Transnational Terrain

Passage of place

2011-06-25T22:55:00.000-07:00

Place: Liverpool UK.

Across the earth's surface is a very different passage of time - that of place. Whilst we talk of time it is only upon the precise moment of reflection that time really exists, being but a reference for place at this moment. In Scotland the water drips to re-form the river from a frozen lake, whilst a hundred irrelevant miles away, the mannequin sits quietly mid sentence in an endless moment of fluctuation on the back streets of Liverpool England.

Description over prescription

2011-06-25T21:13:00.000-07:00

Body: Rachel Sweeney. Camera: Marnie Orr. Taken 17 April 2010, Barmouth, Snowdonia, Wales UK. Plaes Caerdeon based reflective period post- Adaptation intensive, Dartmoor.

Perception can be driven by the frame we allow. The eye of the onlooker can be drawn away from the body's form per se, and to the environment - by body placement and inquiry (dancer), and visual frame choice (photographer) during the live event. Here, as a viewer after the event I see the texture and shape of the rock, as well as imagining how the body is behind the rock.

The shift in focus during the live event from form to body placement here provides infinite possibilities in the viewer's interpretation in seeing the image. An aim could be to empower the viewer in experiencing the image for themselves through the artists' live descriptive process, rather than artists dictating a particular response from the image viewer by relying on past knowledge (eg of a dance form etc).

Nature's choreography - time

2011-06-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

Nature's choreography - time - is a navigational strategy. The passage of time guides change, as is shown here when this liquid water had turned to ice. External conditions have altered the physical state of the water, transforming it to no longer shape to Bruce Lee's teacup. Rather now, it holds it's own shape, momentarily, as I watch the front end of this frozen river drip back to flowing. Loch of Lintrathen, Scotland. 12 December 2007.

Shooting the Moose & the Kangaroo

2010-06-18T04:29:00.000-07:00

Image [ABOVE] and video [BELOW] taken April 2010 in Dartmoor National Park during Adaptation, Artist Research Intensive. Willem Montagne speaks with Llewyn Maire, Michelle Outram, Lisa Newman, Manuel Vason, Carla Vendramin, Katie Etheridge, Rachel Sweeney and Marnie Orr. Ongoing discussions of Willem Montagne with Orr and Sweeney charts the changes in cultural understandings of land management over time, and how that has affected policy.

China Clay, Dartmoor

2010-06-14T12:36:00.000-07:00

paint, coca-cola cans, plastic pipes, tennis balls, trainers, rubber bungs, plastic coving over car engines, car hub caps, sanitary ware, paper, plastic moulding, porcelain, rubber mats, car bumpers, white road lines, sparking plugs

ash soda skin
kaolin smoothed
waste deposit slowly bedding down
gravity sifts through porous layers
a silt secret kept below

this is cloth worn over broken surfaces
caked through impact and attrition
blended, pressed, noodled, dried

her tongue finds fissures
through ancestral scree paths

eyes scan the chalk periphery
where ponies flick damselflies
around gravestones
stone laid over crevassed hand and sedminent lung

The formation of china clay

http://www.dartmoorsociety.com/files/debates/chinaclay.html

Granite is one of the commonest igneous rocks, but varies considerably in its composition from place to place. While the quartz is never anything but quartz, the feldspar can be a silicate of alumina with potash, soda or lime and the mica can be the potash-rich muscovite or the iron-rich biotite.
In some parts of the South West, the feldspar in the granite is higher in its soda content than its potash content and these places are where china clay is found today. It came into being through a complex sequence of events. While the molten rock was still cooling, it was attacked successively by steam, boron, fluorine and tin vapour, these acting on the alkali content of the feldspar and converting it into china clay.

The South Western granite has been converted into china clay only in those areas where the feldspar contained a sufficiently high soda content.
China clay, or kaolin, is believed to have been formed through two processes:-
Hydrothermal activity (hot gases combined with high pressures) caused the granite (feldspars) to decompose.

