Coronavirus/Covid 19 and the Crowhurst Art Garden

I am kind of enjoying Covid 19. In fact I feel better than I usually do. Crisis? Excellent - I know exactly how to behave in one of those. No choice? Excellent - I know exactly what to do without a choice. Official sanction for doing nothing has removed my normally intense anxiety about not having enough to do while feeling I really should be doing something which, combined, render me incapable of doing anything anyway! 

So this period has given me pressure and anxiety free time in which I am getting things done. Creative things. I am particularly pleased to have two new additions to the Crowhurst Art Garden. This garden is a project created on a small piece of land adjacent to my house.  It was started in 2017 with 'Bonehinge' which was a pillar of stone, topped with a bone and a rusty hinge, all of which we found when we were digging over the space. These finds and the fun of putting them together gave us the initial idea for the garden. 
A call went out to friends and we then received the generous donations of Mantis by Martin Adams and Julie by Esther Neslen. Mantis began as golden plywood in 2017 but underwent a metamorphosis to forest green in 2019. 

Beautiful Julie is weathering wonderfully, displaying various mottled shades of moss and algae in the winter and then returning, more or less, to her original colour in the summer. 

The next addition was in 2018. Three cast iron radiators removed from the house during a new boiler installation were given an entirely new life as Sheepish.  

In March 2019 we received Jolyon Dupuy's Duchamp's Step- Ladder. Not only does the wheel spin but it also has its own original music video put together by Jolyon and Peter Schofield.  Thanks to Tim Vine for photos of this. 

Now here we are in April 2020 and I happy to present 'Flying Fish' and 'Still Life'. In the course of doing the 2019 Crowhenge project,  I met 92 year old master carver Ian Gordon. As well as contributing the carved title piece to the Crowhenge Project, he also gave me this piece of found wood which has now become 'Flying Fish'. The shape is just as he found it so all I did was sand and oil it and give it some eyes.

'Still Life' consists of an empty picture frame suspended between two trees on thin wire. This gives the illusion that the frame is floating in space.  What you see through the frame changes as you walk around the garden and will also change throughout the seasons. I found the frame dumped in the street in Hastings several years ago so am delighted to have finally transformed it into a less random public artwork.

(Lucky photo taken just as sun started filtering through trees). 

(Guest Photo from Laura Cecil)

I guess it's ironic that in this weird, pandemic period I have been busier than usual and it's not just the garden. I was also part of a team that set up a Coronavirus Support Group to match volunteers with people needing help. The community response here has been great, so I’m very happy that the time I’ve had to work on the garden means it can now be open to visitors. I am leaving the gate permanently open so no one will have to touch it and am sure visitor numbers in a village make it unlikely I will need social distancing queue markers! I may put a note on the gate asking people not to fall over, break their legs and sue me though because I don’t have public liability insurance.    
Despite my normal moaning about how much I miss London (I still do), I know it is a privilege to be living in a place like this at a time like this  We can go for walks without seeing anyone else and should the tanks eventually roll onto the lanes of Crowhurst we can jog round our garden and subsist on dandelion leaves and wild garlic. We also have a veg patch. It is also beautiful to see nature in its eternal cycle, regardless as always, of human affairs. The weather is wonderful, the birds are singing, trees are coming into blossom and leaf and there is a riotous abundance of spring flowers and colours. I am very grateful that this didn’t all kick off in November. So... thanks for that universe! 

The breakfast ritual

I've just started a creative writing course. In lesson one we learned about free writing which basically means you just keep writing without stopping to think. Interesting exercise that ended with a paragraph about how much my hand was starting to hurt after 5 minutes of non stop scribble. 

The homework was to write 1000 words on the subject of 'Rituals'.  It had to be started using the free writing method and then edited down. Mine edited down to a paltry 500 words but here it is anyway. 

Rituals

Apart from weddings, christenings and funerals, I don't do rituals except breakfast. I'm lucky - my partner gets up much earlier than me so I wake up and smell the coffee every day.

I get up, go downstairs, slice the bread and put it in the toaster. I pour the coffee into the same mug. Then I butter the toast and spread marmite on one piece and marmalade on the other. I go to the kitchen window where I sit on a stool, sipping and munching and staring out into the garden. 

