Fin de siècle trajectories and industrial heritage trails. Representation of the Mine from Poland to England, aesthetic and transient histories.
Since the decline of heavy industry and pit closures following the 1984-5 miners strike the discourses surrounding the abandoned mine have incorporated theories of post-industrial space and ‘ruin’. Ways of representing the mine have changed dramatically as questions have been raised surrounding the heritage status and preservation of these spaces, which have in turn become commodified and re-populated by heritage industry tourists. It is significant that the aesthetic recapitulations or representations of these spaces are also coloured heavily by the shifts in the traversal of the landscape; movements from one industrial site to another previously provoked by the world wars, the industrial revolution or the wandering impulses of Guildsmen or migrants are now overlaid by the mapped, documented and curated trails of the ‘European Route of Industrial Heritage’ leading tourists from one disused site of labour to another. Alongside or as counterpoint to these trails, my research addresses other more obscure or overlooked ways of encountering and representing these post-industrial spaces, finding positions from which to reflect upon and untangle the Coal mine in particular as heavily laden signifier of a socio-political mythology of mourning. From these positions the research explores the connectivities and contrasts between European mining sites that may be constituted by outsider perspectives and transient modes of looking(the views found for example on the journeys of itinerant artists, writers, unemployed workers, the travels of fugeurs, vagabonds).
Tracing these various ambulatory strains, movements whether transgressive or licensed are given space within the research to stimulate multiple ways of looking at industrial sites. A focus on both the architectural materiality of the space and the movements of a subject through and around it will be drawn through a number of diverse prisms: nineteenth century landscape painting, contemporary art and film, theories of the industrial sublime, Baroque architectural theory, catholic industrial histories, spaces of religious experience and Eastern European pilgrimage trails, Marxist nostalgia, subterranean acoustics, popular entertainment cultures (miners bands, working mens’ clubs) and the experiences ( exhibitions, tours, concerts) now licensed and facilitated by the industrial heritage tourist industry. Read more… and see the fim Terril Walk.
‘Can you feel the Flowers?’ - Reading Tarkowsky in Digital.
A series of essays exploring how experience of Tarkowsky’s films may be altered by contemporary digital viewing experiences.
Exerpt ‘On entering the Zone, one protagonist asks ‘вы чувствуете запах цветов? Which means: "do you feel the scent of the flowers?" but in Russian цветов also means colors - The word for "color" is цвет. It's plural is цветы, the same as the plural for flowers. So, the plurals of these two words, are identical and meaning is to be deciphered through context. Reading into the question, are we as the audience expected to 'feel' the colour (the film turns from black and white to colour just as the protagonists enter the 'Zone' a space where the usual logic of sensation is turned on its head) – The Zone is arguable a space of pure ‘affect’, where a feeling may well be a smell and a colour may well feel like a flower...semantic meaning becomes interchangable and it is the characters ability to embrace the new logic of sensation which determines their fate and ability to survive. As I will explore in this study, colour goes beyond just visual codex for memory and nostalgia(as explored in previous studys of tarkowsky films) and is instead phenomenologically connected to the medium of cinema itself.’
Will become a book. See also Interlope.
Arts Territory Exchange.
The Arts Territory Exchange, instigarted by Gudrun Filipska in 2016, facilitates collaboration between artists in remote and wilderness locations such as, islands, deserts, refugee camps and small communities.The Arts Territory Exchange encourages ways of engaging with 'place' which move beyond traditional travel in the age of the Anthropocene, artists and writers are selected to take part in long distance postal and digital correspondences, engaging each other in discussions around the post-colonial, political and environmental narratives of their respective territories. aTE also hosts events, lectures, and a series of virtual residencies. See here.
Manuscript.
This project has sought to re-evaluate ideas of ‘manuscript’ – usually considered as a collection of writings which have been brought to a particular point of fruition, complete enough to be rationally understood and considered by audiences and publishers but not finished. The manuscript is a work in a state of transition- one that speaks of author archives, back catalogues and research as much as leaning towards the possibility of its bound, printed and possibly published self. The ‘manuscript’ represents an interesting in-between moment at a time when the art world and the humanities are becoming increasingly outcome driven and the idea of research (both in the sciences and humanities) is often undervalued.
In a digital age where artists self publishing is increasingly popular the idea of ‘Manuscript’ takes on much broader meaning and the systems behind ubiquitous computing, demand a re-evaluation of the word.
Will become an exhibition and publication co-organised and co-curated with the writer Laura Davidson.