wanderings, wonderings and ponderings in two valleys
“All that is gold does not glitter
Not all those who wander are lost”
Bilbo Baggins, describing Strider, in Lord Of The Rings, JRR Tolkein
Last summer, I was back in the sanctuary - or retreat - of the ‘artist cottage’
high above the reservoir at Pen-y-Garreg at Elan in Wales. Having spent a busy and active previous visit, much of it in the company of upland sheep-farmers, my mood was one of slow reflection and putting pen to paper in an attempt to weave a tapestry from diverse creative-research strands. Finally seeing the light of day, the aim in this new blog piece is to try to create a fruitful - and imaginative - dialogue between two distant places. I am linking the situation of the Elan Valley with the Côa Valley in Portugal - site of a connected artist-residency project. (The former is supported by the Heritage Lottery Elan Links project while the latter is part of the Endangered Landscapes Programme). The text below contains embedded commentary from project partners and associates.
During the summer at Elan, I participated in a ‘gathering’ - that is the rounding up of a dispersed herd of sheep from the high moorland; then herding to the home farm for the following day’s wool-shearing. One aspect of this seasonal ‘event’ which fascinated me was the mode of shared collective working - that of neighbouring farmers coming together to assist each other, following a tradition of cooperation and reciprocal exchange. This rural practice reminded me of the shared ‘Meitheal’ harvest/threshing gatherings which were once the norm in my homeland in rural Ireland. I have a new-found interest in these forms of intangible cultural heritage, partly linked to an artistic research programme I’ve recently initiated, titled ‘Here Commons Everybody’ (an Irish/Joycean influence in that title…), with support from the CCRI (Countryside and Community Research Institute) and Arts Council England.
Comment - Chris Short (CCRI): A clear message from many upland farmers across the UK, Europe and further afield is that these reciprocal and repeated actions help root them in the landscape and bring meaning, purpose and identity to their way of life and livelihoods.
In situations of extended landscape-based artist residency, there is usually a form of gathering (-in); a herding-together of disparate thoughts and findings into ‘pens’ or clusters, for separation and processing. In lieu of wool, there is even a shearing off, or extracting, of material to then weave into a useful, beautiful - or at least insightful - outcome. In the farming context, as was clear from the shearing and gathering days on the Elan hills, these functional processes also create a social bonding and binding; a knitting together of community, sustenance and - ideally - multiple generations.
Scales - of time and space
The field-based project at the Elan Valley initially had a working title of ‘Long Exposure’. This creative ‘residency’ has - over 2 years - covered all four seasons and has embraced ‘long duration’ thinking extending across the span of deep-time, including the comings and goings of ice-sheets, peoples, armies, ecologies, predator species etc. And in a spatial sense, I have been reminded of the deeply thoughtful book, Walden, by Henry David Thoreau in which he wrote “I have travelled a good deal in Concord” - suggesting that one does not need to range very far from one’s back-yard for rich experience and revelation. To echo this, I can say “I have travelled a good deal in Pen-y-garreg” - journeying in geography and time. And in all that time I have been ‘between two waters’…in various ways. This local area sits in what was traditionally ‘Cwmdaudwwr’ or the Commote of Two Waters - ‘commote’ being a medieval land division in Wales. The placename derives from the prefix cym- (‘together’, ‘with’) and the noun bod (‘home, abode’). The wider area is also referred to as Elenydd or Elenid.
Bounded, unbounded and in-between
In a more intimate sense, the hillside immediately above the artist cottage is also between two waters - these being two small mountain streams. ‘In-between-ness’ can be seen as a necessary mindset of artistic presence; the need to oscillate between the imagination and the sensing of a real and present cultural landscape of sheep farms, water infrastructure and tourism, in transit towards a potential future of more…what? more ecology, more vitality?, more restoration?, more protection?, more sanctuary? But what is a valid braiding or resonance with/for a creative practice in such a setting, or scene? (for it surely is a scenography - with stage, props, narratives and players?). The fluidity and ‘soft eyes’ of artistic attention can allow shifts in focus and perspective; zooming-in, in a fractal sense, into hidden micro-realms.
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| Elan Valley, macro-photo taken at concrete post marking watershed limit |
And such scenographies of/in liminal landscapes proliferate. From 2017-19, I had the opportunity to creatively engage with the transforming, recovering landscapes of the Cornish Claylands and the ever-morphing, sea-sculpted coastal shingle spit of Orford Ness, Suffolk. My new artistic programme (Here Commons Everybody) is also concerned with the in-between; with feral-ness, transition and new horizons. Engaging with ecologies and communities, its scope includes creative explorations in some UK rewilding zones, and the depopulating (now rewilding) terrain of the Côa Valley in NE Portugal.