Every day I see some, or all of the following: goldfinches, chaffinches, nuthatches, woodpeckers, blackbirds, robins. Blue, coal, great and long tailed tits. Sometimes a thrush, a bullfinch, a goldcrest. Wood Pigeons, ring-collared doves, magpies, jackdaws and the inevitable squirrels. 

I also see fifty shades of green emerging from the grey silence of winter. Then watch fifty more, dappled in breezy sunlight, become part of the falling spectrum of autumn rain. 

I see human rituals mirrored from that window - a constant stream of marriages, births and deaths. Some of the deaths natural, some accidental or unexplained and the occasional cold-blooded murder. 

I’ve read that crows and other birds hold roadside funerals for their fallen comrades. Sometimes, when a crow is killed by a passing car, a murder of fellow crows will descend and walk circles around the dead bird for 15 to 20 minutes.  The crow’s close relative, the magpie, holds similar services and has even been seen placing tufts of grass alongside the departed. Is this a ritual or is it only humans to which that word applies? 

As for the marriages, there may not be a formal ceremony with invited guests but birds pairing off can be preceded by violent competition, acrobatic aerial courtship and virtuoso musical performances. Then comes the explosion of chicks from early spring to late summer often accompanied by behaviours that look a lot like love. I often wonder if that first trip to the bird feeder with the parents is an avian coming of age ritual. 

My experience of the human rituals is that they provide families and friends with regular opportunities to remind themselves and each other that they are part of something larger. There is a collective unity in celebrating together, grieving together and marking time. Recognising change and its impact, not only on yourself but on those who are a fixed part of your life.

Having managed to remain a romantic, I like the wedding ritual but the births are obligations I could do without. Funerals, on the other hand are getting much more interesting as I get older. Partly because I am no longer just a spectator but often have some role in proceedings and funerals have changed. They are now equally as likely to be celebrations of a life, as a mourning of a death. It is still as painful whatever you call it. 

Marriages have also changed and can have counterpoint divorce rituals now, although I am not sure that the guests at the first party will all be attending the second.

My breakfast ritual won’t change. Not for a while at least. I will still wake up and smell the coffee. I will still look out of the window, fixed in the present and be reminded that the cycle of nature is eternal, that birds never waste time and that squirrels are fucking geniuses. 

Coastal Currents 2019 - 'Dance Movies' at the Kino - Review

I like cinema. I like dance. I like music. So the three for the price of one ‘Dance Movies' at the Kino-Teatr as part of this year's Coastal Currents, was an absolute must. It not only motivated me to leave the house, but it also made me want to write a review.

The event was split into two halves. The first half contained three, very different short films in which performance was either the main, or integral, part of a wider visual and narrative composition.

The first film I Am Weather (Rebecca Marshall/Nichola Bruce/Clare Whistler) was a triptych projection filmed at the Library of Water in Stykkishulmur, Iceland. 

The triple screens alternated between close-ups of fast moving water or spray, and dancer Clare Whistler viewed through a lighthouse lens. It appeared as if it had been filmed in an empty room in a tall glass building with a distant view of an urban skyline. The remarkable effect was to capture the dancer in a way that distorted her body, elongated her limbs and finally made her physically disappear altogether as if melting into the floor. The water sequences, that seemed different each time, provided an intense soundscape. It was a wonderful combination of the free flowing and the confined in a meditative union of shades of grey and elemental hydro-sonics.

The second film Klipperty Klopp 2 (Andrew Kotting/Yumino Seki) was also a split-screen and shades of grey affair. Funnily enough the last thing I reviewed was Kotting’s ‘Lek and the Dogs’ so it was very interesting to see this much earlier and now reinvented work.

On the left screen was Kotting’s original 1984 film of a man energetically running round a field in Gloucestershire pretending to be a horse. On the right this had been re-created with dancer Yumino Seki, more of whom later. The two films mirrored each other although the original was filmed almost completely in the rural environment, whereas Yumino Seki’s re-enactment also brought in some urban grit. This included segments in which she was quite brilliantly placed in front of a wall with the legible graffiti reading 'Take your poo…'. Given the slapstick speed of the characters and the original narration about the funny/crazy man and his horse, there was definitely humour. However, the tension between the absurdly humorous and the reality of two people running in marked, repetitive and seemingly futile patterns while negotiating relationships with their accumulated detritus, was also quite uncomfortable at times. The whole thing ended close to home with Yumino Seki on Hastings beach, barely able to hang on to her wildly flapping metaphor in the fierce wind. I so wanted her to just let it go.

