Compassion / Competition / Cooperation

This is a good question:

"Do we choose to treat each other and all other creatures with compassion, and approach the world as a whole with humility and reverence? Or do we treat each other as competitors to be done down, and other creatures and the fabric of the earth as resources to be turned into commodities, and assume that we really know what's what and how to do whatever it is we want to do, and take the world by the scruff of the neck and beat it into shape?" Colin Tudge A Different Way of Looking at The World, pg4 Earthlines (Issue 6)

Also in the same article, Colin explains that in Victorian times 'fittest' meant most apt, so Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' takes on a slightly different meaning. He goes on to say:

"The general idea of natural selection says nothing at all - absolutely nothing! - about the means by which some creatures become more successful than others. Sometimes to survive, we must indeed fight, quite literally. But most of the time the best survival tactic by far is to cooperate. Indeed Earthly life itself clearly arose as a cooperative. We have been given to understand of late that life is in effect just a Game played by DNA: as Richard Dawkins said in The Selfish Gene, we (and oak trees and mushrooms) are just vehicles for DNA. But DNA is a highly evolved molecule that could not have risen at all except in a living environment. That is, there was life - of a very sophisticated kind - before there was DNA." pg7

He goes onto describe DNA as The librarian, "helping metabolic cycles replicate themselves accurately" and emphasises that DNA isn't "the boss".

"Our whole bodies are, in short, are a masterclass in co-operativeness. Competition is an inescapable fact of life. But cooperativeness is its essence." pg8

What a relief to read something like this at last.

Call me crazy but it makes me feel like I can breathe again (for a moment).

Sussex Wildlife Trust's (unintentionally topical) donation box

Ramble 2 - A walk and a meeting

Last week, introduced through Scott I met local artist and composer Adam Ronchetti.  Adam is a bit of an all rounder - a painter, a sound artist, a sculptor, a musician. I visited him in his studio under The Loft which appears to be a hive of lots of good things.  Various types of artists are housed there and there is a lovely space on the next floor up where cinema nights and workshops and events seem to happen.  It was great to be shown round.

Adam and I will go on a short walk together next week and see what unfolds. He is also one half of Hickory Signals and perhaps there might be some room for them to actually play/sing within this Ramble...

After meeting Adam dusk was falling and I had some time to kill before my next appointment, so I decided to go on a walk towards a lighthouse I have spied a couple of times from public transport.  I never made it.  It turns out it is quite a long walk and follows a road heavily laden with traffic at around 5pm!  But it did take me past the skate park. A small strip of land, nestled in between lots of roads, bustling with skaters.  The sound of their skate-boards hitting the tarmac seemed like prime 'foraged sound material' so I recorded them for a short while. The skate-park, reminded me of the horses that are kept under an intersection of roads just outside of Shoreham... It was a surprising sight the first time I encountered them, all stood there in a field directly under a motorway. But there is grass there I guess, so in a way it makes sense.

Scott Smith's Halloween handiwork

I wonder what the horses make of the traffic though?

And us, looping around and around the roundabout?

Lots of things seem to converge in Shoreham by Sea, roads, an airport, the sea, the downs, the river... Space is used in interesting ways... The marina, the boat community, the beach, the shops...  It's definitely not boring.

Even at dusk on Halloween when walking alongside a traffic jammed road towards a lighthouse you never reach...

Ramble 2 - The bells The bells

Rings, loops and double-backs...

Ramble 2 has led me towards visiting two bell-ringing groups in Shoreham by Sea over the last two weeks.  I attended two practice sessions. One with the St Mary De Haura Bell Ringers (of the large variety ie. change ringing in a church) and the second with the St Mary De Haura handbell ringers.  Both groups were really welcoming and I even got to join in and play some handbells. I played lower C and D and was reminded that I can in fact read music, something that I had somehow forgotten.

It goes without saying that he two experiences were completely different.

With the large bells, after being let into St Mary De Haura's after hours and climbing the winding staircase, the group stood in a circle and pulled on ropes (the bells themselves weren't visible). They pulled the bells in various patterns which were called out to them by one person.  Names of patterns that have stayed with me were 'Cambridge' and 'Yorkshire', which were bellowed out above the sound of the bells, but there were a lot more.  In between sessions the ropes were tied up - so feet don't get caught up in them I presume... The sound and the patterns were incredible, plus also the simple act of watching a team of people work together and move in the same manner in order to produce an ordered sound - there was so much choreography involved!

After the session, one of the members sent me a leaflet called '20 questions and 19 answers about English Church Bells' and in his note to me said "what other organisations outside of bellringing offer free training and use of £100,000's equipment in beautiful historic settings and a life-time's worth of skill progression?"...well... exactly...  It definitely seemed to be keeping those involved fit and happy!  I was lucky enough to record the session and hope to use some of fragments in the sound installation I now know I am working towards producing.