In an attempt to communicate the role of extended artistic involvements, ‘affect’ can be a useful word - implying emotion plus atmosphere. For, in essence, the land-attuned artist is dealing with a geopoetic binary of fact-based knowledge (intellect) and intuition/instinct - a flowing dynamic of yin and yang; of insider and outsider; introspection and outrospection. In these settings, places, scenarios, there is potential for sensitive creative responses which suggest new braidings or fluxes of both metaphor and rational dialogue; also a wrangling with ‘something else’, something hovering both outside and within. This attention therefore involves both stepping back and zooming-in (and under) - to other levels. Here, I’m partly alluding to concepts such as Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’, Coleridge’s ‘esemplastic’, Joseph Campbell’s musings on ‘creative mythology’, Shelley’s ecstatic ‘joyance’ and - for me - the creative vision of Andrei Tarkovsky, who always emphasised a deeper purpose - and liminality - in his field of artistic film-making.
“I refer once again to Stalker. There is a place there, the Zone, which is and is not, it is reality and, at the same time, it is a place of the soul, of memory. In the film, when you see it, it is a forest, a river. That's all. But the air that circulates, the light, the rhythms, the perspectives, without distorting anything, make you feel it as an 'other' place, with various dimensions, always real and, at the same time, different.” Andrei Tarkovsky; ll Cinema dei Maestri (The Cinema of the Masters) 1980.
As humans, we inhabit an ‘entangled’ world [a nod here to Merlin Sheldrake’s 2020 book, Entangled Life], often made more meaningful via creativity and poetics. Artistic activity necessarily swims in the undercurrents of shifting relationships, tensions and paradoxes. When in ‘the zone’, we seek hidden subtleties; meshes of affect and knowledges that connect diverse living entities and ecologies (and non-living ecologies too).
Fluid ecologies of light and dark
A person and a body (and a landscape) are superficially what we see/perceive with our senses, but a body is also the blood-flow, the beating heart, the zinging nerves, the complex digestive process, the vital organs - all of which we don’t readily see. In a landscape, there are undercurrents, pulses and flows; and there are also emotional currents, cross-generational flows too; and traumas.
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| 'Cofiwch Cwm Elan', echoing the Welsh Nationalist slogan 'Cofiwch Dryweryn'/ 'Remember Tryweryn' |
In the Elan Valley, trauma is evidenced in the presence of the reservoirs and imposing dams; and in the hints and upwellings from memories, stories, histories, songs and graffiti (see images above). Through the glass darkly comes both light and shadow as well as reflections. The currents here are not just underwater - but in the rain, clouds, mists, lakes, streams, bogs, underground waters and piped waters. All in a fluid continuum. And the stories, songs and species are in a continuum. This is ecology; it changes, morphs, coexists. We humans seek to precipitate change, but also to resist change - through systems, infrastructure, fences, boundaries, rights, laws, force…
Deep-time erases and ‘overcomes’ all. Poetics is partly about absorbing this reality. This was one of the themes of a short video (Between Two Waters) that I made for an Elan-derived installation at the Ten Acres Of Sound festival in Stirchley (Birmingham) in 2020. A second video in this series (Reservoir Birds) also touches on deep-time dynamics, hinting at the eventual dissolution and erosion of these enormous built structures - the Elan Valley dams. The birdsong included in the soundtrack echoes an imagined past as well as an anticipated future.
In a third short video piece for Ten Acres of Sound (Roadside Picnic), recorded under strange, uncanny lighting, I zoomed in to into a micro-community of mosses and lichens. With certain prosthetic tools (original meaning: ‘giving additional power’), we are enabled to go deeper, closer, smaller. Within the concept of Indra’s Net, everything is inter-connected…and by extension everywhere is connected too. While present in the Elan hills, we are connected - physically and imaginatively - to different places, such as: Birmingham (via a water pipeline); Iberia (rhododendron as an ‘invasive’ introduction); Germany (WWII ‘bouncing bombs’ testing); Ireland (my own origins, and the local archaeological feature called Crugyn Gwyddel Cairn or ‘Irishman’s Grave’); Rome/Italy through the nearby ‘Roman Camp’ archaeological remains.
[All six short video works can be accessed here: www.tenacresofsound.com/antony-lyons ]
Dwelling, refuge and restoration
In the braiding of Elan and Côa valleys, I’m wondering too about a commonalities or correspondences between the Portuguese term saudade and the Welsh heraeth, which relates to ‘homesick’, but is much more. It is a longing which contains bitter-sweet pain, related to time, place and people. And then there is also cynefin:
""Cynefin" is the state of being influenced by multiple pasts of which we can only be partly aware: cultural, religious, geographic, tribal and linguistic for example...It describes that relationship: the place of your birth and of your upbringing, the environment in which you live and to which you are naturally acclimatised.”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cynefin-hiraeth-homeplace-homesickness-andrew-sumner
Cynefin is sometimes translated as ‘dwelling’…
Comment - Aimee Morse (CCRI): I have worked with farmer groups and farming families in Wales, researching these topics - especially in Snowdonia.
