The Warren
A creative residency. Italy, 2016–2019. Co-created and hosted by Alana Hyde Bloom, Daniel Hernandez and Zuma Puma with support from Chloe Wykes, Masseria Atipica and Sally Davies.
The Warren was a wild and unique creative residency for those yearning for expression, movement, magic and tribe. Held annually in Italy from 2016 to 2019, it began small and intimate, a potent seed, growing into something untameable and deeply formative for all who passed through it.
At its heart were three forces: the tarot as mirror and guide, ritual as the grammar of our days together, and the body as the primary site of knowing. We were not interested in creativity as a product. We were interested in what radical creative permission gives way to and the shadows it illuminates, the courage it calls forth, the authentic self it slowly coaxes into the light.
Each gathering brought together a loose and loyal tribe of artists, tricksters and seekers to live, for one brief week, in a way that many of us dream of: nurturing one another's wildness and holding it sacred. The questions that animated us were not abstract. How do we hold space for each other? How do we bring our edges and our boundaries into the room? How do we live as authentic warriors, trying to be truthful, on the threshold?
We painted ourselves with clay. We gorged on cherries. We danced, moved, cried, rejoiced and howled. We listened intently to the land. We created poetic acts under a full moon, feasted together in raucous ritual, and made friends with the goats, bees, dogs and the particular quality of light in the Italian hills at dusk. Everybody was a bible. The body was the portal.
“We will come together to live for a brief moment in a way that many of us dream; as a group of humans nurturing one another's wildness and holding it sacred.”
The Warren ran its final gathering in 2019. What it seeded did not end there. Daniel Hernandez went on to found The Ridiculous House, continuing to hold tarot gatherings and transformational work on his land. Alana Hyde Bloom deepened her work with the earth and the soul, founding True Nature and continuing to hold space for grief, ritual and the more-than-human world. Zuma Puma carried the spirit of play and embodiment forward through Clownlife. The Warren is no longer running in its original form but the community it built, the rituals it planted, and the wildness it gave permission for continue to live in the work of everyone who was there.
Photos by Jack Davolio
