Notes on a Watery Weekend

Water – forms up to eighty percent of our bodies; covers two-thirds of the earth’s surface; we can’t live without it; can’t survive long in it. As a character in my third novel Taking in Water, says, ‘Pay attention to water, water rules the world.’

So, last weekend, I couldn’t resist an event titled, Taking The Waters. Organised by Gareth Evans and Aldeburgh Music, over two days at Snape Maltings, Suffolk, the event brought together academics, writers, filmmakers, musicians and visual artists for, ‘a weekend navigation through the cultural meanings of water.’

It was a mixed bag, a curate’s egg, but some bits were excellent.

A few jottings from my notebook …

Robert MacFarlane launched the programme with an elegant, affectionate talk on his friendship with the late Roger Deakin – a presiding spirit.  MacFarlane conjured up the legendary wild swimmer through anecdotes and passages from Waterlog. In water we are, ‘differently minded because differently bodied,’ said MacFarlane - Deakin’s frog’s eye view.  ‘Water is a visionary substance.’ Prepositions become crucial: are we in the stuff, on it, under it, thinking through it? Might water think us?  In and through water might we re-think/imagine that inter-relationship – us/world.

Deakin was a major influence on Macfarlane’s own exploration of water and wild places. Influence, a watery word suggesting in flow and infusion. Archipelago was another key word that recurred throughout the weekend. How are the fragments connected? How to think/flow/‘slip shape’ between ponds/islands?

Someone remarked that there seemed to be rather a lot of men rambling around East Anglia and writing about it. I was pleased to find that one of them was Ken Worpole.  He suggested that this need to walk signalled a reconnection with place away from the road. Much writing about place in the 30s and 40s had been for the motorist, those Shell Guides. 

Worpole’s 350 Miles, An Essex Journey recorded a view from the footpath. He certainly achieved what he set out to do: rescue Essex from its dismissal by Country Life as ‘being of no interest.’ Using Jason Orton’s photographs of that same journey, Worpole took us into a defensive and shifting landscape – marshes that constantly change with the tide, never quite the same place twice, water and land in perpetual negotiation.

Warpole walked in order to experience, ‘the mystery of being at the water’s edge,’ and to challenge the stereotypical view of the Essex coast as fish & chips at Southend. The beach, post-religion, he suggested, becomes a site from which to stare out – like Caspar David Friedrich’s monk – to reflect on doubts and uncertainties; a place which we might re-configure ourselves. The sea – mother/place of return/place of spontaneity – is a place where we can create meaning.

 

Perhaps we stand and stare because there’s so much we don’t know about what lies in the deepest ocean.  Musician David Rothenberg brought noises from the underwater world on stage as he played his clarinet in a kind of call and response with a recording of the song of a humpbacked whale. Apparently, whale songs are complex compositions of up to 24 hours duration. Having just embarked on singing lessons I am humbled by this fact.

After the lyricism of water, walking and whales, Noel Burch’s and Allan Sekula’s film, The Forgotten Space, brought a shift in gear.  Burch introduced it as ‘a political economy of the sea; an Agit prop documentary.’ Far from signifying order, proposes the film’s thesis, that ubiquitous rectangle the shipping container is the cause of chaos - personal and environmental. Inside this ‘rational’ space lurks trading madness. Cod caught in the Atlantic is shipped to China, filleted by cheap labour, shipped back, deep-frozen, for consumption in America.

 

The film offered some terrific, telling images but too often their impact was lost amid longueurs. With a film essay surely selection, editing is all? I’m thinking of Adam Curtis’s recent All Watched Over Series broadcast by the BBC last summer. Curtis’s repetition, minimal use of words, cutting and juxtaposition made compelling viewing. There’s a powerful one-hour visual essay somewhere in The Forgotten Space’s 112 minutes.

Jay Griffiths took us back under the sea as she read from her book, Wild: An Elemental Journey, evoking a wilderness that few will ever witness – the abyss. To journey there is to see colours gradually fade until all is ultra violet and then blackness.  There is ‘no season, no sun, no pull of the moon,’ only ‘ugly fish, blind creatures sucking, rasping.’

 

Top-of-the-bill on Saturday evening was a ‘premiere presentation’ of Swandown, a collaboration between writer Iain Sinclair and artist/film maker Andrew Kotting. Having admired Kotting’s Deadad project and Sinclair’s London Orbital I was curious to see this.

Swandown involved travelling in a swan pedalo from Hastings beach along the coast, eventually up the Lee valley to the Olympic Park, and filming the journey. Before attempting the pedalo voyage, Kotting walked the land route with a decoy swan under his arm as a lure, a conversation piece.  They described the project as, ‘a travelogue and odyssey of Olympian ambition. A poetic film diary about encounter and culture… an endurance test and pedal marathon.’  The two-hour event turned out, indeed, to be an endurance test.

Far too much time was given to showing a speeded up film of Kotting’s walk - migraine inducing. As the film flickered in the background an under-rehearsed Sinclair and Kotting larked around on stage. In the pub afterwards someone remarked that it was all a bit ‘Top Gear.’ Sinclair and Kotting claim to be ‘Urban Shaman and landscape Ombudsman.’ On Saturday it was more a case of Sinclair playing James May to Kotting’s Jeremy Clarkson. Too much laddishness – what was the significance of taunting the real swan with the decoy?

