happen to Meet Anyone I Want to Lie Down So That We are Entwined Together series, created during her 7-day residency at The Resonant School in Walthamstow, explores raw clay as a medium of intuitive resonance. Grounded in the school’s philosophy of chance, presence, and multitemporal connection, her sculptures emerge from a fluid dialogue between hand and material. Each form embodies a moment of becoming—gestural, tactile, and ephemeral. Thorne’s work captures the clay in states of flux, where structure and dissolution meet, inviting the viewer into a space where form is constantly shifting within the resonant field of possibility.
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When I Happen to Meet
Anyone I Want to Lie Down So That We are Entwined Together, 2024
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Stay, 2024
Rupture it all, loose and heart-high,
let love-feelings burn like mauve webworks,
binding in a sacrament of sparks—
this single spin, this sweet rocket,
not made for staying bound.
You don’t understand, the ceiling simmering,
the raw pull of strings on a shadow’s edge,
fingers trembling like raucous noise,
the taste of anger lying in wait,
wellbeing, like hands searching
for something to hold, something to break.
Possibility exists, but barely—a glimpse,
a flicker seen just before it goes,
and maybe that’s the crux of it:
we’re left to build on scraps,
each naked message flaring, fading,
a table set with nothing, just the ache of absence.
As if by accident, these strands weave together,
pull tight, then unravel—
a running thread of naked history, bare and raw,
rolling up, spilling over,
still searching for a reason to spark
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Cathedral, 2024
In the quiet, I hear them—
where light filtered as it does now
a soft cathedral of hours stacked
I walk, long stilled within this
and feel the hum of footsteps
not gone, but near as my own skin.
nor am I entirely here—only waves
in a greater pulse, a body of minutes
where we meet and fold and ripple.
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In the Space Between
Heartbeats, 2024
Finding my own tempo has been a journey of unlearning. I used to think of pace as something linear, something I could control if I just organized myself enough. But every attempt to “optimize” my time seemed to miss something essential: the quiet moments of nothingness that were once natural and essential. Those moments aren’t productive, but they are full—filled with a richness that defies scheduling.
When I sit to write, I often listen for my own pulse, for the slow rhythms beneath all the noise. I wait for words to come from that place, letting them rise like bubbles through water. There is a resonance there, a sense of alignment, as if each word that comes from this place has weight and meaning beyond its surface. It’s not fast, it’s not efficient, and yet it feels deeply, almost achingly, alive.
To find our own tempo is to reclaim the shape of our own lives, to allow the spaces and silences that bring us back to ourselves. In a world that urges us forward, I believe in moving sideways, lingering in the stillness, trusting that there is wisdom in the slower, quieter paths. Because, in truth, those spaces between heartbeats are where I feel the most present, the most myself. And maybe, that’s where time becomes not something to manage, but something to marvel at.
There’s a kind of bravery, I think, in resisting the pressure to keep pace with everything around us. In the quiet, when we allow ourselves to slip out of sync with the world’s urgency, we might feel out of place at first, maybe even guilty. But that discomfort is often the first sign that we’re onto something meaningful. Learning to move at our own speed—however slow, however unhurried—can feel like an act of rebellion, a gentle refusal to let time be something that only rushes us.
I once read that ancient trees grow slowly, their rings expanding just a little each year, weathering storms and droughts with a patience that seems almost supernatural. It makes me think that there’s a wisdom in slowness, a strength that comes not from pushing through but from remaining steady and rooted, regardless of the changing seasons. When I think about finding my own tempo, I like to imagine myself as one of those trees, allowing time to pass through me rather than dragging me along.
In my writing, this translates to a willingness to leave things unresolved. I don’t always know where a piece will go, and I try not to force it. I let the ideas settle, breathe, wait. Sometimes I return to an essay months later, finding that a thought has ripened on its own, or that it has shifted, mellowed, perhaps softened in ways I couldn’t have predicted. There’s a joy in this slowness, in knowing that creation doesn’t need to be immediate to be true.
I think there is a communal aspect to this search for tempo, too. When we find our own rhythm, we start to see how everyone around us is moving through time differently. Some are rushing, some drifting; some find their stride quickly, while others wander, circling. It’s like a silent dance, each person moving to their own beat. Recognizing this—honoring it—can bring a gentleness to how we relate to others, a respect for the many ways to live a life.
