Since my September post the expedition trips for Who is the land have accelerated in frequency and distance. As a part of our movement research and cultivation of film material Stacie and I have voyaged to the Isle of Arran (off of Scotland’s West coast) the Southern coast of Cornwall and have just returned from Whitby (where Captain Cook trained as a seaman) for the penultimate installment of this phase of our adventure.
Images from the Isle of Arran
In all of the locations we have encountered so far we have been blown away by the epic beauty and power of the landscapes, coastlines and waters we have stumbled across. It has been fascinating for us to discover some of the unique characteristics and qualities of the places we have visited, getting brief glimpses of the location’s personalities, which have very much inspired our movement material and research. However due to our limited time frames in each of the locations there is a sense that we are only just scratching the surface of possibilities within our chosen locations. Although a set time constraint within each place has offered us much needed parameters to work from and an element of raw immediacy, which I am particularly intrigued by from a choreographic perspective, I can’t help but feel a longing for the luxury of more time to explore these incredible places further.
Images from the South Cornwall coast
As the project has developed it emerged that through the film we are hoping to capture our physical encounters with these places through a series of digital postcards or snapshots of our time and explorations in them. Our intention is that these snapshots will not only provide a form of creative documentation or record of each of our trips, but will also reveal some of the methods we have employed to create and develop movement material in response to the landscapes we are moving in.
Images from Whitby
This weekend coming will see the last of our journeys (for now anyway) that will be taking us back to the Gower peninsula where we first started our research. Returning to Gower is significant to us as there is a sense that we are going back to where we started our voyage, finding our way back to our departure point, similar to more traditional types of expeditions of an explorative purpose. From a choreographic perspective we are returning to our starting place in order to experiment with how the material we have generated in the various places we have been since relates to the landscape we were first inspired by, the place that offered us numerous seeds of inspiration that have been carried throughout the rest of the project. We will be considering what traces are left of our original investigations, what has evolved or shifted and how does the catalogue of material we have created up to now, sit in this place of conception?
Whilst on our expeditions we have met a plethora of wonderful people, both locals and visitors alike who have given us great insights into the gems of the areas we were in, from suggestions to film on wild beaches to the best fish and chips around. We have been asking the people we encounter to fill out and send us the two postcards we have made for the project as we are fascinated to find out about other people’s connection to the sea and these special places as we are creating our own personal stories. Along the way we have also been delivering the postcards to museums that have a connection to our journey, including the National Maritime Museum Cornwall and Travellers’ Tails partner museums: the Hunterian Museum and the Captain Cook Memorial Museum, so that their visitors can also feed into the project.
We are eager to collect as many stories or responses as possible so if you would like to get involved please email: whoistheland@rmg.co.uk answering both or either of the prompts below:
- What is your connection to the sea?
- Tell us of a hidden gem, a local treasure, a place you have discovered.