A work-in-progress it might be, but perhaps too loose to offer to a paying audience?  Maybe something will emerge in the finished film.

Two quieter voices on Sunday made more impact.  Manu Luksch’s Kayak Libre project offered a more engaging encounter with water in the Lee Valley. The Austrian-born artist talked of her fascination with England’s canals, their changing use and the ways in which these routes have re-shaped the land. Many were now forgotten spaces. Kayak Libre invited people to book a ride in her Kayak ‘Taxi’, the ‘fare’ being a conversation about imagined future transport. Low down on the canal water in a different ‘audiosphere’ her passengers talked freely of ‘ghost boats,’ and systems of tubes in the air. You can see the routes, hear the conversations, here.

Local artist, Simon Read, lives on a converted Dutch barge. He has immersed himself in issues around the shoreline management plan for the Suffolk coast. Conceived of in separate zones, how might action in one area adversely affect another?

As he researched he noticed that with radar, sonar etc there were ‘ways of mapping – more than a hand can do.’ Such data often translates into jargon most people don’t understand. His maps of the coast and the Deben flood plain attempt to put all that information on one sheet of paper. For him the process of map making is ‘a meditation on what’s happening to the land.’ The result: beautiful artworks, useful maps. See his work at the link above.

This weekend immersion was stimulating. I came away with a clutch of books from the excellent bookstall. Top of the pile being, Macfarlane's The Wild Places. 

It looks as if this focus on ‘Place’ will become an annual event. Let's hope so. Given the news this week might ‘drought’ be apt East Anglian subject next year?

Comments

[Pam Johnson]

Yes, Tammy, walks and workshops - great idea. Certainly some element of discussion, even if only, a panel discussion at end of the morning/afternoon, with all of the contributors lined up? Might not be too difficult to programme even given the time/budget constraints.

[Tamar]

Thanks Pam, for posting this, and to Anne and Jane for their comments. Yes, completely agree that poetry would have been a fine addition to the weekend -- Alice Oswald's 'Dart' was certainly mentioned by at least one speaker, and there are local poets such as Pauline Stainer and Wendy Mulford who write about the East Anglian landscape who would have made wonderful contributions (not to mention the fact they're women!)

I also agree with Anne that the Jarman film felt slightly at odds with some of the weekend's themes (especially as Grant Gee's film 'Patience' was one of the great highlights of last year's festival). As with any weekend of this nature, there were highs and lows. The most interesting presentations came from Macfarlane, Warpole and Read, as I felt they all understood the focus of the weekend. It would have been excellent to have some more interactive events, such as walks and workshops. And perhaps more of an intensive focus on Deakin.

But, as someone who has attended both weekends, I applaud Gareth Evans and Aldeburgh Music for such excellent programming. Already looking forward to next year's event.

[Pam Johnson]

Yes, Anne, meant to say - the omission of anything about 1953 flooding was curious, particularly in the Estuary piece ... that storm/flood very much part of the history of Canvey Island...

[Pam Johnson]

Thanks Jane and Anne. Yes, Jane, poetry would be a great addition - perhaps at next year's Place weekend?

I've been thinking about the blokey aspect - why is it that so many men are walking around East Anglia and writing about it? Why aren’t these peregrinators heading for Lancashire? An equally interesting county with a coast.

I suppose the university triangle – Cambridge, UEA, Essex – and proximity to London. Few of these writers [Sebald, Macfarlane, Will self] are native East Anglians, apart from Worpole, I think.

Why men? Well, the old story I suppose: you can’t peregrinate and be back in time for the school run.

Although to be fair to the blokes there was much childminding by men going on over the weekend!

[anne]

Thanks, Pam, for this account of a stimulating weekend. The real highlights for me were Robert McFarlane, Ken Worpole and Simon Read. The way McFarlane opened his talk with a recording of Deakin was very dramatic, an excellent curtain-raiser for the weekend. I’d been looking forward to this session anyway, having admired them both for a while. Worpole was a revelation, as I hadn’t come across him before. Read’s work was beautiful. I’d have liked more time to listen to him and look at his artwork.

I agree with Jane that the weekend felt very blokey, especially the Sinclair/Kotting gig. The Jarman film was not really so relevant to the theme, although some scenes were shot on the shore at Dungeness. It was powerful, but rather dated. (There should have been a warning about the film’s adult content, as many people thought it was going to be the documentary about Derek Jarman’s garden and there were children present. I noticed a lot of people walked out, and it wasn’t only because we were running late.)

It was a huge theme, inexhaustible really. Surprising to be in East Anglia talking about water and no mention of the 1953 flood. And why not one of Jason Orton’s more local photographs for the weekend wallpaper, instead of Morecambe Bay?

I really hope there will be another weekend next year. Yes, “drought” could be a broad theme – but the important thing is this rich multi-disciplinary approach. If anything, it would be good to have a chance to participate. Was there a walk I missed out on? Q & As with Keith Worpole? It would have been fantastic to have a workshop with Simon Read!

Excellent bookstall – I spent a fortune.

[jane]

Excellent overview...maybe like water it was meant to slip past with some bits leaving us stuck in a banal and familiar swamp hoping to be rescued by the contagious enthusiam of Macfarlane, Worpole and the capable Kayaking of Manu Luksch following brilliant maps from Simon Read. Plus if the film had been edited leaving the memorable and important and new there would have been time for poetry...and more women contributors. It felt very blokey...