Overall, one of the most notable things in my research was the family element, with sons and daughters interested in staying on - instead of going to college, or going away. But this 'passing down' also needs to be supported with appropriate succession planning and business advice. Related to this, I was interested in what people had to say about their sense of loss. Like when farms are sold, and the new owners are not interested in livestock, but in - say - creating a nature reserve. In one example there was some disquiet about a working sheep farm becoming a holiday-let business. The land was still rented to a neighbouring farmer, but it wasn't the same; there was, again, a sense that something had been lost. The new owners did want to integrate with the local community, but as they weren't farming, this was difficult, despite the community’s openness to newcomers.
There is also concern about the loss of the Welsh language. During my time in north Wales I was able to visit the annual Eisteddfod - here I was able to make connections with local farming families and begin to learn Welsh, or Cymraeg, myself. Its importance to local communities, particularly in the north, is undoubtable. A week’s immersion in Welsh song and poetry only emphasised the importance of both language and landscape; a real admiration for, and connection to, the landscape emerged in many arrangements I listened to and read. Moreover, I learned that if you lose the farming interactions and networks, this has implications for the vitality of the Welsh language. There are also some terms that are specific to farming, that don't readily translate.
There are concerns about areas of rural Wales continuing to be living - and lived-in - landscapes. Going forward, we can't just develop visions for rural communities which are based on seasonal employment in service sectors; we must consider solutions which support the development of diverse, sustainable rural communities. Nor will farms bought for tree-planting continue to contribute to rural communities in the way they once did - again, we witness sociocultural loss, for corporate businesses’ gain.
Farmers are open to change, but specifically changes that respect the way of life in the community and offer those living and working locally good lives and livelihoods. Many are already working with organisations such as Natural Resources Wales, the RSPB and the Snowdonia National Park Authority. They're not set in their ways, but want change to happen on their terms, with their involvement, and I think that's where 'cynefin' comes in as well. There's this strong sense of local attachment, thriving relationships and collective voice, which can be used to bring social and environmental benefit. Dwelling is perhaps the best translation of cynefin into English - the word carries a sense of presence and, to take Heidegger’s work on dwelling as an example, suggests a sense of being at one with our surroundings. This place attachment is unique to an individual, lending them a feeling of belonging and a deep understanding of the land in which they work. Change which respects local knowledges, voices and livelihoods is likely to be respected and upheld in return.
My main research focus is now in England, and on the social outcomes of a particular scheme which aims to encourage collaboration in farming; how do we build relationships and share knowledge with one another in a way which will hopefully lead to environmental change? I’m hearing similar stories of attachment and commitment to the land on farms and in communities across England; however, the strength of feeling and place-attachment that is apparent in Welsh hill-farming still interests me and I hope a return to Wales may one day be on the cards. It’s safe to say that it was only when my time working in the area had ended that I truly began to understand another word which was frequently mentioned by farmers: hiraeth, a deep sense of longing for a place.
As well as imagined birdsong (video-link above), there is also a real and present soundscape of birdsong, and insect buzzings too - recorded over my many visits. In a way, it is clear that the role of refuge, shelter or sanctuary (awaiting future habitat expansion) can be seen as a key aspect of many of these ‘limbo’ rural landscapes. This arguably applies to culture as well as nature. In the Elan Valley (and similarly in the Portuguese Côa Valley) one witnesses a deep connection and interdependent relationships between farmers, dogs, horses, sheep, grass etc. This is an intricate mesh, and is part of cynefin. Although sheep dominate the Elan farmer’s herds, there is another player on the stage - cattle - and their numbers are increasing. These lands, in pre-history, have hosted large herbivores - auroch, elk, bison, even elephant, rhinoceros and hippopotamus.
https://museum.wales/articles/1029/The-Caves-at-Cefn-Tales-of-strange-creatures-and-evidence-of-Waless-earliest-humans/
In lieu of sheep, cattle are being ‘restored’ in certain places, on conservation grounds - producing a richer more robust ecosystem; conservation grazing as a form of restorative agriculture. To some extent this is part of the valid contemporary shift to payments for good ‘stewardship’ of land and ecological health (as one purpose of farming). Broadening this out, there are growing tensions at play in the increasing moves to assign monetary value to ‘ecosystem services’, zones of ‘natural capital’, tax-derived payments for land-based carbon off-set projects etc., which collectively have been termed 'biofinancialisation' (“the financialisation of life and matter” ref. Experimental Practice. Technoscience, Alterontologies and More-Than-Social Movements, Duke University Press, 2018)
Comment - Chris Short (CCRI): The new reality for many uplands might be juggling a blend of private and public funding streams as a result of the range of ecosystem services that are attribute to these places. The reality is off putting, something akin to the wild west at the moment, with unproven frameworks offering carbon credits that might be discredited, and a lack of confirmation from public schemes as to how these align. But the financing on nature has already begun from the accepted and understood inclusion of water company to ensure a clean supply of water supply to the less regulated carbon offsetting.
Through all of this, we should not forget restorative human aspects - i.e. mental health, well-being and quality of life. Of course, these benefits have long been associated with green (and ‘blue’/water) spaces, but probably not truly linked to ecological understanding/appreciation and entanglement. Today, writers such as Merlin Sheldrake, Robin Wall-Kimmerer, Anna Tsing, David Abram and many many more point to a resurgence - a new-found tuning-in to a non-instrumental, non-extractive ‘environment’ - a complex holism (despite the limitations of our senses and ‘post-modern’ culture).