Surface precipitation combined with humic acids from the bogs that were present, or by deep tropical weathering.

Sustainable Development
Policies for sustainable development have been laid down by government. Sustainable development is concerned with ensuring a better quality of life for everyone, now and for generations to come. The Government's Strategy for Sustainable Development published in 1999 set out four key objectives, which the clay companies aim to achieve:-

a) social progress which recognises the needs of everyone.
b) maintenance of high and stable levels of economic growth and employment.
c) effective protection of the environment.
d) prudent use of natural resources.

Summary
The industry has been an important part of Dartmoor life for over 170 years and intends to continue for many more. Although it has a long history, it has a modern outlook, fully understanding its environmental and social responsibilities to the communities affected and influenced by the winning of this nationally important mineral and aggregates.

Body Mapping Debate | Skype 09.05.10

2010-05-09T11:36:00.000-07:00

Place Mapping in Snowdonia, N Wales. April 2010

Plans for Website development:
an archive of our practice/ outline illustrated research profile
[11:51:00] rachelmark1: some transnational terrain features... albany perrenial rainfall / fresh water / tides and shifting properties /links with snowdonia / barmouth. marine life pushed inland / migrating species
[11:51:45] rachelmark1: there are black swans in teignmouth/also a port town for granite export
Coming back to mapping processes as correlation of place names. mapping at a sociological perspective. red rock/kalbarrie= red sandstone in SW devon

Barmouth Social Club, Wales

ON IMMEDIACY....
[12:06:53] Marnie Orr: our work is facilitated through immediate response
[12:07:04] rachelmark1: surrealist writing movement has developed through psychogeography / with writing as an aim - this is also to do with non audience places
[12:07:37] Marnie Orr: Marco Marcon talked about IASKA as SLOW ART
[12:07:41] rachelmark1: our process is embedded in immediacy and transaction - NOT for communication towards audience but within a subversive ACT
[12:09:20] Marnie Orr: We need to develop a TEXTURAL NARRATIVE to explain what we are doing.
[12:10:34] Marnie Orr: Performance Art: still working from that 1970's radical & surrealist actions, to do with self - / gift economy / reworking materials from the environment
Live Arts has evolved its own definitive relations with audience - part of a different economy
[12:16:30] Marnie Orr: IASKA - we have live research practices that correlate, but that have 2 different groundings. THis is the umbrella term for our work... Land Art Body Research Institute

Adaptation example

On PROTOCOL....
[12:57:51] rachelmark1: OK: then our process so far can be viewed in critical stages:
1. mapping the field (ethnography) / distillation of japanese training principles
2. mapping the field (phenomenology) / arts place relations through the senses / psychogeography / socially engaged practices
Immediacy and Sustainability / ephemerality as a trope for non consumable materials / ethics of engagement....... this leads us back to protocol within wilderness
[13:02:27] Marnie Orr: changed forum of art... the non-finished, non-galleried, local/global ,,,, into singularity/universality as a truth serum/measuring stick that makes the IMPROVISATION not improvised but based on listening/reading land and place
[13:02:32] rachelmark1: event / non event - mark making and moving THROUGH terrain as opposed to charting (to do with future planning) or trace making (to do with the past) - ACTIVATON methods
[13:04:40] rachelmark1: languages of mapping reside in geographical mapping and layering of information / historic land use. This is strategic and representational / to do with a demonstration of force/power/defences
[13:05:09] rachelmark1: in contrast: our intervention or aim...to open up the process of mapping to re-engage a real functionality of the navigation tools
[13:05:30] rachelmark1: ..those two mechanisms are essentially to do with moving and writing
[13:07:02] rachelmark1: professional application is to do with land-use. the implication of that in terms of physical statement / (going back to web design) the image needs to harness the action of the measuring stick/ than of navigation tool
[13:07:54] Marnie Orr: PROTOCOL vs ENTITLEMENT
[13:08:39 | Edited 13:08:56] Marnie Orr: The two maps not being able to speak to each other - an irreconcilable difference in knowledge or is it LANGUAGE
[13:10:37] Marnie Orr: Implied meaning in 'protocol' around not being a part of something - or being an outsider / levels of perceived knowledge / and in-access, no access
[13:10:55] Marnie Orr: less availability - eg less entitlemet
[13:11:55 | Edited 13:12:06] Marnie Orr: questioning the forum of fly-in, fly-out as artists: how to address this?
[13:12:00] rachelmark1: what is our community in a post-communal environment? nomadic as a means of survival / adaptation

