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?)

Autumn Leaves

A long overdue addition to the blogosphere - so this one will be a time-spanning assemblage. Working back from the recent past:

I'm on a train travelling through the birch forests of Sweden. My thoughts are drawn to some filmic memories and resonances. Strongest is the echo of Elem Klimov's powerful and troubling Come and See, which does not have a Scandinavian setting - but the atmosphere of the landscape feel somehow similar. Another of Klimov's films is Farewell, set amongst a Soviet community whose island-homes and lands are soon to be submerged by a huge reservoir project. There is a powerful theme of (loss of) deep place-attachment running through the film - a work that is inhabited by the spectral trace a different loss - the death of Larisa Shepitko (Klimov's wife) who was part-way through making this film when she and her film-crew were killed in a car-crash.

A Long View

With Glastonbury Festival now kicking off, it seems appropriate to give an brief update on the creative research project - Submerged (Drowned Lands). Recently, I presented some early findings at a workshop on an island in the Wadden Sea (Netherlands). These relate to a collaborative exploration of the dynamic and contested landscape of the Somerset Levels, its waters and 'lost islands'. Glastonbury Tor (pictured above) is an ever-present landmark throughout this area...

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.

Occupy the Intertide? part2

Tide + Time, NOVA (Lyons), 2006

My presentation (of a project proposal) at the recent interdisciplinary Emotional Geographies conference in the Netherlands was titled:

Dreaming of Sabrina
Geopoetic Possibilities In The Estuary  - A deep-mapping almanac

The 'estuary' in this case is the Severn (aka Sabrina, or Hafren). The inclusion of 'almanac' - a word derived from Arabic/Greek sources meaning 'of the moon, or month' helps express the dominant lunar-tidal process in this water-body, with the second-largest tidal-range in the world. The map below shows the main settlements adjoining the estuary...

Occupy The Intertide?

[An Almanac of the Submerged]
June 18: I am reminded by the always insightful Open Democracy that today is Magna Carta Day, recognising the event that - to some extent - brought the monarchy to account in England. (Interestingly, the document was signed on a 'water meadow' - a liminal space between land and water, and a landscape very pertinent to some of my current research). At the signing, a companion document was The Charter of the Forest (Carta de Foresta). In contrast to the Magna Carta, which dealt with the rights of barons, this apparently provided some real protections for the common people against the abuses of the aristocracy. 

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...)