In the contexts of the proliferation of new ‘rewilding’ and regenerative agriculture zones - in the UK and worldwide - there is a lot of emphasis on providing economic viability through eco-tourism, as well as draw-down of carbon-capture funds. What is perhaps not receiving due attention is the human health potential (and indeed community health/healing/sustainability potential) of these newly-framed dialogues with the natural world. The emerging methods of ‘social prescribing’ are part of this mix, and I’ve previously discussed these in the context of a model community-based ecological project in the Cotswolds (UK). www.academia.edu/40913903/To_the_waters_and_the_wild_Reflections_on_eco_social_healing_in_the_WILD_project
Eco-education and eco-literacy is also part of the mosaic and rationale in these projects, and an area that deserves to be hugely expanded.
Comment - Chris Short (CCRI): The potential for social or green prescribing is finally being realised and could ensure that a broader range of beneficiaries might benefit from rural areas natural assets. In an increasingly urban-based world and lifestyles three is an increasing need for ecoliteracy and eco-education for all ages, whether part of a social prescribing scheme or not.
Entangled Valleys
Notes on an interweaving of artist residencies - between Elan Valley and the rewilding region of the Greater Côa Valley in Portugal.
Some resonances and confluences are outlined:
Dams:
These large built objects play a big part - or have done - in both landscapes. In the Elan Valley area, six dams create a complex of reservoirs to supply water to the city of Birmingham, 75 miles away. In the Côa Valley, a vigorous campaign was fought in 1995 to prevent the construction of a hydroelectric dam that would have flooded the lower stretches of the river valley, including a complex of paleolithic rock art engravings that now are a keystone tourist attraction and indeed serve as one inspiration for the ambitious Greater Côa Valley rewilding project. The Côa flows into the much larger Douro River which is controlled and harnessed by a series of giant dams, making it impossible for any migratory fish (e.g. salmon, sturgeon, eel) to journey upstream to the Côa River catchment.
The dam topic is still echoing in the Côa Valley, and one facet of this is the continued existence of a large ‘coffer dam’ (image below), constructed before the full-scale construction project was halted. This causes partial flooding of the lower stretch of the river, and there are on-going calls for its removal. In a much broader context, there are many strategic projects aimed at restoring ‘free flowing’ rivers and/or providing fish-pass structures. In Europe alone, over one million barriers fragment rivers, negatively impacting freshwater biodiversity, water quality and surrounding natural habitats. Of those, at least 100,000 barriers are abandoned or out of use. The Open Rivers Programme is supporting interventions that lead to the removal of dams and the restoration of river flow and biodiversity. Closer to home, Unlocking The Severn focuses on the twaite shad which used to migrate up the River Severn to reach their natural spawning grounds. In a previous project (Sabrina Dreaming) with the CCRI, I explored coastal and climate-change issues around the Severn Estuary. One of the results was a film-poem titled Transgression/Regression, which took a deep-time perspective. In other previous projects, I have also had involvements with dams e.g. on the Colorado (US), Alqueva (Portugal) and Shannon (Ireland) rivers.
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| Exploring the Côa River coffer dam site, Sept 2021 |
Shepherds:
Pastoral farming activity is also shared, and very much alive, in both of these valleys. However, in the Côa Valley, this activity is in sharp decline. Some years ago, I spoke to a shepherd there who was certain that his sons would not be following in his footsteps, and doubted that the sheep-herding lifestyle would continue for very much longer. There are also some local tensions between pastoralism and the new rewilding strategies (involving e.g. reforestation aspects and fires/burnings). In the Elan Valley, the traditions of sheep-farming are still very strong, although stock-levels today are lower than in the past - largely for conservation reasons. Trans-generational continuity appears to be functioning reasonably well, and my encounters show that it is not just the sons, but daughters too who are now taking on the herding and farming duties.
Horses and Feral-ness:
For the recent ‘gathering’ in the uplands of Elan, I witnessed horses being used, in a traditional manner, to help round up the sheep herds for shearing. Also, in these high moorlands, there are small groups of semi-feral horses roaming widely. In the short atmospheric video (HWS) I featured some of these animal residents. The role of horses in the Côa Valley is somewhat different. Over the past ten years they have become one of the cornerstones of the rewilding efforts. The need to have roaming large herbivores is key to the ecological restoration strategy. One very important function is the clearing of low-level vegetation or brush that can lead to rapid spread of fire in dry conditions. Ancient breeds have been re-introduced (Sorraia & Garrano) and new water-holes have been excavated to support these herds; this being one of the many interim management interventions needed to shift - hopefully - to a self-supporting functional ecosystem.
(you can lead a horse to water…but…)
Feral-ness is strong, resourceful; adaptable, fluid. Also I'm interested in the wider application of this term ‘feral’. It is associated with rewilding (as in the book, Feral, by George Monbiot), but, arguably, artists also need to be feral - existing both 'inside' and outside’ (the system); both embedded and free. As discussed above, this echoes the nature of artist-residencies - which necessitate integrating insider and outsider perspectives - through collaboration and conversation.