Yilgarn Granite Crator, WA

2009-05-10T05:07:00.000-07:00

Piesse Brook, Kalamunda Western Australia - I am so small in this place.

Granite Ball Clay

2008-07-28T07:09:00.000-07:00

10/07/08

Rachel Sweeney

Plymouth Coastal Walk

Devon, England

Departure Point: West Hoe, Plymouth Route: coastal path through Stonehouse, Mount Wise, Devonport Dockyards, Royal William Marina.
Features: Devonport council estate houses circa 1950 (derelict), Stonehouse Marine Barracks, Princess International Yacht moorings, Mount Wise Lido (under construction).
Terrain: cycle and foot pathways (tarmac), jetty (wooden and concrete), parkland (grass), steps (steel)
Access to Dartmoor: viewpoint - top of Mount Wise park.

Ball Clay departs Teignmouth, Devon

2008-07-28T06:35:00.000-07:00

...today is Beatrix Potter’s birthday. The Google insignia told me so when I finally tuned into the web, after 10 days of solitude from other temporal realities, email requests, passing and pressing and just missed deadlines.

...my right eye is playing up today- perhaps the result of overexposing these two blues to a much bigger, stronger one which has dappled my peripheral these past few weeks, immersing my sight wide horizon sea and sky.

...Beatrix used to holiday in Teignmouth, South Devon (as did John Keats, and Isadora Duncan). Nowadays it houses British holiday makers, furnishing them with donkey and carousel rides, feeding them a diet of chips, fudge and clotted cream.

Teignmouth is also a port town - the last departure point for Dartmoor granite leaving this terrain. I have been exploring the threshold between granite bedrock and its final departure point as ball clay, boarded onto great steel carriers and set forth into distant oceans to be carried into Baltic, and Pacific seas where it gets transformed into just about every domestic appliance known to us, from foam mattresses to lawnmowers.

Further north up the coast in Dawlish, the dune sand formations echo exacty those of East Qatar in the Arabian Gulf

http://www.soton.ac.uk/~imw/jpg-Dawlish-Warren/8DLW-Dune-Comparison.jpg

This is the red sand that stains the skin when you swim along this coast. When I dug into thte river bed in Deancombe I scraped the red earth and Devon sandstone darkened my palms.