Film three was Experiments with a Danse Macabre (Nichola Bruce/Patricia Langa/Daniel Hay-Gordon). Another film that dealt with confinement, Patricia Langa danced out the tension of being within ever decreasing walls, amidst a world of projected images. From a painterly perspective this film was lovely to watch. The layering of images, colour, texture, dark and light and movement made the film an ever changing and beautiful visual spectacle. The subject of death, or the ability of the dancer protagonist to inflict it at great personal cost, was told in the manner of a fairy tale. I accepted the artistic license in the telling of the tale and the beautiful package it came in, right until the last clichéd line: “we are all equal in death”, at which I sighed, possibly audibly. I'm afraid we are as equal in death as we are in life and that is not very equal at all.

The second half was just brilliant. Exspira Machina/Kwaidan AI was a combination of live music, dance and film. Afrit Nebula provided the music, Yumino Seki the dance and Mark French the visuals. The description of the pieces as ‘a ghost in the machine trapped by a scanner, unable to escape her own memory’ doesn’t come even remotely close to communicating the astounding amount of stuff that was going on here.

Musically it was a multi-layered fusion of jazz, rock, world, sacred, experimental - in fact there are all sorts of genres you could try and define this trio with but really, really good is probably best. There was a lot to it, both instrumentally and vocally, and it was very tight.

The visuals in this part of the evening ranged from a kind of ambient, spectrum loop to a mesmerising film of industrial machinery. A Victorian pumping station (I think) working a continuous and massive, rhythmic sequence of power and painted ironwork. Hard to believe this was normal less than a century ago.

From the left Yumino Seki appeared slowly and silently and the combination of music, visuals and live dance completely took over. The interplay between the three was superb. At first it was hard to know what to focus on but after a while there was a kind of emotional and sensual absorption into the whole. It was a wonderful experience.

On a personal note, I spent most of the 80s living in Japan and it was magic to see a butoh trained dancer for the first time in about 30 years. In Hastings! 

The Artists

  

Film Makers  

Nichola Bruce - https://www.nicholabruce.com/projects-in-development/

Rebecca Marshall - http://rebeccaemarshall.com/filmmaker/

Andrew Kotting - http://www.andrewkotting.com/

Mark French - http://shootonsite.org/index.php/mark-french

Dancers & Choreography  

Yumino Seki  - https://yuminoseki.webs.com/

Clare Whistler - http://www.clarewhistler.co.uk/

Daniel Hay Gordon - https://www.danielhay-gordon.com/

Patricia Langa 

Musicians

Afrit Nebula - http://www.afritnebula.com/

Venue and Host

Kino Teatr  - kino-teatr.co.uk

Coastal Currents - http://coastalcurrents.org.uk/

Images
Images for 'I am Weather' and 'Klipperty Klopp' found in public domain. (Was unable to find an image for 'Experiments towards a Danse Macabre' (or a website link for Patricia Langa). 
Images of Afrit Nebula and Yumino Seki courtesy of Neil Partrick.

Shit Happens

As was apparent from my last post, living in a village does not make me the happiest bunny in the world. Ironic really given how many bunnies there are around here. Yes the house is beautiful, the garden is beautiful, there's a separate annexe, a summer house, a garage, a drive, two garden sheds, a vegetable garden and a hexagonal greenhouse. There is an extra piece of land where I've started a small sculpture garden. This is just across a path to the station where I can easily get on a train back to my beloved. (I.E. London). So what  am I complaining about?

From the outside it looks idyllic. Factor in that old chestnut of British, or is it more English, cultural aspiration and it looks like I've really made it. I have the detached house in the countryside and in the kitchen I even have that marker of contemporary, middle classness - an Aga. I'm a success. I'm a pleb made good. I can now wander off into the rural sunset content in my coloured wellies. I can drop all that complex baggage of background, class and family trauma. If it isn't visible to anybody else why draw attention to it?