River/waters:
Water, in both its scarcity and abundance is key to the longer-term narratives of these valleys. The core geographical formative processes of are the actions of water. The combination of ice-action, rain-storms and stream/river flows has carved out the terrain over hundreds of thousands of years. Most of my video-sonic works from both Côa and Elan valleys are contemplative reflections on these deep-time dynamics. Small magnitude, short-term erasures (by mist, fog, snow etc), point to much more powerful processes of transformation operating over deep-time. My image-lens gazes over the super-longterm, and suggests that human agency is not predominant, and the cycles of movement of ice, rivers, stone etc. repeatedly erase all superficial layers and patterns - including forests (see below). There are flows too of animal and plant species that predate our emergence on this planet. Many of these species are likely to outlive us humans. This is not to deny that human-caused extinction, and the converse - human nature-protection/conservation - are not of great influence; just that the greater geological ‘flows’ form the meta-narrative of life on earth. As I’ve mentioned, it was abundant water that - 100 years ago - lured the engineers, from the rapidly expanding city of Birmingham, west to the Elan hills, and thus started the current chapter of this dammed landscape.
From Moving Waters to Moving Images:
I have touched on the continuum of waters - across air, clouds, mist, (even miasma), rock-soil-river boundaries and the endless connectivities therein. Similarly, there is a continuum within our bodies (70% water); in our fluids and flesh; in our breath. Droplets, aerosols and mists are very much in public consciousness in these viral times - as are the attempts to contain or filter by means of fabric masks. Whatever the trajectories of these new currents in the affairs of humankind, it is most likely that the moving image (video, film, TV) will remain the premier communication and expressive mode of our time. In my view, the aforementioned Russian film-maker, Andrei Tarkovsky stands out as an apogee, or high-water mark, in this art form, this medium. Water is a repeating and very prominent motif in his films.
Moving Waters - Moving Voices:
Unsurprisingly, water is also central to the creative research and production for my year-long artist-residency (a collaboration with archaeologist, Bárbara Carvalho) in the Greater Côa Valley. For instance, we have a plan to transcribe the year-round data from rainfall and river/stream flows into an original music score for voices. The visual content of a resulting Wild Côa Symphony will also include meditative observations of water influences, spanning nature and culture in this place. There is potential to replicate this 'eco-symphonic' experiment in Elan. The waters are alive with the sound of music…
Moving Waters - Moving Sounds:
Specifically to the Elan Valley, and its water pipeline link to Birmingham, I have initiated a series of experimental sonic works - the Aqueduct Series. The first is online, and the next one is ‘in the pipeline’ - being undertaken as a collaboration with sound artist Nikki Sheth. For this series, the pipeline is both real and imaginary; the concept being that, as well as the one-way water flow, there are sounds that travel and reverberate in both directions - a flow and a counter-flow. And there is interference and mixing of the ambient soundscapes of Birmingham and Elan. These are geopoetic works and open to poetic insertions from elsewhere - in a metaphorical and symbolic mode, as well as the in-situ locative field recordings. Light too could be said to be able to travel through this pipeline - perhaps imagined as a giant fibre-optic conduit! An associated ‘aqueduct’ short film (H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness] contains video+sonics from each end of the pipeline, and from various points along the route, recorded on a challenging field expedition in Sept. 2020. [To be discussed in a follow-up blog]
Fire:
And so to ‘fire’ - a common and persistent theme in these two distant valleys, in diverse ways. Many may have heard of the devastating fires that in recent years have been on the increase in rural Portugal. Some of the cause can be assigned to the build-up of brushwood, as previously mentioned. Blame is also directed at those who establish easily inflamed plantations of exotic Eucalyptus, and also there are instances of arson. As in other parts of the world (perhaps most notably in California and eastern Australia) there are suggestions that the decline in ‘controlled’ planned burnings - as practiced for many centuries - can lead to the eruption of uncontrolled and hugely damaging fires, over longer cycles. In both the Côa and Elan areas, there are traditions of burning ground-cover (heather, bracken, broom etc) to renew grazing lands for the herds of sheep and goats. Clearly there is no right or wrong in this complex issue, and humans must also accept that the elemental earthly forces are sometimes capricious and untameable.
Trees:
Perhaps often overlooked (at least by me) in the landscape, trees, and forests, are among the most ancient residents. In Elan and Côa, the extent of tree communities (‘tree cover’ in the parlance of those who like to measure) is increasing. This is due to ‘abandonment’ of areas by farmers, fencing/exclusion of grazing animals, and some new tree-planting projects. In Elan, lone trees are emerging within the heather, bracken and moss of the wet moor areas, forming the vanguard of new forest expansion. In the next decades, the character of these landscapes will transform substantially. In different ways, both regions are ‘deserts’, and have been described as such. In the case of Elan, one appellation long used has been ‘The Green Desert of Wales’.
