Gen Doy New Collaborations Bursary 2014

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Images show broken “mouth” opening left on the ground at the site of Pol 21 on Greenham Common former airbase, and a view of the site of what remains of the overground structures of Pol21 from a distance.
After struggling to upload these pictures once again (!) ( please can you improve this software a-n!) here’s a report on 2 visits to Greenham Common this week, one on my own and one with Lynn Dennison.
I spent hours taking photographs, singing songs and doing sound recordings at the Common. The songs are all related to various points in the history of the Common as a military base over a period of hundreds of years. There are lots of interesting examples of places where only traces of human activity are left eg. ruined buildings or other artefacts rusted and/or overgrown with vegetation. Gorse bushes are almost everywhere on the Common, and horses and cattle graze without hindrance of fences for large areas. Small planes and helicopters are often flying overhead.
I may have to go back and record more, and I need to write a text to speak at the Common. I’m not sure if this will be a text in sentences, a narrative, or simply words or abstract sounds. I want to convey something of the difficulties in finding and understanding the disappeared or semi-visible traces of activities on the Common. For example the two photographs here (I hope!) show remains of the overground equ8ipment for getting fuel out of underground fuel tanks for aircraft. From a distance they actually blend in with the landscape and this last remaining one is hard to find till you come upon it. at first you think the upright metal poles that remain are fence posts or even treetrunks. There’s a couple of these broken off rusted metal shapes on the concrete base which are amazing. If you look into one of them you realise that underneath is a very deep shaft with lots of empty space underneath the platform on ground level. it is quite dizzying to realise this. I experimented with striking a metal circular cover near one of these gaping “mouths” and this resulted in a kind of hollow breath emanating from the hole. Wonderful sound. I’m definitely going to use this and will return and record this again but leaving more time for every trace of the sound to die away before I hit the metal cover nearby again. Also the sound of the wind and of a wooden mallet sliding slowly up and down the sides of the metal uprights is great. When I’ve edited these files I’ll try to upload them in a new blog post. (Ha ha! That should be fun! )
On Thursday Lynn came with me and she did loads of filming and we discussed ideas for how the material (both visuals and sound) could be edited. Lynn suggested starting with the most recent songs and working backwards. I’ll need to think more about what the non-sung voice material is going to be. I envisage it kind of rising to the top and falling down to the bottom again in the way that archaeological stuff can do. I want an edit that isn’t just linear but very deep with loads of material in different tracks in the timeline, without things getting too messy. This is going to be a bit of a challenge. I’ve also been thinking about having sound sometimes without any visuals but I’m not sure that Lynn is totally convinced by this. We’ll discuss some more when we see what material we’ve got. Lynn also wants to shoot the footage at the Yew Tree again as sometimes there is too much sun in it…it was a lovely day. More after my next visit to Greenham which should be after delivery of replacement contact mics next week. Mine “disappeared” after an evening class I attended :( I’ll go back and record at the underground fuel tank site with the contact mics to see what that gives.

Well, no reply at all from Orford Ness so I think it unlikely that I’ll be able to do any work there this year, at least. I was at Dungeness the other day as part of a workshop entitled Atmospheric Pressure which was all about responding to the weather through performance. We were based in Folkestone and made the trip from there to Dungeness. Wonderful place. Reminiscent of Orford Ness in its nature, shingle beach, dangerous tides, interesting plant-life and wild-life. Instead of bomb-testing derelict buildings as at Orford Ness, we have a nuclear power station. Derek Jarman’s lovely garden and cottage is there too, with a beautiful poem by John Donne on one of the walls, a poem I have always thought was magnificent. The one about lovers in bed who don’t want to get up, and the line that goes “days, months, weeks which are the rags of time” or as near as I can remember.
At any rate, I need to devote much of the rest of the time of this project to Greenham Common. I want to go there this week, and was hoping to go tomorrow, but my voice needs a rest after a lot of talking and even singing at the weekend. I’ll go on Friday. There is lovely autumn weather at the moment. Bright, but not too hot. I spent this morning sorting out songs to sing at various locations on the common. For example at the rusty fireplane, which is really quite something, I’ll sing a WW2 song “Coming home on a wing and a prayer” (I need to learn the melody for this), and at another location I’ll sing a Jacobite song “O’er the water tae Charlie”.With words by Burns and a good melody, this should work well. If I can find the bomb overgrown bomb storage places in the wood across the road, which was previously part of the common, I’m going to sing a WW1 song “I don’t want to die, I want to go home…” . My ex-partner used to sing this for me in the days when we were close. That’s how I learnt it. There are some other songs, one is Psalm 149 which is apparently one that the Roundheads used to sing going into battle against the Cavaliers (there were two battles of Newbury in the English Civil War.) I’ve written a slightly different final verse (still based on Psalm 149) and the tune will be Hanover. Plus another one about ww1 Called “Trenches” by Brecht and Hans Eisler I think, Dagmar Krause sings it really well. I’ll have to just do my best!
I’m struggling to get a good song for the Greenham Peace Camp period. I’ve found one which is a version of “Which Side are you on…” but the words written by the Peace Camp participant don’t scan very well so I might need to slightly adapt this to Pete Seeger’s music (which is where it all came from in the first place.) Also there’s a good verse in it which has the line “Are you on the side that calls me cunt” so that’s probably narrowed down the places where this can ever be exhibited or installed!
All this is to testify to the military role played by Greenham Common over hundreds of years, of which only some fairly recent traces remain….as well as the anti-militaristic feelings of many participants in conflicts.

Once I’ve gone and recorded the songs, I’ll try to persuade Lynn to come out there and film what she feels interested in. She’s just finished editing the previous parts of this project ie. the Yew Tree, and the first one we did, set in Scott’s Grotto.
Tonight am off to take part in an underground singing project in the tunnels in the Brunel Museum near Rotherhithe in South London, with another session on Wednesday night.
A day of song practising and learning coming up tomorrow!