Ecological Spirals and Mineral Journeys

Ecological Spirals and Mineral Journeys - featuring parts of my contribution to a new book by António Monteiro.

'Not Circles, but Spirals: 4-D landscape flows and nature-culture entanglements in the Côa Valley, Portugal'

There is a slow, quiet unraveling at work across some interior landscapes of southern Europe...

ZONE ROUGE RED ZONE

Zone Rouge / Red Zone (Back Forest Reflections)

For the first of a series of posts about my latest film-poem project, I am sharing a short reflection by the commissioner of the work, Dr. Esther Breithoff (Birkbeck, University Of London). Esther is the Principal Investigator on the research project, Ecologies of Violence.

Still from 'Zone Rouge'

Ecologies of Violence uses archaeological, historical and ethnographic research as well as vitalist/‘more-than-human’ frameworks to critically investigate how landscapes remember past violence against both culture and nature, and how these social, material and biological scars persist in...

Coa Valley Ecological Art

Wild Côa Symphony. A 1-year artist residency project with the Endangered Landscapes Programme & Rewilding Portugal. Summer 2022 update. 

[Extracted from a news article on the ELP website, and including personal reflections from primary creative collaborator on Wild Côa Symphony, Bárbara Carvalho, creative ethnographer, Portugal]

Imaginative weavings of landscape, ecologies and communities:
Working closely with local communities in the Côa Valley, the ecological artist, Antony Lyons, and public archaeologist, Bárbara Carvalho, have been exploring this impressive riverine landscape

How Wild Is My Valley

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’

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.

Conversations In Chaos

Third blog post in a series which revisits the Sensitive Chaos project conducted at the coastal site of Orford Ness (Suffolk, UK). Excerpts from 'conversation walks' with some of the main participants are copied here. These are transcribed from audio recordings which were originally presented on cassette tape as part of an exhibition and installation trail in Summer 2019.

 

Duncan K.: So now we come to our Zybolian ruined civilisation. What on earth were these forms? They resonate with things like burial mounds. As if they were just built as monuments. And that is what they look like you know, big longbarrows,

Foraging on the shingle shore

Orford Ness artist residency. First of a series of blogs revisiting findings and reflections from the Sensitive Chaos project, 2019.

Prompted by some recent requests and discussions, I have assembled imagery and notes from parts of the Sensitive Chaos installation trail. Unlike the project's video-sonic works (NebulousNess and Blue Danube Redux) and the photographic series (Lethality & Vulnerability), the elements featured here have not been documented elsewhere. More broadly, I was asked by a cultural heritage researcher to reflect on the artist residency and the ways in which I interacted with the specifics of the site (a former military testing area), the controversial strategies of heritage management (by the National Trust and others) and the legacy of a long pattern of artist involvements with this unique place. Some of these general reflections are included here.

The image above was taken at one of the observation windows on the top floor of an all-timber, eight-sided building called the 'Black Beacon'.

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:

Sensitive Chaos

Sensitive Chaos - poster
Exhibition at Orford Ness, 2019

Poster production with the assistance of the Letterpress Collective, Bristol.
www.nationaltrust.org.uk/orford-ness-national-nature-reserve/features/sensitive-chaos-on-orford-ness

Landscapes in Limbo part3

Poster for Limbo Landscape Lab (2018)

With special thanks to:

Nick and Ellen (Letterpress Collective, Bristol)

Adrian Utley (Musician-Composer)

Landscapes in Limbo part2

Geopoetic reflections, exhibition notes and images from the Limbo Landscape Lab

An exhibition at Wheal Martyn Museum, Cornwall, UK (July-Nov. 2018) 

by Antony Lyons, Heritage Futures senior creative fellow.

Assembling human and non-human stories in a transforming landscape

#Transformation theme of Heritage Futures

“It is the children born now who will see if
we humans can turn it around…can re-balance?
It’s not us. We’ve messed it up.
They will fix it…or they won’t.
I would like to be around in 75 years’ time to see 
which way it will go; what they do; what is done to them
…but I won’t be there”
(a worker at Wheal Martyn, Aug 2018)


a) DEEP-MAPPING in the mists of DEEP-TIME

"This film is time-compressed. I recorded it - hand-held - for over 30 minutes, from the shelter of my trusty mobile studio/campervan. The circumstance was happenstance, serendipitous. The occasion presented itself after many visits, over the course of a year, in the environs of the Sky Tip mound of mining waste outside St Austell in Cornwall - the centre of the long-established industry of kaolin mining. The Sky Tip has slowly, yet inexorably, inserted itself on my radar, and also now it is the focus for a project by a group of photography students - from the local Poltair School - with whom I’m working.