The handbell practice was equally intriguing. The bells themselves are covetable objects and sound beautiful.  The group stood in more of a horseshoe shape and played from music as opposed to memory.  Everyone wore white gloves and some of the group played several bells at once.  Again, it was great to witness (and experience) a group working together to produce a particular sound or set of sounds.  At the end of the night the bells were packed away into orange velvet drawstring bags and black boxy cases - something I also of course enjoyed seeing.  Because I was playing in this session (which was a surprise to me) I didn't manage to record, but intend to return another time to do so...

Somehow, all of this is coming together. I have a sense of what the story-telling part of Ramble 2 might be about and I'm going to start writing some text and threads of thoughts tomorrow...

Ramble 2 - Sussex Hedgerow Inventory Project / Marlipins / A Shoreham boat

Three things I haven't reported back on as yet that I definitely want to catch thoughts on here:

1) A visit to meet Peter Challis who runs the Sussex Hedgerow Inventory Project

3) A visit to Marlipins Museum

2) A conversation I had with Hamish on his boat

The Hedgerow Inventory project is based at Woods Mill Nature Reserve where Sussex Wildlife Trust is, so of course before and after meeting with Peter I had a good look around.  I was surprised to come across a mossy stone figure reclining in amongst the grasses, a bird watching hut (which I sat in for a while recording sound) and some water droplets caught in a web.

The conversation with Peter was really informative, I picked up lots of information about Sussex in general and got to have a good look at all of the materials Peter has produced for logging Hedgerows and the species that they are made up of.  There were lots of lovely phrases (as there always are when you meet someone who is in an expert in another field to that of your own) such as "character areas" and "intact species rich".  For the last ten years Peter has actually been allocating every hedgerow in Sussex a unique number whenever the species it contains has been logged (with help from information provided by volunteers). I of course asked if any hedgerows in Shoreham by Sea had been examined and we found only one on the system. Hedge 1723.  I'm quite taken with the idea of hedge 1723 and am pretty sure it will make it into Ramble 2 in some way. 

After meeting Peter I looked around Marlipins Museum.  It's a treasure trove of information about Shoreham and stuffed with artefacts.  I lingered around a Lighthouse lamp for quite a while, the four sets of cats bones which had been found in the walls/floors of the building, some ships in bottles (always amazing), a statuesque figurehead, some ticket halves and a china spoon with a delicate design on it. And this really isn't all...but I don't want to make another long list, just record that I'd visited and will more than likely go back...

Come to think of it bones are becoming a bit of a theme. The museum has on display the skeleton of a woman, with little known about who she was (if my memory serves me correctly). In fact, now I know I'll be going back, just to read about her again...

Anyway, bones came to mind again as Hamish has quite a collection of found animal skeletons which I was able to look at when I visited him on his boat. We talked about the wishbone in a crow (amongst many other things) and the span of its wings. This was an interesting conversation as for me it connected back to Eliza Brightwen - the original inspiration behind this project - who was a great collector of bird skulls... There was lots more that was of interest in the chat I had with Hamish, but there's no time to report it all here... Suffice it to say, there's a theme emerging for me for sure out of this ramble:

Rings, Loops and Double-backs... 

Ramble 2 has begun

I've only spent the eqivalent of about 3 days on this Ramble so far and already my head is brimming with thoughts...  Perhaps because the things I've done in that space of time are:

Last week
Travelled to Shoreham-by-Sea to meet musician Scott Smith.
Went for a ramble to look at the Shoreham area and discuss how we could work together.
Stumbled into an intriguing conversation about sound and listening and the ear...
Decided that a way forward would be for me to 'forage' for sound.
Had a brief look around some of Shoreham's charity shops (aaah objects).
Had a little 'equipment' lesson (editing software and how to use the recording device).

This week
Travelled to Portslade to begin a week long residency at Blast Theory studios (which is close to Shoreham).
Met with Ruth Dudman (the person who runs Undercurrent where I am also artist in residence for the duration of Ramble #2).
Undertook some research into portable speakers (there will be some in this piece I suspect).
Met with Chris Platt at his allotment (gardener/artist) and veritable mine of knowledge about the local area, plants and wildflowers, then went for a wander together (South Downs, River Bank, The Rec, Sea-shore)
Arranged more local meetings.
Became embroiled in reading these two very interesting pieces about nature writing:

Is our love of nature writing bourgeois escapism? (by Stephen Poole)
In defence of Nature writing (by Richard Mabey)

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There's almost too much swimming around in my mind to articulate here, plus more to see and experience this week...