Aye... there's the rub.

People from poor backgrounds, especially women who escape their still rigidly predictable class trajectory, become very good listeners and quick and comprehensive learners. They ask questions in order not to have to answer them. They learn how to blend in by not drawing attention to themselves. They move with stealth, make sure they are good at whatever job needs to be done to keep them moving, and are usually easy going and fun at parties. Strategically, that last one helps a lot. 

Having negotiated an adult understanding of the pain of being perceived negatively in formative years, and having learned how to swallow that anger, means they are not generally judgemental themselves. They are fluid and discreet and very few people get to know them very well.

The first legacy of a poor background comes when you realise how much knowledge you have not been exposed to and thus your ability to communicate is severely curtailed.  You cannot talk confidently about what you know because that will expose you and you know from experience that your reality is best kept obscure. The second legacy, of an often chronic lack of confidence begins here.  It is compounded as you move through life and find that your view of how things are is so different from your majority, middle class counterparts that you believe you must surely be wrong.

So here I am in the countryside looking like a success story and feeling utterly miserable. For the first time in decades I am revisiting some of those class insecurities. I am back in the vicinity of my birth - a place I never wanted to return to. I am not here because of a considered decision about being tired of my international city life or wanting to signal my achievements with that detached house in the country. I am here because my brother took his own life and then, somewhere in the profound, emotional chaos that followed, I lost mine. 

I am here. Isolated. Bored. Anxious. However, I seem to function and from the outside it seems as if I've blended in here too but I feel nothing. I do nothing. I cannot get any traction. Everything moves slowly and often does not move at all. Three decades of international urban life - my life and all that contributes to the person I think I am -  is irrelevant. It's as if the life between leaving and returning to the same geographical space never happened. I feel like a stranger to myself in a compensatory property. 

It would of course be easier with children and grandchildren. Being childless is particularly tough in a village where conversation, connection and belonging revolve so much around family life. Tried blending in with a dog for a while but that was disastrous. Rescue dog + rescue human was never going to work in this case.

I'm increasingly concluding that I'm just not cut out for life in a village. In a city you can be anybody, or nobody, just like everybody else. There are beautiful strangers and the strangest beauties. Numerous, spontaneous and random moments of humaness. There is movement and colour, life and surprises. Most of all there are possibilities and there are people like me. 

I will never be tired of London but I am often tired of life these days. Will someone please buy me a flat in a London postcode. Any postcode will do! I'm not fussy. 

Crowhenge - A Community Art Project

It is an unavoidable fact that I am a bit morose living in a village after 3 decades of international city life, however, the drive to convince myself otherwise has at least resulted in a project. So ladies and gentlemen I give you.... CROWHENGE! 

The project began as an adjunct to the Crowhurst Neighbourhood Plan (NP) a community strategy which emerged over the past 3 years to give the village influence in how local housing development quotas are managed. In an earlier attempt to convince myself I belong, I volunteered to build and manage the substantial NP website. In the lead up to what was a very successful NP referendum, I was asked to submit ideas for an art project to represent the village and reflect the community ethos that had underpinned the NP. 

This was the basic proposal: 

Crowhurst sits in an area of outstanding natural beauty in which trees are one of the dominant features of the landscape. 'Crowhenge' will use local woods to create a 7-piece structure linked to key elements of village life: Community, Environment, Heritage, Youth, Business, Farming and Sanctuary. All community groups, businesses and organisations in the village can then contribute something that represents them.  

One of the woodland trusts in the village RSPB Forewood generously donated the wood for the project. I had Oak, Sycamore, Silver Birch and Hornbeam. Stage one was trimming, shaping and sanding. 

The project began in March and was installed in July. It is ongoing in the sense that people can still add things to it at any time. It is the first time I have done a project of this nature from concept through to completion on my own. It was tough but I am pleased with how it turned out in the end. It was also great to meet people like the 92 year old master carver in the village who created the title sign and to work with the school and various other youth groups in the village. Working with kids is great. They have none of those adult insecurities about 'art' so you don't have to constantly reassure and cajole them into getting involved and then (often) have to do it yourself anyway. 

Full details of the project and how it unfolded are on the website and the Crowhenge Facebook page so will just post some project images here. 

