Roots&Remains

Searching for Squirrels

Gillian — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 21:33:37 +0000

On Wednesday morning a few of us from volunteering met up to get a session in surveying for red squirrels, and since the greys have moved in, them as well. Our 8am start was met with lovely clear and sunny skies, although after the clocks going back, it meant our light was maybe too bright. But it provided a nice motivation for those of us (ie me) who don’t exactly bond with early mornings.

The light and shadow amongst the tress was beautiful, and a few steps away from the path, into the enclosure of pine trees, provided a heavy silence and calm. No wonder squirrels choose the dawn to be active.

Focussing on the task at hand, it is amazing how quickly your ears hone in on the sound of squirrels nibbling away in the branches above. And the scratching of their feet as they move through the trees. No doubt watching us with glee, knowing we are struggling to see anything other than the branches dancing under their movement.

The colours of autumn glowed brightly; eyes focused and ears open, to all our surroundings.

Music: WITTR

Gillian — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 22:48:03 +0000

I recently picked up Issue 42 of Zero Tolerance magazine due to the included Wolves In The Throne Room interview, and I wasn’t disappointed. Many things that were mentioned that made me take notice, think and agree with, particularly relating to place and location.

From Zero Tolerance Magazine: Issue 42 – Aug/Sept 2011 – pages 14-19
Interview with Aaron Weaver; Interviewed by Will Pinfold

“Our music is completely connected to place. In fact, it is inspired almost completely by the unique natural aspects of the Pacific Northwest and their corresponding occult dimensions. One of the things I hate most about the culture of late modernity is its utter lack of connection to location and place. In modernity, the real world is increasingly being replaced with a simulation. Depth and complexity, connection to tradition and the honouring of uniqueness – both are discarded in favour of a one-world culture created by global capitalism.”

“… A deep sense of yearning for a forgotten past is what gives our music its melancholy spirit. But to be trapped and engulfed by the ghosts of the past is a different thing. We have no interesting in dressing up as Vikings and cobbling together a religion from a lost culture. We don’t romanticise the past; we criticise the present.”

“Our mystical ideas are crystallised by our experiences with nature. For us, there is no alternative because we have no spiritual traditions to turn to; all we have are the wild places and beings that are messengers from the otherworld. This is why we’re not interested in the kabbalah or hermetic lore or an attempt to re-imagine traditional paganism. We want to start from nothing and begin to build a mythic world anew for ourselves.”

“Our music exists in a liminal space between the miserable, compromised existence we have to live in and the world that exists in our dreams and in moments of peak existence. If we lived in a utopia, this music would not need to exist. All art is caught between the flawed material world and the world of the ideal.“

Land Art & the Viewer: Lotte Glob

Gillian — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 00:13:21 +0000

Following on from my previous post regarding the role of the viewer in relation to land/site-specific artworks, I thought I would relate this to specific artists.

The first artist I want to mention is Lotte Glob, a ceramic artist based in the Highlands of Scotland. Kwon’s suggestion that a viewer is required to validate artwork becomes interesting when considering an artist such as Glob, particularly in reference to her work Floating Stones, and also raises questions in relation to place and documentation. Glob’s work is heavily connected to site selection and involves her giving back to her surrounding landscapes. In Floating Stones, Glob released 333 ceramic stones into 111 Lochans – three stones in each. Each release was documented through photographs and a journal, which has now been made into a book. The introduction of the book states that:

“Lotte has increasingly been drawn not to the mountain tops for their own sake but instead to discover the more private, hidden location that often lie on their flanks[1]”

This demonstrates that the site and landscape are inextricable to the work. But when the specific, and remote, locations of her “stones” are not disclosed, where does this leave the viewer? If the viewer was to try and seek out the Stones, how certain could they be that they found the actual object – the ambiguity of Glob’s Floating Stones are such that it may be hard to tell them apart from a real stone. The only evidence of this project comes in the form of the book ‘Floating Stones’ published in 2008, which showcases a photograph of the “stones” in situ, along with a journal entry regarding the surroundings.

Fourteen years have passed since Glob first started this project, which has no doubt resulted in the altering of her stones through movement in water, weathering and decay. The original object will be forever altering, until it may possibly decay completely. All this is, no doubt, part of the “artworks” process. But this raises an extra issue of viewer validation. If a viewer is required to “complete” the artwork, when the object of the artwork itself is ever changing, at what point should the viewer be validating – when the stone(s) is first released, or when it is decaying. And with 333 stones within the project, would a viewer ever be able to find them all?