"The world does not give us very much now; it often seems to consist of nothing but noise and fear, and yet grass and trees still grow" Hermann Hesse
Grasses:
In most of the discussions about rewilding and biodiversity protection (and extinction), it seems that the humble grasses can get overlooked. For this reason, a lot of my filming in these sites has focussed on grasses - attracted by their play of movement and light. In a more scientific mode, I have been interested to hear of the efforts to control Molinia (Purple Moor Grass) in the Elan Valley area. The expansion of Molinia is linked to drying out of bog areas, and it can in turn exacerbate moorland fires. Trial re-wetting of bogs is being undertaken, but also there is support for the Rhos hay tradition. “Rhos hay is a strongly localised, culturally significant, agricultural activity, traditional to some hill areas of Mid-Wales. The practice involves cutting excess and less palatable (largely overgrown molinia) forage on suitable areas of open hill and using this to make hay for feed or bedding.” https://www.elanvalley.org.uk/about/elan-links/enhancing-nature-and-wildlife/elan-rhos-hay
Comment - Chris Short (CCRI): The expansion of Molinia is a characteristic of many upland areas and the impact is felt in terms of loss of biological diversity and agricultural productivity – basically no one wins as the areas are less attractive for wildlife, livestock and walkers. The causes are contested but it is clear that a different approach is needed, perhaps a blended of local custom and expert knowledge in a shared problem solving forum.
Continuing on the subject of grasses and grasslands, I recall that a central theme of the 2004 best-selling Chinese book Wolf Totem (2004) is the health of the grasslands of Inner Mongolia - on which every other species (including humans) depends. In many ways, it is a tragic tale of destructive human interference, but also an eye-opener into a mode of co-existence that may need to be re-discovered, and re-enacted, if humans are to have much of a future in a thriving biosphere. We live in a time when the limits of human expansionism and exceptionalism are finally being accepted. However, there is a strong current of belief in techno-fixes, technoscience and ‘post-nature’ (and post-human) futures. This anti-ecological thinking is fostered via media, device/game-addiction and indeed an education system that lacks fundamental eco-literacy. And it lacks a sense of, and celebration of, a ‘commons’ - for all humans (not just a portion), and for all species and ecological webs.
On the topic of grazing, bio-abundance and deep-time, pre-history considerations, I turn to the evidence of palaeontology and rock-art. Here we often encounter predators and prey, grazing herds (some differences; some similarities to todays fauna) and hunters. In the Côa Valley, the abundant and impressive rock-art illustrates predominantly a small set of what could be classed as ‘prey’ species (ibex, horses, deer, bovids etc). I am reminded too of Doggerland (now a 'drowned land' off the coast at Orford Ness, Suffolk), where bones of mammoths, elephants etc. have been recovered, echoing the finds at the Welsh cave mentioned previously. The so-called ‘Irish Elk’ (Megaloceros giganteus) is worthy of note, in imagining the wilder prehistory of these lands. A dwarf relative of this ‘giant deer’ (Megaloceros matritensis) was common in Iberia in the Middle Pleistocene and another related species of giant deer (Megaloceros novocarthaginiensis) is found in the Early Pleistocene. In these deep-time ponderings, it’s also interesting to recognise the importance of grasslands to the early evolution of Homo sp.
“The fundamental importance of grasslands may lie in the complexity and heterogeneity they added to the range of habitats available to the early species of the genus Homo.” Reference
The Commons, and ‘here commons everybody’…
“The upland landscape provided the community with pasture for livestock (organised through a pattern of ‘sheepwalks’: areas of grazing reserved for designated flocks); peat (an important fuel into the twentieth century); and estovers. This pattern of landownership and land use went through dramatic changes in the late nineteenth century, when large areas were purchased by Birmingham Corporation for the creation of reservoirs. Birmingham’s purchase created a large new estate – the Elan Valley Estate – replacing common rights with tenancies; whilst those remnants of waste not purchased were put together to form Cwmdeuddwr Common. Though these contiguous lands have different legal status, they remain open and unfenced, and continue to be used as communal hill grazings today.”
http://www.collective-action.info/_CAS_COM_WAL_CwmdeuddwrCommonsManorCourts
Today, the completely fence-less expanse of the Elan Catchment has some of the quality of a huge commons, even if formally not so. On the OS Explorer map, most of the land area of the catchment is shown as ‘Access Land’ - allowing free range beyond the paths and tracks. On a foray uphill to the watershed line high above the artist cottage, I was reminded of former delights taken in free-ranging over many moorlands - in Dartmoor, Bodmin, Lake District - and especially memorably on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland.
Coming back to the topic of ‘The Commons’, it must be said that the Elan catchment also represents a vast appropriation of land and water. As portrayed in the local play, The Valley of Nantgwyllt, by Peter Cox and the Rhayader Young Farmers Group (which I was lucky enough to see live in March 2020), the event was a forceful move by Birmingham Corporation - a compulsory purchase of farms, and a taking over (appropriation) of most of the common land; another invasive force - as were the Romans who bivouaced here at the ‘Roman Camp’ - possibly on their way to erase the residual druidic refuge on Anglesea. Here in the valley, the reverberating echoes of the dam-building are still bitter-tinged, 3 or 4 generations later. Homesteads and hamlets are occasionally revealed when the reservoir water-levels drop. I visited one such location in July 2021, feeling somewhat in archaeological mode - trying to piece together a sparse narrative of place - based on scant footprint-remains of dwelling walls and an old river pier or platform.