Review - Lek and the Dogs, Electric Palace Hastings

I saw Lek and the Dogs at the Electric Palace Cinema in Hastings on Friday evening. It is based on the true story of Ivan Mishukov, who left his abusive home at four and lived with street dogs for two years before being picked up and put into children's homes. His transition into adulthood seemed to work for a while but he was unable to sustain it. 

The film was quite an experience. A friend of mine, who had seen it in London, asked me on Facebook what my review of the film was. My immediate reply was:

“Great apart from a tad too much not entirely convincing crying from Lek, and the tiresome, smugly dogmatic (no pun intended) philosophising. The film would have been much more effective by cutting out that guy entirely.... that's my review! :)

As a pithy and amusing comment it works but the film bugged me and kept bugging me. So I looked at the published reviews to see if any of them reflected what my own reaction had been.

I found a lot of reviews. All of them stuck to pretty much the same format but not always in the same order: a plot synopsis, varying degrees of sycophancy and a focus on cinematic form and reference, literary and philosophical influences and assessing where the body of work fits in director Andrew Kötting’s oeuvre. There was a fair range of opinion on these things and not everybody enjoyed the experience. The BBC’s film critic Mark Kermode obviously did. This film is right up his street. He was  going to find several avenues of pleasure in this movie and he did. So far, so predictable.  To be fair, however, he did also say (as did others) that what people took from this film would be entirely personal. That is absolutely the case but then again is that not the case with any film or work of art?  

There seemed to be very little about the actual content - the emotional content I mean - and surely it is the story and the trauma and how those emotions are conveyed that is the point here.  Introducing the film at the Electric Palace, Andrew Kötting said that he wanted people to feel these things. That is commendable enough but it makes an assumption that the audience are strangers to such feelings and the director is therefore providing a service to allow them to understand trauma at a safe distance.  Often it seemed as if the director was ‘bludgeoning’ his audience (a word used in more than one review) to emote, and to feel pain. In that respect the film is very much of its time. Public displays of trauma: parents of murdered children, victims of violence, abuse, terror - trauma as spectacle seems to be a news requirement these days.

Mainstream film reviewers are obviously not keeping up although a couple of the reviews mentioned the word ‘emotional’. The problem was that none of them really communicated any and what I wanted to know was how the film made them feel and what they thought of the subject. 

Perhaps it is in the nature of ‘educated’ reviewers to not go there. They retain that vague sense of contempt for public expression of emotion but it’s fine if it’s either fiction, or cinematised ‘truth’ that can be glossed over in an analysis of the form in which it is presented. The reality of the story effectively becomes secondary to the package in which it comes. 

I could not access the pay to read reviews but the available quotes suggested they were much the same content-wise, if more critical of the film overall. The most succinct and effective review was probably Eye for Film’s, Amber Wilkinson who avoided the verbiage and managed to tell you everything you needed to know without actually losing sight of Lek - the film’s subject.

What I found most strange and disturbing is what appears to be the complete disconnect between telling and reviewing a tale of childhood trauma, without understanding just how triggering that can be for audience members who have suffered childhood trauma. The director joked that walkouts had previously occurred perhaps because people thought they were coming to see Show Dogs or Isle of Dogs. The muted ripple of laughter in the room was muted I suspect because half of this audience didn’t have a clue what either of these films were.

I am sure that some of the walkouts have been because the rawness of it has been too overwhelming for those who don’t have the luxury of understanding trauma at a distance. In fact I am not sure it is possible to understand trauma at a distance.

The audio-visual noise may be another reason people walk out. It was phenomenally loud, intense and often distorted. For people who do not find peace at the centre listening to industrial noisecore, I can see why the soundtrack could present not only emotional challenges, but physical, aural discomfort as well.  

The difficult thing for me to take in this film, however, was the philosophising drone that effectively concluded you’re fucked. Your trauma will inform your actions in endless repetitive cycles and there’s no escape. Such a message is potentially devastating. People who have been traumatised are painfully aware that it is still informing their actions.  They have been forced to understand it and forced to find ways to alleviate that cycle in order to survive both emotionally and physically. The glibness of this single, simplistic, philosophical overdub, threatened to reduce a complex and quite remarkable piece of cinema to a smug, undergraduate observation. Because of this I couldn’t help feeling that Lek/Ivan had actually been a bit dissed by having his story and his trauma used to conveniently park a philosophy that does neither Lek, nor actually the film, justice. However, I am seeing this film as a standalone piece. In the context of the trilogy perhaps there is a wider angle. At least the humour kicked in as the (cruelly) paraphrased drone continued …  yer’ all gonna die, the planet’s gonna die. No shit Sherlock!  

