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In January 2020 I took part in Magnetic North’s Rough Mix Residency, where I was given the opportunity to collaborate with artists from varying practices on a new work. The other artists were Flavia Hevia, Uther Dean, Gavin Glover, Greg Sinclair, Kol Sigfúsdóttir, Rachel Drazek, Apphia Campbell, Claire Willoughby, Elspeth Turner, Marion Geoffray, Nicholas Alban and Sean Hay. 

Leading up to the residency, I was really unsure about what I wanted to explore, with different projects tumbling around in my mind, I felt a real pressure to pick the ‘right’ one, and to come out of the residency with a really solid WIP. I was also a little unsure of how to use the main resource available to us: six performers, especially as I was still unclear about what form I wanted to explore. 

For the first few days, the main artists; Flavia, Uther, Gavin, Greg and myself, gave presentations on our practices. I shared a collection of objects relating to my exploration of rewilding, I observed that I had a strong emotional response to one particular object: a small brass bullet casing. The casing had come from research work that I carried out in the field late last year, where I went Hind stalking in Corrour. I realised that I hadn’t yet fully processed that experience and this residency might be an opportunity to do so. 

I discovered that the best approach for me was to ‘do less’, this didn’t mean less effort, but rather focus on a single objective, action or word and the main focus for my residency emerged; explore what’s it’s like to have other people tell the Hind Stalking story. This was a huge shift for me and it was a total joy to hand over responsibility for telling, what is for me, a hugely emotive experience.  Having other people hold that narrative created space for me to see what they were interested in, what aspects of the story they wanted to take responsibility for and also the gaps that I could write into. I finally understand how it could work with three performers, I could see my work without me in it, and It looked great.

Being able to observe other artist’s practices was hugely inspiring, the language they used, the detail they were interested in and also how they translated what they needed into exercises with the group. Lots of crossovers started appearing between sessions and there was a real enthusiasm and desire to keep exploring. It was a total delight to see everyone’s sharing at the end of the residency, but also to have an insight into how the pieces emerged throughout the two weeks.  It was a huge privilege to have such a wealth of expertise available during the residency and to feel supported by the room despite my own uncertainty. The Rough Mix process allowed my new work to gradually unfold and reveal itself to me, so even though I didn’t feel ready for Rough Mix, the work was.

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More information about Corrour from estate owner Lisbet Rausing

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Scottish Natural Heritage - Wild Land Areas Interactive Map

Wild Land Areas are the most extensive areas of high wildness. They are identified as nationally important in Scottish Planning Policy, but are not a statutory designation.

Our wild land:

is a big part of Scotland’s identity

brings significant economic benefits – attracting visitors and tourists

offers people psychological and spiritual benefit

provides increasingly important havens for Scotland’s wildlife

We believe wildness depends on the presence of four physical attributes, each of which can be measured and mapped:

perceived naturalness of the land cover

ruggedness of terrain

remoteness from public roads, ferries or railway stations

visible lack of buildings, roads, pylons and other modern artefacts

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In 2007 Anders and Anne Holch Povlsen established Wildland Limited to help take forward the conservation, protection and sustainable development of some of Scotland’s most rugged, precious and beautiful landscapes. Across three iconic regions of the Scottish Highlands, the Wildland project is dedicated to the restoration and vitality of one of the UK’s greatest land holdings.

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I visited the Pairc Trust in Lewis back in September to chat about their experience of coming into community ownership and how young people are getting involved in the future of the estate.

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The last six months of my artist attachment with Magnetic North have been hugely challenging, provoking and revealing from both a professional and personal perspective. My focus has been to observe the debates about rewilding and conservation in Scotland, from attending high profile discussions around issues of land management, to rewilding conferences and participating in highly divisive acts of conservation.

In September, I attended the Big Picture’s Rewilding Conference at the Macrobert in Stirling. It was a great opportunity to reconnect with people I’ve met on my journey, such as the Ramsay family from Bamff and members of Cairngorms Connect. I was delighted to realise I was sitting amongst high profile politicians, some of our youngest rewilding advocates and infamous

billionaires. This is all testament to the growing profile and momentum of the rewilding movement. However, in these situations, I always have my feminist killjoy sensibilities at the front of my mind, and I was hugely disappointed to observe that only one female speaker was included in the main program which was dominated by middle-aged white men. Incidentally, Lynn of Lynbreck Croft, our main female speaker, was hugely inspiring.

Shortly after this, I spent some time in the Outer Hebrides where I met with representatives of community owned lands in Lewis, from the Pairc Trust and the Galson Estate Trust. I’d been fortunate enough to hear Agnes Rennie at a provious event during the Edinburgh Book Festival, so was keen to hear more about Galson. Both estates provide hugely valuable insights into land reform and the challenges facing community owned land and I hope to connect with them again in the future.

Finally, at the beginning of November, I participated in a hugely divisive act of conservation, hind stalking. After organising a mini-residency in Banavie, I was determined to test my commitment to the principles of sustainability and conservation. I spent some time trying to identify a local estate whose conservation principles aligned with my own, and it was essential that I avoided any estates that participated in muirburn, grouse shooting, or raptor trapping. I was fortunate enough to find Corrour and their head stalker Allan, who kindly agreed to take me out. I won’t go into details about what occurred during the stalk, as this is something I’m still processing, but I can tell you that the day was filled with exceptional views, beautiful eagles, evidence of mountain hares, much talk about ecology and the famous Corrour train station which featured in the film Trainspotting.  