However, just to catch some of the ideas quickly somewhere here's a bit of a list of ideas / thoughts / phrases I don't want to forget.  It's quite long:

Scott's 'Golden ears', Foraging for sound, the flora and fauna growing inside of us, human nature, careful planting versus 'wildness', how many empty lager tins you see in hedges, The life-span of a cherry tree, what Poplars and Ash look like at age 20, wind-pruning, badgers apparently bury their dead, a mushroom fairy ring (which having since read the folklore about I'm glad I didn't actually step into),  a huge bank of edible plants of various types (nettle, dead nettle, yellow mustard, burdock, fat hen), the gorgeous brightness of a dog rose gall (concealing the steadily growing larvae inside),  a dead bird with its eyes plucked out, Marsh Samphire (glasswort), the purple flower of Devil's bit scabious, wild oregano (introduced by the romans), the weald inducing thorns and starchy red berries of Hawthorn, the spidery roots of an artichoke, how disconnected a lot of people are with what their food constitutes (including me), how recent the phenomenon of supermarkets are, GM food, natural hybrids versus man-made hybrids, the curve of the river, the journey between an alottment - a rivers edge - the sea, how salt burns plants, the old rec - which used to be a rubbish tip, (which used to be under-water), teeny-tiny small seeds on the tip of a finger, the thistle-like Knapweed, Burdock seeds (the inspiration for velcro), lovely white Meadowsweet (a bit like cow-parsley), Lady's Mantle (and its relationship to bleeding), Mugwort, caterpillar hair stings, the poisonous nature of a large plant that I can no longer remember the name of (or what it looks like - gulp)...What Blackthorn actually looks like, a memorial to a catastrophe, a hedge near a beach hut, plants rooting themselves in sand, a weed is just 'a plant in the wrong place' and 'The South Downs created by Africa' (Chris).

And breathe...

Ramble 1 - Week 3

Description at Cambridge Botanic Gardens

Glimpse of a laid hedge

The week where everything reduces down. Where all of the possibilities that the Ramble could accommodate, where all of the directions it could go decide to go in, gradually get smaller and smaller, until there it is the 'thing' you've made.

Or should I say the four things you've made:

• August
• Fur and Feather
• Feast for Goldfinches
• On Considering The (English) Hedge

Ramble 1 has resulted in four cine-poems of quite short lengths (between approx 1 minute 40 and 4 and a half minutes), and it's all quite exciting.

We've decided not to release them (like birds into the night) until they've been installed somewhere - and this is what we're working out now...how to install them.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Week 3 began with me writing.  Untangling words and then running them past straybird.  Then once these were fixed we recorded them with Duncan Whitley (another great artist). Next they were edited and 'cleaned up' and then the video editing commenced, drafts were shared, commented on, re-shared and then final edits were made. 

I'm making it sound easy (and in some ways it was), but it was also pretty full on. 

Phew.

All, however, I am pleased to say worth it though, as the results are great... 

Something we realised along the way was that every comment we heard or made to each other, or watched or shared or experienced, ended up being absorbed into what we produced.  Even down to a label-maker I mentioned I had at one point that then became useful for producing the title for On Considering... Even down to continually getting lost... Even down to finding a cracked egg-shell under a tree...

Sometimes it can feel like you're doing nothing but you're not...you're amassing knowledge and making decisions and creeping closer to whatever it is you're actually making....and...then hey presto it's done. It can be surprising. It can be more than the sum of its parts. It can be something very different to what you imagined. But you get there. Becky reminded us of something Jonathan Burrows says - that the piece you're going to make, is the piece you're going to make.  No point trying to predict what it will be, or trying to be strategic. It is what it is. It'll be what it's going to be.

Which reminds me of another thought I like that seems relevant here, by Corinne Julius in Crafts Magazine:

"I'm a complete nomad now. I don't belong to a tribe. I'm not a crafts person. I'm not a potter. I have no allegiance to a particular skill. Bigger isn't always better. It's not to do with scale. Scale can be a red herring. It's to do with feeling that you are using all your skills and not forcing it. It's appropriate now. It's maturity." p51 Crafts no.240

I love the comment about scale and I love the idea of being a nomad - between disciplines, between skills and of finally having the courage (or maturity) to simply follow an idea...wherever that takes you.

Which then made me think of this, sent to me from my dear friend Caitlin Newton Broad, way back when I first started making work:

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Dear Sheila

This is by Anne Carson and she is referring to the myth of Ariadne's Thread and the Minotaur - the woman who in order not to get lost in the labyrinth, trying to save her lover I believe, painstakingly leaves a trail of thread like a spider to help her on her way back out...

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Save what you can, Emily.

Save every bit of thread.
Have you a little chest to put the Alive in?
            (Emily Dickinson letter 233 to Thomas Higginson)

One of them may be
By Cock, said Ophelia
            (Emily Dickinson letter 268 to Thomas Higginson)

the way out of here.

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Love Caitlin.

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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)...