We live in an age of anxiety, dystopia and fear masked by increasingly absurd levels of pretence that we are all unique and heroic individuals who can make a difference. We are simultaneously more empathetic and quicker to shut down. We are all one of Lek’s crowd on the street desperate for recognition. With no certainty about what we are supposed to be recognised for, or who is supposed to be doing the recognising, we are constantly recalibrating our identities just to feel comfortable. Going underground is not an option we have.

It is an exhausting time in which to live. The film communicates this, at times in a profoundly beautiful way but it is the beauty of Lek himself that you should be taking home with you. 

Links:

BFI Interview with Andrew Kotting

Hattie Naylor
First dramatisation of Ivan Mishukov's story, which formed the foundation of this film, was Hattie Naylor's play 'Ivan and the Dogs'. 

Xavier Tchili 

Actor - Lek (hard to find info and this is out of date but has some biographical content).

Lek and the Dogs twitter feed

'Rotten Tomatoes' review list

And finally. .

This is the front lawn of our motel in Havelock. There are two US military facilities in this town and just up the road is a newer and snazzier fighter jet also presented as a public artwork. You see a lot of this. In 2009 we stayed in a tiny town motel in Utah that was opposite a recreation ground with a 20 foot missile standing on a plinth. Bit like North Korea.

There's no escaping just how huge a domestic deal the US military is. Expressions of support are evident everywhere. On T-shirts, baseball caps, bumper stickers, billboards, radio and TV ads and in lots of named memorial highways.

Since the advent of Trump's caricature presidency, coverage of the US has become all about him which inevitably ends up negatively caricaturing the whole nation and its people as well. This a shame because the people aren't the president. I like Americans. I love the fact that I get a chorus of good mornings and big smiles when I walk into a diner for breakfast in the morning feeling like shit after a shit night's sleep. That huge shot of positive has rescued me several times on this trip and I really appreciate it. 

It is inevitable that I am comparing how I am now to the person I was on the last road trip in 2009. It has not been a comfortable reflection on time and getting older but a realisation (for both of us) of the impact of events over the past 5 years on our mental health and on our relationship. Just to recap that includes the suicide of two, close family members, a reactive relocation to a tiny village after more than three decades of a life and career in international cities and finally, caring for my mother until her death 3 months ago. That's quite a lot of stuff and there's actually more in the backstories..... but that'll do for now!

Anyway, the upshot is a cycle of mutually reinforcing anxiety that at times, makes us each feel we are constantly under attack from the other. It's exhausting and can turn even the simplest decisions into a minefield. The most crushing part is that being aware of it doesn't actually help that much. Still we have managed to get to the final day of the trip without killing each other and the serendipity of finding a vacant room in Smithfield, Virginia with a balcony and this view has been pretty amazing. Especially sitting here last night watching the lightning show that preceded a tropical southern downpour.

The original plan for this trip was to go North to the lakes and mountains of the Adirondacks in upstate New York.  Despite the occasionally unbearable heat, humidity and mosquitoes,  I am very happy that we had a last minute shift and decided to come South. That laid back, positive and hospitable southern vibe has been very calmimg when the tension has been as high as the humidity. Saturday was particularly good. We ended up in the 'original Washington' - a North Carolina coastal town - on their festival night.  This meant we spent the evening in a waterfront park listening to a great band called the Embers and watching what seemed like the entire town, country line-dancing to pretty much anything the band played. This was a lot of fun and hugely enjoyable to unexpectedly be part of such a local experience.

However, before I get too carried away on the US feelgood factor that I appreciate so much, I have to acknowledge that it can go a little over the top. Not from the generosity and openess of the people but certainly from motel publicity executives. Having to look at this every time I sat on the toilet in the Hampton Inn, knowing there was a fighter jet parked on the front lawn, did make me consider random acts of violence....