I’m into my final months on attachment and it’s hard not to feel apprehensive about it coming to an end. However, my new focus is to begin exploring how all this research can be articulated in various performative forms and contexts. I’m excited to be carrying out some development in December with a handful of collaborators, before throwing myself into Magnetic North’s own Rough Mix in January 2020.

See you in the New Year!

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Loch Lomond  from Conic Hill 27.10.19

Quick thoughts: Ecofeminism - patriarchal environmentalism

Built steps into the hillside, both wooden boxes and stone constructed suit a longer stride length and leg length. I have to take two steps on each step and raise knees to hip height or higher to step up.  Also, to step down, i have to sink into a crouch and lower one leg first over the steps.

Felt obvious that step length and height were constructed to a man’s average stride and height. This made me feel infantilised and I had to physically work harder to complete the walk. 

I could overcome this by walking beside steps at my own stride length and step height. This was obviously a strategy used by others on the route and has lead to significant erosion on either side of the path network. 

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Landscaping with Beavers

In June 2019, as part of my artist attachment, I was invited to a take part in a 3 day residency at the Bamff Estate in Perthshire. The focus of the residency was to explore the dynamics between the family of Beavers, which had been reintroduced on the estate, the land and us.

Laura Bissell has written up an excellent summary of the residency, which you can read here.

This residency provided a rare opportunity for me to experience a landscape shaped by Beavers over a number of days and at different times of day. What at first looked like a really unwieldy landscape was quickly put into context as the work of Beavers. This immediately challenged my preconceptions of what a landscape with a keystone species would look like. It looked chaotic. Beavers are conspicuous.

What also became apparent, was that despite their relative shyness, they had set up a dynamic in the landscape that both maintained their privacy and security, but also enabled us intruders to watch them. This, I observed was not unlike the performer / audience dynamic, except instead of your two meter clearance, was a pond, and the pros arch and cyc. was a massive Rhododendron.

This was of huge interest to me. This is a dynamic I understand. This is performative.

In response to this, along with colleagues, we filmed ourselves building a dam and ended up showing the film in the main house in Bamff. But rather than just watch the film, the rest of our colleagues had to stand at a distance from the ipad on which we were sharing the film, and view it through binoculars. So it became less about the film, but the act of observing on terms that were not our own. The frustration at not being able to see properly through binoculars, at not being allowed any closer, at the image being an imperfect composition, at not having the usual performer / audience contract honoured.

Another example of us (me) imposing something inherently anthropocentric on another species.

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Very happy to finally listen to this episode of Scotland Outdoors. Not only because my MSc research project focused on the environmental impact of the NC500, with conversations around electric car charging points, but also because I was recently in Lyth, as part of the attachment, and was surrounded by Caithness stone.

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Shifting Identity

Prior to my artist attachment with Magnetic North I simply identified as a Scottish theatre maker. I’m six months in and I’m finding this is starting to shift.

The purpose of my attachment was to integrate my recently completed MSc in Sustainable Rural Development into my arts practice. One way I identified of doing this was to focus on the divisive issue of rewilding in Scotland. This line of inquiry has lead me to discover a new network of artists, researchers and scientists, as well as reconnect with old colleagues and friends. It’s taken me to numerous rewilding projects across Scotland, to festivals, conferences, talks in community spaces and various SSIs (Sites of Special Scientific Interest). Its given me an insight into the conversations that are being had in the arts sector, and beyond, about rewilding, climate change, land management and land reform.

For the first months of the attachment I was feeling a little lost, having come out of an academic process I was struggling to get back into a daily arts practice, I was missing the sheer amount of knowledge I would be fed every week, the journals and articles I’d digest across a breadth of subjects such as; renewable energies or biodiversity management. Suddenly that was gone.  It was only by talking to other artists that I realised I was at a new stage in an artistic process that I’d never experienced before. I had already reached what would normally be the end point in my research process, the next stage would be working in a studio, writing or devising new work. But I found myself at the beginning of my attachment and at the end of my normal artistic process. This, I’ve found to be hugely liberating. Terrifying but also liberating. It’s taken away the urge I’d normally have to identify a form, or a narrative. It’s given me the freedom to keep learning, keep researching, keep talking to people and find new ways to nourish my practice and feed my need for knowledge.

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Empty Bothy

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Lines (57° 59′ N, 7° 16’W) by Pekka Niittyvirta in collaboration with Timo Aho.

“By use of sensors, the installation interacts with the rising tidal changes; activating on high tide. The work provides a visual reference of future sea level rise.

The installation explores the catastrophic impact of our relationship with nature and its long term effects. The work provokes a dialogue on how the rising sea levels will affect coastal areas, its inhabitants and land usage in the future.

This is specifically relevant in the low lying island archipelago of Uist in the Outer Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland, and in particular to Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum & Arts Centre in Lochmaddy where the installation is situated. The centre cannot develop on its existing site due to predicted storm surge sea levels.”

http://www.niittyvirta.com/lines-57-59-n-7-16w/

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Another brilliant resource which collates all the published environmental spatial data mapping in Scotland, s’good. Ahead of my visit to Lyth this week I’ve been looking at various layers for the area, such as vegetation and ancient woodland. Also interesting to know the closest Wild Land Areas and also gaps in data such as bathing quality at Keiss... 

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I’m currently enjoying pouring over various air pollution maps, this one from Friends of the Earth collated data during 2017 from volunteers across the UK who installed air monitoring kits in their local areas. Really interesting to see the data comparing results from Loch Lomond and those from Saltmarket in Glasgow. Ooft.