The Hills Are Alive

The Hills Are Alive...

[Adapted from published catalogue text] In Autumn 2020, invited by Artefact Projects in Stirchley, Birmingham, I set out to weave together field recordings (video and sonic) from two places - the Elan Valley in Wales and River Rea trail that passes through Stirchley.

Long Exposure

Some early writing from an artist residency with Elan Links, in the Elan Valley, Wales. This upland landscape is dominated by a cluster of reservoirs - some over 100 years old - built to supply water to the city of Birmingham, in the midlands of England.

The first opportunity to share work emerging from this residency has been provided by the 'Ten Acres of Sound' festival organised by the Artefact co-operative in Stirchley, Birmingham.

This is an entirely appropriate setting, as the purpose of the creation of the Elan Valley reservoir/dam/pipeline system in the early 1900s was to supply water to the rapidly growing city of Birmingham. Fittingly, my installation is hosted by the Birmingham Brewing Company, emphasising this watery connection and dependency. Under the title 'Also listening with my eyes', there is a programme of six short 'video-sonic poems' on-show. These are works-in-progress from the Elan artist residency. Below I have extracted text and images from the exhibition:

Canyon Correspondences Revisited

Due to a technical (hosting) meltdown elsewhere, I'm attempting to retrieve and piece together some remnants of a 'creative diary' - a rescue mission. These writings were originally assembled during, and soon after, a period as artist-in-residence at the Grand Canyon (Arizona) in 2011.
(Below is a combination of all the entries into a single blog-post; parts of the entries are currently missing. Perhaps the time has come to pick up some of these old threads?)

Water Everywhere?

Working with water; Working with tides (Bristol, Jan. 2014)

The year begins with a return to the topic of the endless dialogue between water and land; between the sea and the shore. Flooding is much in the news - along with mounting evidence of increasingly energetic couplings of weather events and rising sea-levels (including tides). There has been some very interesting coverage of the 'island village' of Muchelney in Somerset. Accompanying the typical deluge of media coverage of these latest floods (river and coastal), there is also to be found some more considered public discussion of strategic solutions - aside from the stock political/techno-fix response of "we must invest in more defences".

Submerged (Drowned Lands) - Sources

Moving from the 'Dylan pilgrimage' location at the Aust Ferry jetty to some poetic words of his:

"Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’  
(1964)

Submerged (Drowned Lands)

Chew Valley Lake, July 2013

Submerged (Drowned and Dammed Lands)

[aka The Almanac of the Submerged]

Environmental artist Antony Lyons is working with others, including Professor Steve Poole (UWE-Bristol/Regional History Centre, Bristol) on an Arts Council England funded initiative, involving creative fieldwork, community conversations/voices and research at a number of locations. The first phase of the project runs from Spring 2013 to late 2014.

The approach involves a creative and poetic response to a variety of landscape and cultural settings that are affected by changing water-levels. The unifying theme is that the waters come, the waters inexorably rise. Then everything is changed (and the waters recede...)

Dammed (Damned) Landscapes

Dammed (Damned) Landscapes 

During the slow assembly of a new publication based on two landscape-residency projects, there has bubbled up the memory of an aerial photograph, from 1946, (shown above) of the farmhouse now ‘drowned’ beneath the Hawkridge reservoir near the Quantock Hills, Somerset. This was a topic I briefly explored - and put aside - during the Quantock Dreaming investigations. But it now returns, in a changed and charged way, as I become aware of the many drowned/dammed/damned landscapes that have featured in my creative projects and residencies. It seems now an inescapable thread - one that is destined to form the warp for my present audio-visual weavings. I am working on a film/sound piece as a stepping stone to a more complex installation. Some of the far-flung landscapes in question (or currently under investigation) are: The Colorado River at the Grand Canyon; The Alqueva Dam and the (former) Guadiana River Valley in Portugal; the aforementioned Quantock reservoir; and a nod also to the Colorado Delta, Mexico - not dammed (but possibly damned?), but affected by the 100 or so dams upriver on the Colorado.

more on this very soon...