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!

25/8/14

Well it’s pouring with rain on a bank holiday Monday afternoon so what better time to update my blog, or attempt to. This time I’m going to write it in Word and try to copy and paste my text in an attempt to avoid losing much of what I write every time I try to update the blog!

I had a long meeting with one of my collaborators, Lynn, the other day. we were discussing a commission we have, but towards the end I wanted to discuss ideas about this collaboration. I think so far that we have been collaborating, but somehow it’s not quite what I think we could be doing…I suppose I mean that I think we should try different methods of collaboration that we haven’t tried before. For example we go to various places together and film and record and perform after discussing what we are aiming to do, or try things out in a more open way, within a roughly defined project. I tend to do the sound aspect, writing songs, recording etc and Lynn does the filming and final editing. It seemed to me that doing things in a different way would at least be worth a try though more time-consuming. The time factor is important. Lynn has already spent ages trying to edit things after I send a sound file to her, trying to get something she is happy with. I think the amount of money I asked for in the bursary to pay her for her time is woefully inadequate, compared to the time she has actually spent. I’ll need to remember this next time (if there is a next time!)
But also I feel that the collaboration is a bit distant in some respects. I do the sound separately, and Lynn does the video and sound editing together, and she feels this is a collaboration because the final work is a collaboration. But I feel that it’s the coming together of two separate bits of work. I suggested perhaps doing some of the editing together, so that the editing becomes more collaborative, and that, for example, it would be useful for Lynn to see the actual sound edit in Final Cut Pro that I have done, rather than just the final wav file being sent to her to work with. In fact I’ve actually not done a very detailed sound edit of any of the collaborative material, because I felt that I would be determining the character of the final work quite a lot if I did that. I don’t think Lynn is very keen on this idea, and thinks that her seeing my sound edit on the timeline isn’t going to be that useful, since anyway the final piece won’t reflect how the edit looks. I’m sure there are many ways of two people working with sound and images though.

I, on the contrary, think this is important, especially in terms of the work I would like us to do at Greenham Common. I’ve been thinking about the way in which the edit timeline is layered like archaeological strata, and I like to think that the sound-editing process is a bit like the layers of time in the earth at the Common, some bits coming up to the surface once in a while through human or natural activity, and then being submerged or buried again. I wondered if Lynn fancied trying to do something similar with the images on the image timeline, but she felt this was probably not that useful. On the contrary, she felt that maybe the images in the edit were like the way in which the visitor comes to Greenham and just sees what is on the surface, and underground is where all sort of intricate and complex layers of time are to be found in a semi-destroyed state.

We decided to devote more time in the project to the Greenham Common work and I want to go there again before the summer ends and it gets dark early. After I do a performance I’ve been rehearsing at the end of this week, I’ll sort out a visit to Greenham to do more photography and sound recording. Then I need to find some time to think of ways in which to make layers of sound which are complex enough to embody the ideas I have. I’m not sure at all what Lynn wants to do there as she wants to go when I’ve pretty much finished my bit of the work. This is a shame I feel, and it could be a question of time and money. I think in future I will work out far better the time that collaborators would spend and ask for the appropriate budget. I could be wrong, but I feel there’s a lot of pressure on Lynn’s time and money.

There has been no reply to my approaches to Orford Ness, so the time due to be spent on that will now be devoted to Greenham. This is a great shame, as we could make really good and interesting work there. Oh well, perhaps another time. Also I would like still to go to Holkham Beach and do something with the geese. I may have to do this on my own, but perhaps I can persuade Lynn to come with me. She feels we should devote the rest of the a-n project to Greenham, but I feel I have a good opportunity here to pay her with whatever is left after Greenham to work with me on something with the geese at Holkham. It will be different from anything we have done before, either individually or together.

Lucy, my voice teacher, has been very supportive all through this collaborative project, and in helping me with other work I am engaged in, and is always trying to push me forward. When we get time, I think a meeting of the three of us would be very useful.

It’s a while since I visited by new collaborations blog, so here is an update.
I’ve had some problems doing my voice exercise due to a medical issue which is giving me a weak voice and a sore throat, so have spent a couple of weeks researching this condition in books and online, investigating some herbal treatments, and getting advice from Lucy my collaborator and voice teacher. Apparently it’s a problem which quite a lot of singers get because of the dynamic breathing excercises they do. The air, when it’s being expelled, pushes up into the abdomen and can push the contents of the stomach up through the oesophagus and then acid gets into your throat and can easily damage the vocal chords, resulting in hoarseness and changes in the voice (for the worse). Not nice……I hope I can solve this problem. I’m surprised as my attempts to do the exercises are hardly dynamic! but it has happened, alas.

Ha ha, well once again I’ve lost lots of text that I wrote while trying to add an image to this post. It’s just totally lost when you try to add a picture and then try to get out of the gallery…..or library? whatever it is called in its confusing way. there must be a better way of organising this software! the stuff I lost was explaining why not much work has been done on this for a few weeks.
The next part of the project is on Greenham Common. I visited a few weeks ago and although I’d done research before I went there, it was hard to tune-in to the place and its history. At first it seems empty……The missile stores are still there but all fenced off with razor wire, I think. The activities of nature, animals and humans constantly obscure and reveal bits of the past and traces of what remains underground or covered by vegetation. I spent ages looking for traces of bomb storage constructions in a wooded area but had to give up in the end! I will try again. However there are some really evocative things which remain of the military presence of UK and US forces over the centuries. For example this fire plane below, which you will find as you wander around.