Glob’s stones are required to make their own journey, and in that sense are truly connected to the landscape they have been released into. This in turn should allow the viewer to look past the stones and into the landscape that surrounds them – and that in turn is the actual “object”. A viewer can not validate this artwork in terms of viewing the actual object to gain their subjective opinion, and therefore complete it, instead they must use their subjectivity in the first place to validate the object(s) they are unlikely to see in reality, and only likely to see within the publication. In this case the physicality of the object to the viewer is not necessarily the “required” link for the viewer to connect and respond – it is the action, placement and cycle of the “stones” that is key, and depending on the viewer, this may be enhanced by the existence of documentation (ie her book.)

[1] L. Glob, Floating Stones, Aberfeldy: Watermill Books, 2008, p. 1

Land Art & The Viewer

Gillian — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 20:38:57 +0000

Sorting through some folders and files on my laptop, I came across some of my essays, and the notes I had for them, from art college and decided to use them to kick start this blog!

By third year my art practice research mostly revolved around “land/environmental” artists and site-specificity, the latter especially for theory/essay based things. One aspect that interested me was the role of the viewer within such artworks, relating to quotes regarding the requirement of a viewer to validate the artwork. Miwon Kwon suggests that the earliest form of site specific works were concerned with establishing an embroiled relationship between the work and the site which could not be divided, and that it “demanded the physical presence of the viewer for the work’s completion.[1]” The suggestion of a viewer being required to complete the work interested me due to the nature of some of the artists work I had been looking at. Artists who engage in earthworks often produce work of such a fleeting temporary nature, or are often so remote, that engagement with a viewer may not occur. In some cases, the only certain “viewer” is the artist him/herself.

But why is a viewer required to validate the artwork? What exactly does the viewer bring to the work that enables this completion? When speaking about his own work, Richard Serra states that:

“Everyone will derive a different meaningfulness in terms of how they experienced the what. The what is really their subjectivity and so without their subjectivity there is no work.[2]”

This statement supports Kwon’s statement of a viewer being required. It is not just the object (or the artwork) itself, that is important, but the subjectivity of the viewer in how they react or translate the artwork – it is the internal reaction of the viewer that completes the artwork, or could be said makes the artwork. Therefore, it is not enough for the artwork to exist “as is” (ie as a physical object) – it requires the viewer to consider it, validate it and therefore complete it.

This requirement fascinates me in terms of “land/site-specific” artworks that are remote, temporary, or are only experienced by the artist on their own. If an artwork never receives a viewer, can it really be argued that it has not been completed or validated? Can documentation of these type of artworks enable this validation, even although it is not specifically the artwork itself?

All the pathways that can be followed from these ideas interest me, and I am neither in agreement, or in disagreement, with the idea of Kwon’s statement. For me, artworks that may never have a viewer are still fully valid and completed artworks. But on the other hand, so many site-specific artworks, and art involving the land, are embroiled in an interest in connecting the viewer to the land, promoting a relationship with site and connecting the viewer with their surroundings (or the site), rather than the artwork itself, that essentially a viewer is absolutely required to validate or complete the artwork, because the artwork is a tool, or an introduction, to something much more.

[1] M. Kwon, One Place After Another; Site-specific art and locational identity, Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT Press, 2002, p. 12

[2] BBC: Imagine: Richard Serra: Man of Steel, Broadcast on 25/11/2008 on BBC One

A Little Introduction

Gillian — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:34:34 +0000

Roots & remains; I’ve had an idea for a while now (at least a year, I like to mull things over!) to make a website/blog that focuses on the environment and archaeology, from a more art based viewpoint. I decided I didn’t want to mix this in with my personal/artwork blog but have only now registered a domain name I feel represents my aim.

The aim of the site? Well, at the moment it is early days. I have my thoughts for how I want this site to grow, so for now, it’s a case of starting it and letting it evolve. It is, first and foremost, a personal project. The idea for the site came out of my art practice research – a lot of my inspiration is connected to archaeology and my own interest in the environment. What comes from all this “theory” side is a lot of “bits and pieces” and I decided it would be nice to have these collected somewhere – for example; I visit a lot of ancient ruins, and therefore have numerous photographs and scraps of information, and figured it would be good to have them grouped somewhere, and if on a website, then they are accessible to others and may be of interest. That’s just one element, another may be thoughts and writings connected to it all.

The main component will most likely by the blog. I have no set idea of what I should, or should not, include within it. So, it will more than likely (but not exclusively) include artists that inspire me that are somehow linked to archaeology or the environment (whether environmental issues/messages or nature and the landscape) and opinions or thoughts relating to such; it may also include opinions and links to archaeological and environmental things that I find interesting, but are not directly linked to an artwork or artist.

Even although I’ve separated this from my personal/artwork blog, this is still a personal project, and therefore prone to change as I let it evolve into what it’s meant to be. It’ll start of slow, as I find the time to build it up.