Ramble 1 - Week 2

A re-visit and  re-think week.  So that shooting could take place and a kind of refining or de-cluttering of ideas that didn't fit, or were too complex. Working fast means that you have to acknowledge quite early on that not everything is going to make it into the final work. It just can't! 

But we still found time to meander.  To visit Wittgensteins grave, to see a pale blue butterfly, to get lost (again), to film MANY hedges, to wander around the Botanic gardens, to find a golden field. 

Map reading with Lucy, Photo credit: Becky Edmunds

We also found an old well-used recreation ground near to where we were staying and had a good chat there with someone who worked for the council as a litter picker but had a secret passion for botany.  He spotted us eyeing up the elderberries and thought we might be foraging. I have to say, one of the things I've noticed so far on this project is that there seems to be no trouble meeting people.  Just stare at, photograph or poke about in a hedge for a while and soon people will be asking you what you're doing.  It's quite a good way to begin conversations...and people generally have a bit of information to impart once we've explained.  Either that or they laugh and wish us luck.  I really like this aspect of the work...The ridiculous way it sounds when we describe what we're doing: "oh we're just filming this hedge." and the way more often than not it provokes the sharing of some nugget of information, or a story, or a tip...

Hedge shots

 Anyway, by the end of this week we had decided we would definitely be making 4 cine-poems for small-screens (telephone size) and that these would exist as both an installation AND something to be watched alone.  We really wanted them to be downloadable (so people could keep them) but couldn't find an easy way to make this possible which was a real surprise to me... (I thought it would be as easy as making a podcast, but there we go, it seems it isn't).

So that's how we ended week 2.  With a set of decisions to explore 4 territories and lots of images and footage, but still a need to now do the 'making/knitting/sewing together of them all.  We also decided I needed to do some writing - so that was to be my main task for week 3, whilst Becky and Lucy each had to start editing and sourcing some archive footage...

Our four territories were: 

Elizabeth Brightwen (the original inspiration behind the project as a whole due to me stumbling across one of her books entitled "Rambles with Nature Students" last year).

August (the month we were working in - the 'site'/space).

Thistle-down (Its abundance and softness - the produce of a really spiky plant/weed).

Boundaries/Edges/Private Land (something we kept encountering).

These all also had connections with each other and when we drew all of these out they became a kind of webbed map for us to follow / get lost in (this time in a good way)...