Body Land composition

2008-06-09T08:24:00.000-07:00

Rachel to Marnie email June 2008
some reciprocal thoughts before we get down to talking...i love the images- so much softer that anything i imagined...ok- here's my immedite thoughts.
some thoughts on the body-land composition...i have been thinking about body topographies and rock as skin surface, also an exchange of properties, rather than a symbiosis.i spent a day up on dartmoor last week with Diana - remember from our CCANW project- she is really keen to take some film footage. there's no particular agenda other than to play and talk and walk. we found a new route up from norsworhty bridge (which, incidentally, is exactly 25 mins from my house....so wierd to spend a day in wilderness and be home before i've even brushed the moss off!!) it was really interesting to approach the landscape from a more visual perspective- think it might be a good challenge for us to use the scope of the (camera) frame to really interrogate what the rock/body/topography could be. not sure where this ties into tthe cartographic idea, as the relation of rock properties and skin/bone etc seems to be mostly a question of composition. i learnt a lot on friday from engaging my visual senses. like a palatte of movement textures and qualities which for me can then be translated into movement form. its a different way of interacting with the landscape- maybe less immersive/reactive and more to do with exchange/translation. within this dialogue there is more space for decision making and compositional strategies which i think just has to do with working in a slightly different time structure...either way it feels like a new direction!
you have got me thinking with the floating image. i've been looking back at some of the lumi properties of light and factal/dissipated textures. i would ike to create a lumi type character using lot of white refracting light and using the clay/red sandstone that you find on pixieville to make a full bodypaint. lkind of similar to the orange stuff i use for anonanon creatures.
I want to try and work with paper - the felt handmade stuff you find in posh stationary shops. will dig around for some ideas on form...
ok- that's just something to chew on before we talk tomorrow.
mark has started a cross continiental project with an artist in baltimore- its cale psychic tides and he just knocked up a blog really quickly. check it out...i think this is our way forward...
http://psychictides.blogspot.com/
ok- loveyou truly...
will speak properly very soon indeed- really hopethere's been some more take up for nav-lab. its so clear what you are offering...i just wonder if its a case of local artists not sharing this language around body/landscape...??? i dont know- just seems such a massive culture gap - maybe there is a completely differenet approach there and one which needs time to permeate. i forget sometimes how evolved our language has become - it is positive, but maybe it does need to open out again in order to facilitate at the widest level...
one thing i really want to do is to stay in the visual this year- maybe that does mean getting prodiuction heavy, its just an intuition that i'm having with all my work at the moment- writing through our ideas doesnt quite seem to give them justice . i think we are always dealing with the visual through language- its more sophisticated than image/sensation/movement, there is an articulation of space and texture and quality working in these differeent environs which i think we need to find ways to represent visually- through photography/animation/film...the blog seems like agood way to start to shift our register...and to stay accountable over the old geo-divide!
ok- over and out for the moment- xx

Place Mapping while walking

2008-06-06T02:42:00.000-07:00

Marnie to Rachel
Dear Rach
I just finished speaking with you in the phone. I thought I would just jot something down ready for our conversation. I am on the choreography as cartography line.
I am also thinking now to look at setting up a tripod and leave the camera running. But I will definitely continue to embrace a triangulation of body-camera-country through a solo investigation, working as subject-photographer simultaneously | working the camera on the body.
BRAINWAVE - I need to find a geographer or similar! I am on it!.

I keep envisaging different costumes. So I was thinking I might work daily towards an OBA through the use of a costume | or not. This is starting to sound like being production-value-heavy. But it will be one person – so it won’t be much.
I have this similar image in my head from what I described to you in an email last year – at pixieville – floating down the river. Remember?

There is not nearly half as much water as at Dartmoor. Not even a tenth! But there is water presently! It rained!

I am good actually. Just a little hiccup with having (felt) overexposed to my yoga teacher. But I did ask for it. All good but. However, I have since been out of my ‘soulskin’. I am working on getting it back!

The place where I am looking at at the moment is Piesse Brooke in Kalamunda National Park. Attached are some photos. I have been doing loads of mapping and re-mapping. The surveys are shit over here. You have to search for bits and pieces to get a good geographical map.

I will be getting more poetic soon! I just want to set down a couple of ground parameters with you. Because I think we should formalise our process here (now). This will strengthen our practice, and I can then use this to form part of my MA independent project (which is another conversation really!)

In the image titles –
LF = Lesmurdie Falls National Park – another site quite interesting but riddled with tourists and their footprints and smell.
PB = Peisse Brooke, Kalamunda National Park – as described above.
The S1 / S2 etc stands for the site number (site 1, etc), and their reference name.
Tell me what your thoughts are.

Love Marnie

Reclaimed golf course - Kalamunda WA

2008-05-30T09:03:00.000-07:00

30 May 2008 - Jorgensen Park - old golf course

b