Perhaps, in the end, finding our own tempo isn’t a destination but a practice. It’s a way of returning, again and again, to the pulse that feels right for us. It’s giving ourselves permission to shift and adjust, to pause when we need to, to let go of the need to be constantly synchronized with everyone else. Because in those spaces, in the intervals and silences, we might just find the truest parts of ourselves—those that linger, steady, in the spaces between heartbeats.
- Theo Calder’s "Listen—do you feel it begin?" is a fragmented meditation on rhythm, stillness, and the interplay between the external and internal landscapes. Crafted through a process of cutting and reassembling found phrases, the poem mirrors the organic, layered nature of thought and movement. Each line feels like a moment overheard, a glimpse into a quiet dialogue with light, terrain, and the self, evoking a sense of grounded fluidity and quiet exploration
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“Listen—do you feel it begin?” 2024
“Light, you see it?”
“On the leaf, yes—murmur distant.”
“Step there. Feel stillness, simple.”
“Untangle, but why here, why now?”
“Gentle path, low impact, they said.”
“Rhythms align, but does it mean clarity?”
“A break, they call it, from mind, from health.”
“Yes, but the leaf, it shifts—texture, pace, slower.”
“A habit then?”
“Or just laughter, distant and green?”
“Structured, I think, like light and shadow, aligned.”
“Rhythms strengthen in steps, body in calm.”
“Perhaps terrain, perhaps nothing, still flowing.”
“Anchor breath. Or unanchored?”
“Terrain within, terrain without.”
“Yes. Health, or something like it.”
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Field Notes on Resonance and the Art of Walking, 2024
Walking, some say, is the most intimate of all movements—a deliberate drift through space and time, attuned to the shifting rhythms of the world around. To walk is to step into a living conversation with the landscape, each step a gesture toward presence, each pause a chance to feel the threads of an unseen web. In this journey, meaning becomes fluid, responsive, unfolding beneath our feet.
Drift through cycles of layered chance,
where shadows echo in silent gestures.
Each footfall becomes a note, marking time in unclaimed rhythms.
Walking invites us to notice the minute—a leaf in freefall, a shadow caught in transition, the way the air changes at dusk. These are the quiet languages of movement, the ways in which the world speaks to itself. For the Resonant School, walking is a practice of attunement, an open invitation to feel resonance in unexpected places.
A web woven in light, shifting touch,
marked by breaths that wait, linger, fade.
The road itself becomes a partner in this dance, offering textures to feel, spaces to breathe
In every step, there is both a forward motion and a return, a tracing and retracing of paths. Walking blurs the lines between origin and destination, inviting us into a state of perpetual almost, where each step holds potential without demanding conclusion.
Presence feels like fabric, scattered and fluid,
each pause an unseen call toward connection.
The act of walking opens us to the fleeting and the fragile, to the hidden currents beneath the ordinary.
Walking, then, becomes a practice of resonance—a way of engaging with the present as an unfolding field, alive with echoes of what came before and what lingers in the periphery. To walk as a Resonant is to move with the landscape, to listen to the subtle rhythms beneath the noise, to let the journey itself become a living, breathing form.
Threads of rhythm fracture, sway in open air—
a gentle movement slips, unclaimed and soft.
Here, the journey finds its own shape, a quiet rhythm that shapes and is shaped.
The Resonant School sees walking as more than mere motion; it is an exploration of resonance, an art of noticing. Each step becomes an opening, a way to sense the invisible threads binding us to the spaces we move through. Walking offers a way to exist in fragments, to let go of coherence, to dissolve into the landscape.
The ordinary marks the field, unnoticed,
where time rests in fragmented layers.
In the movement of walking, we find ourselves layered, overlapping, part of something larger yet unspoken.
Through walking, we understand that nothing holds, yet everything resonates. The path is not linear but responsive, shifting with each step, each shadow cast. This is the art of moving within the resonant field—a practice that shapes us as we shape it, leaving behind only traces of steps and echoes of presence.
A voice in fragments, a shadow cast,
where meaning is almost, but never quite there.
In walking, in resonance, we arrive without arriving, finding ourselves in the quiet, continuous rhythm of the now.