I have just uploaded my offering for the watermarks project to be shown as part of the showreel at the Highlands and Islands Edge Conference coming up in December on the 15th & 16th.
This film has been made for a project called Watermarks – organised by Walking The Land Group. It will be screened as part of a showreel at the Highlands & Islands Conference in December 2021.
The film shows a video rendering of a birds eye view of the Arlingham peninsula, which is on the other bank of the Severn River to where I live. The Google logo is compulsory – and it also makes a comment on how we relate to landscape – we view it virtually, quite often via satellites, before we experience it. It keeps us at a distance from the reality of the lived experience of place.
By 2041, if predictions are correct, most of the Peninsula will be under water. Hills will be islands. I want to engage in conversations about the future, if we can imagine it we can maybe work together to prevent it, or reduce impact. I am writing and making work about this, prospecting for a future landscape, visualising what the view might look like then.
This is a sensitive issue to discuss and many feel it is scaremongering and unlikely. It is not possible to provide scientifically accurate facts, but there are many projections available online that have been programmed from statistics of rising sea levels, increased rainfall, raised temperatures that dry the land, followed by flash flooding that the can cannot absorb. We don’t need to be convinced about those things – we are seeing it regularly on the world news – huge fires devastating forests; floods bringing countries to a halt due to strain on the infrastructure of road and rail; temperatures rising steadily causing droughts and effecting food production. I could go on but surely I don’t need to, it is obvious.
I have just read an article by Ben Okri in the Guardian. He speaks eloquently of what is needed from creatives: “The ability to imagine what we dread most is an evolutionary tool that nature has given us to transcend what we fear. I do not believe that imagining the worst makes it happen. Imagining the worst might be one of the factors that makes us prevent it from happening. “
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Carolyn Black 