The Land Listening Project
The Land Listening Project is quite simply art born of the love of land, all land, but also the land directly beneath my feet, the land i live on, the land i sleep on and am bring up my son with in.
I was an army child, and so lived a transient life moving every 1 to 3 years. After i left home i carried on travelling, or moving homes, as it was what i knew. I have been based in Totnes for the last 15 years and here on this very specific patch of land for 11 of those years.
Although i have always loved the natural world, and found deep pleasure in each and every landscape i have found myself in, there is something so precious about coming to know a piece of land deeply over time, to become intimate with it, to know it like a friend. I have become particularly enamoured with the beautiful ancient hollow way right next to my home and an old quarry at the opening to this. These two spaces have been a great support to me as i navigate some chronic pain issues exacerbated by stepping into peri-menopause. Sometimes they have been the only natural spaces i could access and i have enjoyed sinking deeply into their sights, sounds and smells as a gentle therapy, a balm to my bodily struggles.
I respond in gratitude, as an artist, to this great support and connection that the land has shared with me, this takes the form of rituals of gratitude, ode poems and ephemeral art left on the land.
It has also been expressed through an exhibition, in the quarry, of art pieces created from the plants with in easy walking distance of my home and the quarry. It consisted of eco printed cloth, ink made from oak galls, bunches of dried plants and seed heads, bones found in my garden and stones from the quarry.
“The land knows you, even when you are lost.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
The Quarry Exhibition
Track Talk
Track Talk is the working title for my current aspect of artistic praise for this wonderful land that has supported me. As a health practice for myself i began walking the track (which is my affectionate name for the old hollow way) and observing with each sense in turn. I became deeply absorbed in the sights, smells, textures, tastes and sounds of this space. I began writing after each walk what i had seen, heard, felt, thought, this became a record of that deepening relationship. I researched creatures and plants, wrote their names; i witnessed little happenings between the creatures and a slow dawning on me that the track its self has a spirit that welcomed me deeper and deeper into their world each time i walked, slowly and consciously.
Track Talks' ultimate becoming will be an audio experience, a mixture of my voice reading the writing, as well as readings from an old book on ferns about this very hollow way; some audio of other local peoples reflections on this space; field recordings of the sounds there, some music, and sounds made at home in praise of what this track spirit has gifted me. Ultimately it will be shared as a program on my local community radio station SoundArt and as a podcast on MixCloud. For now, however, let me share with you this audio introduction, in which i am walking up the track, describing it to you, on a day in early spring.