So we have a complex tale of loss (in the mountains) and gain (for the industries, people and public health of Birmingham). This theme is another potential resonance between Elan and Côa valleys. One form of ‘commons’ is the ‘kinship’ and entanglement with other species in ecological webs. Thus, ‘commons’ has more connotations than that of human sustenance and agriculture, though that in itself is a rich and still very relevant story. Two recently read books have been Plunder of the Commons (Guy Standing, 2019) and The Book of Trespass (Nick Hayes, 2020) - both dealing with the struggles to maintain ‘commonage’ and access rights, in defiance of appropriation and exclusivity by powerful feudal and oligarchical forces. Over the centuries in the UK, radical movements such as The Diggers and The Levellers resisted but were crushed. Then in the 20th C, the Kinder Scout ‘mass trespass’ created ripples that led to the founding of the openly accessible UK National Parks that exist today. It feels that now, in a time of looming collapse on many registers, there are new weavings and fresh disruptions in the air. Perhaps the ‘detournement’ practices of the radical Situationists can, in some form, be revisited or recovered? ‘Detournement’ was the situationist practice of taking existing cultural elements and diverting them to subvert their meaning - a political practice directed toward a critique of the totality of contemporary society.
“All my life I have seen only troubled times, extreme divisions in society, and immense destruction; I have joined in these troubles.” Guy Debord (Panegyric, 1989)
Thoughts on film, longevity and erasure
Debord used cinematic ‘interventions’ (combining the use of existing images, subtitles and voiceover), and it is/was the very dominance of the cinema as the representation of the ‘society of the spectacle’ that prompted his interventions, and the uncovering of ‘lost utopian moments’. When I use moving-image as an artistic method, there is little chance of disentangling from spectacle - or from technology, even if that were desired. Unlike the Paleolithic Côa Valley rock-art engravers and the poets, sculptors and painters (even photographers) who have sought to express some essences of these places, we film-makers and sound artists are tied to our ‘black boxes’ of technology. We can understand this technology up to a point, but eventually hit the buffers, at some electronic level. And most of us certainly hit the buffers if we seek to make our tools of the trade from scratch. So this is a dependency - not just on others - and on systems, networks, resources, global trade etc. - but arguably a dependency on this specific contemporary moment. This is an era of electronic video-sonics. It wasn’t feasible prior to the 20th C, and who can confidently predict that any of this will be feasible (or even viewable) after the 21st?
…and the future?
I have visited the Memory of Mankind (MOM), deep inside a salt-filled mountain in the Austrian alps - a place which is an expanding repository of human stories, records, mementos, data - all fused into the materials of ceramics and glass. The long term aim is for this to survive for many millennia (even an ambition of 1 million years!). But will this be seen by anybody after this time span?
Here Comes Everybody…The MOM is now a kind of museum-commons in that is globally crowd-sourced and, whilst curated, is also a democratic exercise. And new moves are afoot to capture more image records fused into 1-mm thin ceramic sheets encased in wafer-thing sheets of glass. This is not unlike the the approach and aims of the ‘golden records’ placed on the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes. [Video link: a compilation made for the Heritage Futures project, featuring the Voyager space-probe ‘Golden Record’ and One Earth Message]
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| Ceramic tile deposited in Memory Of Mankind; design A. Lyons |
“Now the future has fused with the past. Are they ready for it?” [from Tarkovsky’s film, Stalker]
Yes, there are many who are convinced that the future is being constructed in the frenzy of Silicon Valley, or in leaps in micro-processor design and AI; even in digital currency and global connectivity; and still again in laboratory-formed ‘meat’. But there are counter-narratives to be found in these seemingly peripheral landscape zones - rewilding and striving areas - seeking new accommodations and fusions between nature and culture; between human and non-human; between protection and extraction; between essential food/livelihoods and a biophilic/Gaian understanding; between shamanic/animistic & creative imaginations. It is perhaps not obvious that these places are all hives of future potential, creative-seeding and rejuvenation. But if we look at them through a kaleidoscope or spectral-prism of ‘wilding’ then we clearly see upwellings in action in all these seemingly peripheral locales.
Counter Narratives, Counter (Hi)stories and Counter Mapping
Maps and common-land are inextricable intwined. One of my first encounters with common-lands was during a creative residency project in 2008-9 - Quantock Dreaming - in the Quantock Hills of Somerset (UK). Here I became enthralled by the densely detailed palimpsests of the still functioning archive of local commons maps.
