Experiments in back tracking

    A series of experiments during my residency at Joya:AiR served as starting points for venturing into the landscape and seeking different ways of returning.

    From the house it is possible to walk in all directions. The unevenness of the ground encourages the use of existing tracks. A few routes are compacted with certainty, and become the default entry points into the landscape, before branching sideways at intersections that carry a resemblance to paths inviting human incursion. The house is the returning point, out and back, and the leaving point, a flow of people, coming and going with small intense windows of overlap enabling rich interactions. Connection is fostered by the nourishment of bodies together, within the unfamiliar envelope of pale clay, almond trees and aromatic shrubs.

    Joya:AiR Velez Blanco, Spain

    Nov/Dec 2018

    Experiment no. 1.

     

    The bakers thread purchased over the internet is labelled according to its weight, not length.

     

    ‘How long is a piece of string‘  began the practical enquiry about what it means to backtrack. The looping of the string as a measuring technique, returning it almost to the place of its departure. Now the back tracking is constructive, it binds, holds, secures. It transforms the branches, attaches itself through its parallel path, a return towards, but not tracing the same path. This looping enables an intensification of colour, the delineation of line  – a 3 dimensional drawing in nature. The line is determined by the shape of the branches, but might suggest a reversal in cause and effect, the thread appearing to hold, constrain support, leak from the branches.

     

    One experiment promoted a second intervention and both might have been left for others to discover until I remembered the intention to track back. I rewound both colours of thread onto a bent stick, unravelling the work done and became aware of the significant difference in both the physical process of undoing and the mental attitude to it.  Tracking backwards is not a simple reversal of movement, gesture and intention, but is its own activity. It might be treated with impatience – the urge to get back to the starting point in order to begin again, the return journey, fatigued by the primary activity, restless and future focussed. I watch the mind prioritise and I suggest to myself that this unwinding should be given equal attention. I take some notice, but it is nearing the time to return for lunch.

    Experiment no. 2.

     

    Short walk with blue and green twine from yesterday (50 metres approx). Walking in a straight line as far as the thread will allow and then in a curve, keeping the line taut until meeting an object. Then the line snags and the trajectory changes until I come to a tree where I can attach the thread. The odd shaped stick means it is slow to create the line and I make the dismantling of the line slower still by wrapping the thread around objects found on the way back.

    Longer walk with string on soft ground. The new spoil is fast to unravel and my step is the determinant of speed. On the return the rewinding requires a fast action of the hands and very slow movement of the legs, with feet sinking into the soft earth. The discordant rhythm sparks impatience and I shift to a quicker looping of the string into a loose hand held shank.

     

    I think about harvesting the soft earth.

    Experiment no. 3.

     

    The thread caught on the bark and the ground was too rocky and uneven to delineate the line by walking. The yellow twine wrapped around the trunk and pulled me closer and closer, reining me back into the spiral trajectory, like a sideways gravity, pulling me into its atmosphere.

     

    I left marks at the points where the path split – ‘doubt’, ‘silence’ and ‘me’, Stencilled on the ground with paprika. I meandered free after the spirals, engrossed in the form of young almond tees protected by tall thin tubes of black plastic and bright blue net. The landscape had reformatted and I glanced the fleeting fear that I had lost my way. This was the time when a thread tied to a tree could have averted the momentary panic, but this is what I wanted to experience, wasn’t it?

     

    The track I took became increasingly familiar, signalled by items of clothing attached to the trees, branches as stretchers attributing corners to bodies, trousers and sleeves hanging limp.

     

    My route did not pass ‘me’, but met my outward journey at ‘silence’ and by the time I reached ‘doubt’ the route back was clear. I had found the imprint of a tyre track on the way there and left a sprinkling of paprika on a stone to help me locate it. I lifted the track with care as if it were a clay artefact and searched the ground for more allusions to ancient civilisations left by the recent tread of vehicles.

    Experiment no. 4.

     

    An attempt to shape the body to the landscape, to bend and mould to its contours and crevices. The shape of the body in relation to natural features takes precedence over identity. The body giving definition and hommage to the landscape, a reversal of the landscape as backdrop for the body.

     

    Returning to the earth, succumbing to nature, being part of nature, the body stretches, bends, balances, slips, sinks in search of the edges of its physical vulnerability. It might be an embrace, a draping, clinging or submission, but the landscape provides the lead and the body follows, craving memory of its place as part of the natural cycle of energy.

     

    This collaborative experiment with Chris Stenton continued over a number of days and lead to a series of black and white photographs entitled Benign

    Back-tracking ……forwards

     

    I am wondering now if I am set on a path that does not lead to where I need to go.

     

    The alternative paths might be offshoots further back along the way. To find them I will have to go backwards, not forwards. I might have to follow different branches to see where they lead and then backtrack.

     

    Returning is not a simple reversal of the forward journey. The landscape looks different from the opposite direction and the mindset and intention of returning cast the experience into a new form.  It might be difficult to see where we have been and it is tempting to stick to the main paths and miss the hidden tracks.

    We might mistake someone else’s foot prints for our own, unconsciously wishing to be in the other’s perfect shoes.

     

    I could try going backwards to look for clues about the present, yet the ‘lessons of history’ are never framed in the light of what can be learnt. The clues that exist as memories are partial and charged with longing. They dissipate and elude us when we look closely.

     

    Memories jostle into the narrative. The power of rewriting the story of the past is in defining ourselves by a different set of experiences. Is it possible to reconstruct stories built on fragments when a new shard shines in contradiction?

     

    I return to the earth.