Revealing Hidden Waters

To mark World Water Day 2017, I'm assembling a few words and images to offer glimpses into a current watery research project that I'm involved with, as part of the NOVA Creative Lab. The project is called Towards Hydrocitizenship, and this blog post looks in particular at one of the site-based case studies - Water City Bristol. The overarching theme for the Bristol study is hidden/forgotten waters.

Salt of the Sea - Salt of the Earth

I've received two messages...about salt...

One message is from Vancouver; a weather report from a friend:
Weather wise, we got another huge snowfall on Saturday and another expected today or tomorrow. Vancouver has used 7000 tonnes of salt to melt ice so far, whereas most winters they only use 1000 tonnes. Salt shortage everywhere prompted Vancouver to hand out free salt on Wednesday but it was gone in minutes and people who had been lining up for it left disappointed.

Return of The Aliveness Machines

Posters produced for exhibition at RGS conference in London next week. A platform for a new development phase of The Aliveness Machines - first seen in Devon in 2012. A NOVA research project.

Eco-Art Dialogues

 Revegetated clay waste-lands, Cornwall, 2013

Some preparatory musings, questions and themes - prepared in advance of my a-n Re:View conversations with Glasgow-based environmental artists, Tim Collins and Reiko Goto. Our time together will include a visit to their current main field-based project at the Black Wood of Rannoch. Our continuing dialogues will be documented via an a-n Artists Talking blog.

A Myriorama of Oblique Strategies

View from the freshly shored up rail-line at Dawlish, en-route to Falmouth

The photo here was taken on a trip to a seminar/ 'melting pot' at the Environment and Sustainability Institute in Cornwall, where I recently presented some glimpses (or a myriorama) of a drifting creative journey through the realms of science and eco-art, towards some substantial research-based collaborations.

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 - Transgression (The Rising Waters)

Submerged - Transgression (Rising Waters)

[The Almanac of the Submerged]
Following one strand of the Submerged (Drowned Lands) project, I have embarked on a film-making adventure, kicking off with some shoreline conversational walks with Iain Biggs. The title and theme for this experimental filmic journey is Transgression (Rising Waters). A first iteration will be screened at a conference in Bristol in November this year - the international conference of the Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA).
"How can the term transgression stimulate invention and generate new insight into modes of design practice and concepts of power, politics and space?... How can the notion of transgression offer new readings of buildings and space?"

Water, Water-Bodies, Water-Ways

...and the poetics of vital matter

photo: a lyons

"You can't keep water down"

This comment bubbled up in discussion with Dr. Owain Jones at his PLaCE seminar talk last month (the final instalment of the long-running PLaCE Research speaker sessions).  Over the coming weeks and months, I'm aiming to write a detailed blog-post on what could be termed the 'geopoetics' of each of the materials woven in to my intermedia installation for the recent Tramontana Festival 2013. Water is the topic of the first of these.

Sao Macário Mountain Dreaming

                                                                                                                                                           an intimate space for water and women, in Sul

Sacred Waters - territories of timeless whispers and serenity

"But I know of places where there are stones
That speak to me" 
A. M. Pires Cabral, December, from Arado (2009), Portugal.

I recently completed a short rural artist residency in the remote mountains of northern Portugal, supported by the unique and inspiring Binaural organisation, and commissioned by the Tramontana Festival. Whilst situated within the realm of sound-art/intermedia, the exploration was, for me, primarily landscape-based; fossicking, turning over stones in search of some enduring essences, and intimate relationships between people and place. The Tramontana theme for 2013 revolved around 'divine/religious/sacred' connections. Responding to this, the quest was to uncover, and respond to, people's sensuous and deeply-felt connections to this land, especially those relating to pathways, pilgrimage, journeys and water.