earth too easily

crumbles cracks collapses

fissures fragments fall

sensing seeking solace

sing sigh saturate

place pigment paper

inscribed imbued time

tumbles traces tracks  

present presence past

return retrieve remember

earth atmosphere water

The Earth Crumbles film, and the words above, were created in response to a First Friday Walk as part of Walking The Land. Eva Rune and I first worked together when she gave me permission to use a kulning song for When You Call I Shall Come. Our working relationship has developed over the year and Eva also participates in the online Walking the Land Sessions. Our landscapes are merged by this film. The first image is the soundtrack map of the song she sings overdrawn by me – from a landscape photo of where Eva walked on the day I made the film. Synchronicity.

Every time I visit the Garden Cliff – a triassic land information – I explore it with different media. It is rock, obviously, as the cliff has been there for many million years, and when the rock-face drops pieces onto the ‘beach’ below they look like stone. But pick them up and you realise how fragile all of this is.

This rock

This cliff

This planet

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The rubbings I am making with graphite putty have allowed me to take home a record of the surfaces. Photos and films help me to understand it visually, as does drawing. Holding a rick in my hand and feeling it gives another point of reference. The ease of collapse in my fingers alarmed me. I am sensing the history through the material. So many things have changed since they first formed, yet other thing are seemingly untouched.

When I heard Eva’s song my immediate thought was that it’s melancholic tone was similar to the aesthetic of my film. And that she also sense her home landscape, which is re-presented through her voice.

It is important to me that my presence, and inevitable impact, on the place, was evident. My hands, my foot, my performative actions. I am present in the film not just as me, but as all people that mark the land, erode it, inscribe it. Correspondences by Tim Ingold is currently informing my work. I love the way he writes, opening up new ways of thinking and understanding the condition of our ecology. And the part that humans play in both the making and destruction of the planet.

Please visit Vimeo to see the full film.

https://vimeo.com/548044647