3/7 Hythe and Dungeness- made leisurely trip up the coast from Hastings to Hythe … visiting a smouldering Dungeness en route …. everything hovers on the horizon suspended in a filmy haze. Landscape utterly flat and stoney like a huge extended beach. The power station, magnificent and moody from a distance, is more prosaic up close just like a bunch of factories and offices.
Driving helps me think things through – trying to formulate ways of showing work at St,Omer station – need some kind of inter activeness from users/audience – tricky. Ideas come and go is visual waves in pre-verbal ways and can’t quite pin it all down yet.
Forget that some people go to the coast for leisure ! must remember to take my own kids soon !
28/6 Sevenoaks – Swift sunshiney visit to Sevenoaks Station last Sunday on way to see Jude Law in Hamlet (very good !) but took a few photos part typical suburban commuter belt haven – part evergrowing railway station … developing ideas about being in transit and points of departure.
19/6 Haubourdin – went to Pierre-Yves venissage (presumably derived from varnishing day ?) just outside Lille – great live/studio space and lots of interesting work on display – all tucked away in a quiet residential area. Had a few conversations with the french artists and understood about a third of what they were saying – which wasn’t bad !
Pierre-Yves photograph was a very summery view of a frontier look out post from WW2, somewhere I think along the Maginot line. Lots of these structures are still standing and he produced a really beautiful book of them.
Lovely drive back to St. Omer – long clear roads boarded by flat green fields – bit like being in an american road movie – just lovely – missed a few turnings and Evodie felt rather sick when map reading, but we got back ok.
30/6 St.Omer – Just back from an amazing 5 days working in the Côte d’Opale. Driving and simultaneous map reading was rather nerve racking but managed without too many wrong directions and missed turnings to get to St. Omer, which is about 30 miles from Dunkerque.
I was well catered for in a small hotel by the station – the station being the place where the final work from Résider/Reside will be sited. The station is a lovely example of 18th French neo-renaissance style architecture and there are plenty of possibliites for placing different kinds of work inside.
My french improved greatly – though I did have to refer quite frequently to my backup of french/english dictionary and numerous phrase books … but I was pleased that I got by. The simple things I managed ok ‘un timbre pour Angleterre s’il vous plait’ … but the more complex issues about ideas, developing my work and working with local people were a bit more testing. Fortunately Evodie, from Espace 36 (one of the partner organisations) let me waffle on and then she clarified a bit in English and somehow between us we understood each other – most of the time !
Over the 5 days I explored a range of buildings and structures, looking for something to generate a starting point. I visited ruins, catherdrals, disused mills, quayside buildings, nazi bunkers and blockhouses plus the odd napoleonic fort. I began to get a sense of how turbulent European history had been in this part of France and how wars and occupations by other nations had had a significant impact on the landscape. It also became apparent quite quickly that the memory of this extraordinary history is deeply embedded in the naming of every town’s streets and squares.
There was so much to take in and I spent much of this initial period taking photos, making notes and doing a bit of filming.
16/6 Dover Friday afternoon – pottered around Dover town, looked at the sea – v. still and calm and the bit where land meets sea – an amazing array of architectural styles can be seen just by looking inland over your shoulder.
Also paid fleeting visit to Connaught Barracks – now abandoned by soldiers – and rather haunting in the soft summer rain. Might come back to take more photos.