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| Stills from installation-video works as part of Quantock Dreaming, 2009 |
Above all, maps are instruments of control, even if that control is collective in principle. The practice of 'counter-mapping' has been applied as a critical, anti-colonial, anti-hegemonic geographical method - but ranging through these two river valley catchments, I’m initially drawn not so much to the power dynamics and the politics of place, but more to a collision (and fusion) of past and present experiences that make these places (and countless others of course) into ‘seed-spaces’ where new/novel biophilic futures can be, and are being, nurtured. These experiences can be creatively mapped.
But the ‘counter-map’ is also an expanded poetic map (from different sorts of triangulation), and at the aforementioned Quantock Hills and Colorado River, this is what I attempted to portray through video-sonic means. For me, the idea of ostranenie (a word of Russian origin) is important in this respect. Translated as ‘seeing the familiar in a new light’, this is one of the key features of my artist-in-residence (or an artist-in-dialogue) situations. Duration too is a vital component, because only through slow observation and percolation, absorption, and reflection, can emergent connections be made, with an intuitive and instinctive compass - to other non-site, non-local impulses and associations. It is only via the longue-durée that the enchantment is visible and transmittable - through the glass/mirror darkly (including telescope and microscope methods). But a further necessity is introspective self-reflection, and the journey of the self. This is what Joseph Campbell was addressing - in essence - in his book Creative Mythology, and I’d also refer here to Jung’s symbolic ‘collective unconscious’. Because, for the land-artist, a sense or spirit of place - in addition to sensory perception or ecological engagement - has to be an outer manifestation of an inner world. Arguably, it is only via the interior (the inner bore) that an artist-poet (or a pipeline) can act as a conduit that can reach beyond a rational superficiality.
In this vein, I turn to poetry. Installed outside the visitor centre at the Elan Valley is a monumental bronze statue of the poet Shelley. He (as with Wordsworth and Coleridge in the Quantock Hills) didn’t reside very long in the area, but was inspired and deeply affected by the place (the pre-dammed valley landscape of course). In these ruminations on ‘commons’ I’m poetically linking ‘Here Commons Everybody’ with Shelley - partly via a topical political mantra “For the Many, not the Few” - this deriving from a poem of Shelley’s. [discussed in a previous blog post]
Each of these poets - Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley - is associated now with a somewhat ‘fluffy’ (or anodyne?) Romantic movement - but in their heyday they were all intensely and actively political. Wordsworth & Coleridge were hugely inspired by the French Revolution and (early) Bonapartism. For a long period they were under suspicion and spied-on by the British Government (one individual was referred to by the poets as Spynozy). Coleridge in particular gave public speeches on progressive topics, such as the abolition of slavery. Shelley was expelled from university in Oxford for writing a tome on atheism. He continued through all his (short) life to write political, activist pamphlets and poems addressing topics of justice, equality and state domination.
Today, the novelist and poet José Saramago is associated with the Côa Valley, and in particular with the village of Cidadelhe. Also known for political satire and activism, his writings include a non-fiction account of his travels in Portugal, which featured Cidadelhe, and there was also a reference to the village in his semi-fictional novel about the journey of an elephant (named Solomon) in 1551.
Elan, Côa and beyond
Into these ‘common grounds’ of Elan Valley and the Côa Valley, I am also inserting a few associated landscape settings - Cornwall’s clay-mining lands, the Orford Ness coastal ex-military zone, the ‘model rewilding site’ of Knepp Estate and the ancient sacred landscape of the Avebury area. All of these I have previously encountered in both extended and brief creative explorations. All now become entangled through deliberations on past, present and future modes of living with nature, with Gaia, with magic, wonder, poetics and a biophilic mindset. In different ways, these places are on the peripheries. They can be seen as edge-lands, Terrain Vagues [wastelands], but also in the process of becoming new nodes of alternative future-oriented paths - characterised by much more reciprocity with multi-species ‘kin’.
Involving: multi-stories; multi-senses; multi-stranded; multi-vocal; multi-flows; multi-sources; multi-elemental; multi-symbolic; multi-flavoured; multi-instrumental; multi-maps; multi-currents; multi-cultural; multi-heritages; multi-futures; multi-spaces; multi-cyclical…
Finally…
Circling back to horses, for this is a big focus in Elan, Côa and elsewhere, I’m reminded of the origin of the art-movement term ‘dada’…deriving from ‘hobby-horse’ (Austrian German). The “Dada-ists’ were responding to the trauma and crisis of WW1 with a counter-current of ‘nonsense’, surrealism and juxtaposition. The play The Valley of Nantgwyllth addressed the trauma of submergence and community obliteration with a sensitive story of personal loss, but also one not without the inclusion of the mythical, fantastical ‘Bugwans’. Just as the 'Fool’ character in King Lear, The Tarot, Kokopelli (who I encountered at the Grand Canyon), the shamans discussed in David Abram’s book The Spell of the Sensuous, dealing with trauma and rupture does seem to benefit from such intermediaries - able to rise and float above the pain and offer some unexpected healing - often through performative disruption; a kind of an ‘un-commoning', unsettling, making strange; a mode of riddles; voices and poetics that say what can almost not be said.
