I had a fantastic day at the first Selfscapes event in Dalby Forest last Saturday (together with Joanna Jones) enjoying warm Yorkshire hospitality, meeting artists from various disciplines and working with students from York St John’s university in a very non-hierarchical set-up.
The pecha kucha presentations were a brilliant way for the artists to introduce their practice: 10 slides, 20 seconds per slide with the powerpoint slideshow set so that it played automatically so we all had to keep to time! Joanna’s presentation was masterful and a lesson in how to do it. She actually managed to build in moments of silence and time for us to just look at her wonderful images.
In the afternoon we all got to go into the forest … sort of. I think we carry with us our own history of places visited when we go to new places and particularly with forests, there is a whole set of cultural stories that we take with us too – forests as sites of danger, TV detective series, magic … as places to get lost in. But with only 2 hours or so to make something, I actually never strayed far from the road, with the coach nearly always within sight. So somehow we take the urban with us into these kind of places.
There is an opportunity to be part of an exhibition on 22 June so I’ve started to review and edit the footage I took.