As I wandered around in the heat (there’s not a lot of shelter on the common itself, though there are some lovely little woods on the periphery) I met a retired gravedigger speaking to one of the rangers in a landrover, so stopped and asked them a few questions. The ranger, a helpful guy called Adrian, sent me links to a really excellent report on preserving the heritage of Greenham Common, very well written and really informative. I read it online yesterday and have printed out sections of it, and identified key sites on the Common I want to revisit on a future trip.
While I was there the Red Arrows team of fighter planes flew over, the sound was amazing, quite sinister somehow, as they looked bright red against the blue sky. but alas by the time I got my recorder out and warmed up they were gone and I’d missed recording them! There must be a lesson here ……..

I’m going to re-read all my notes and printouts now and think how I can somehow in sound (very probably song) and image engage with the processes of revelation and concealment, appearing and disappearing, that are linked to the historical landscape of the Common. There is only so much that you can see there, so in what other ways and other senses can you discover what is there, what it means, or could mean, can sound play a role in this, and how can you suggest or bring back to life what is long past? Could I get something out of thinking about archaeology and its methods? I seem to remember Freud has written something about this…..is it the mystic writing pad or am I totally mistaken? also there’s a lovely bit in Laura U. Marks’ book, the skin of the film , where she writes about excavation and fossils…….I will read and think, maybe do a few sketches in my notebook….even if I don’t draw anything very brilliant I always think working with a pencil and paper helps somehow! I feel like a fossil myself sometimes these days. Perhaps I should go to Greenham Common and be a fossil…..I will think more on this.

Lynn at the ancient Yew Tree

Well, I’ve tried four times to upload an image here and every time I try to do this I lose my text and have to start all over again! surely someone else is having problems with this software! Hey! I seem to have done it eventually. You have to write something and save it before you can add an image, it seems…..???
So, Lynn and I got to the Yew Tree and it was a lovely day and quiet quiet when we arrived. Lynn filmed inside the tree, while I went off to the rear of the churchyard and recorded a spoken text I’d written especially. I went to the rear of the little church which is really lovely and would be amazingly peaceful without the sounds of overhead planes, combine harvesters in nearby fields, traffic noise etc. However we set to work and hopefully have got some serviceable video and sound to do something with. I edited the sound files I had this morning.
At the Yew Tree, I warmed up my voice properly and tried to sing as best I could inside the tree.

Inside the Yew Tree looking upwards

However my voice felt weak and hoarse, and I was worried that I’d come all this way and practiced carefully only to deliver something sub-standard when it came to the crunch. I wondered why my voice felt so weak and creaky….I think, on reflection, that my voice is pretty quiet anyway, and I had spent an hour or so talking to Lynn on the train discussing how the editing of the Grotto piece we did before was going, and various issues Lynn wasn’t quite happy with about the editing of that piece, and we also discussed what we were going to try and do at the tree to avoid the problems we’d had during editing the Grotto material. eg. moving camera and sound that sounds static….As it turned out, we may have the same problems again….but we will discuss all this more on Friday at our next meeting. Of course you don’t know exactly what you’ve got till you go home and have a look and start to edit.
I decided at our next site visit, I wouldn’t talk very much before I did my singing at our chosen location. Lots of people don’t realise this, but everywhere we go, almost, there is sound or noise, depending on whether you welcome it or not! talking on the train means speaking over the noise of the train, announcements, other people’s conversations etc, and I find this quite tiring for my voice. Dear knows how I ever managed to be a lecturer for 35 years…or perhaps that’s why my voice weak and quiet now, as well as getting older.
Inside the tree I could also hear the combine harvester now and again! so after a few attempts at singing and recording in the tree, I went back to the rear of the churchyard and recorded my Yew Tree song there. By this time my voice really was tired, but given that the song is sung by a person who is dead, perhaps it will sound appropriate.
The Lynn suggested filming the back of my head and hair inside the tree in close-up, the patterns in the ancient wood of the tree do indeed look like tresses, and the variegated colours of my hair blended in as if in camouflage. This was a good idea, as the whole project about the Yew Tree was about how the person and the tree become linked together, and grow together – the ancient tree growing its roots through the bodies in the ground nearby. When the project is more worked on, I’ll put a sound extract in here. While I was facing the inside of the tree, I noticed initials carved inside…lovers perhaps?? the initials suggest a sense of mystery in a way that a full name would not. what’s the story behind the letters? could it be what I was referring to in my song?

initials carved inside the tree

On the way home we discussed more about what we were doing together and what might, or might not, come out of it. We felt that it would be nice to have some finished work, however short, but also the point was to develop and learn. that’s why I was rather disappointed at my singing in the tree, as I thought I’d managed to sort that. it really is different singing outside though, there’s little resonance, and the voice is “lost”, well mine is, but I thought the hollow tree interior would help. But I think not talking on a train before the performance might help next time! It will take us a while to sort out what we’ve got, but I must say I am happy with the site I chose, the wonderful presence of the tree, and the text and song I wrote, I just have to see how we can put it all together. After that, I’ll think about the next site, which I visited for the first time a week or so ago, and that is Greenham Common. This promises to be a bigger, more complex undertaking requiring plenty of research and more site visits.