Tracing the geometry of fotminne: walking the patterns of ancient landscape to imprint foot memory
Summary
My practice-based project aims to find new ways of understanding how long-distance walkers locate themselves in the natural landscape. I use the Swedish neologism fotminne, or foot memory, as a touchstone, expressing the idea that the walker is imprinted with some kind of mark in their encounter with the land. My practice is shaped by the organisational, schematic principles of patterned, geometric form: does walking in the shape of triangles, rectangles, or circles imprint foot memory more readily? I aim to break new ground in establishing whether foot memory is more than a concept, and whether a sense of direction is more than a turn of phrase.
Additional info
In a form of archaeological excavation, I place what was beneath as now above, and what was on the surface as now underneath. ‘Surface’ is etymologically derived from the seventeenth-century French word sur-face, or above the plane. Landscape is a sur-face over which we move. But what might surface’s subterranean negative be called? I call it sous-face, or underneath the plane and I use interfaces, layering, pleats and folds in my work to investigate its potential.
I have two methodological strands: first, the creation of geometric book sculptures larger than the human form. Constructed from etchings, photographs, orthophotomaps, and text, they invite the onlooker inside as a form of visceral, fotminne encounter with landscape: geometric books to walk in.
My second thread features composed soundscapes and poetry, again relying on geometric principles: the freeform fugue embedded in the circular landscape, or the postmodern waltz combined with the triangular landform. I am researching experimental uses of dance notation as a way of mapping movement across the land in time to the soundscapes. My poetry, mixed with analogue soundscapes, takes the form of sonnets, villanelles and paradelles - a kind of literary geometry. I use analogue tape for the recordings because magnetic tape, like a walk, has temporal, dimensional, directional properties, allowing a richer engagement with the project.
Ridge and Furrow
Details from Ridge and Furrow. Digital print on Somerset paper, with card and book-cloth. 1,300 cm x 30 cm.
Each page represents the length of my own stride. The digital prints on the book's continuous surface capture the undergrowth if the viewer walks alongside it in one direction, and the tips of leaves set against the sky if the walker travels back the other way. It’s a walking book in which what was beneath is now above.
Shadowline
Ink on Taffeta. 1,300 cm x 150 cm
The ink marks on this long painting capture the flickering shadows cast by the leaves of three old quince trees. By flying the painting in the sky, I allow the sunlight to show both surfaces of the silk simultaneously.
Three Fragments
Ink, oil pastel, graphite and dye transfer. 800 cm x 500 cm. These large drawings of tree bark are transformed into pathways or rough tracks by their magnified scale.
Folded paper tests
An experiment to find the best folded, pleated surface on which to print double-sided images.
Doubled-Sided Drawing
Testing methods of bringing images on the reverse of the page to the front of the paper, combining both images on a single surface.
Doubled, folded tree
A further experiment in combining two images on a single, folded substrate
Underfoot
Ink, oil pastel, graphite, crayon and dye transfer. 210 cm x 100 cm. The large scale of this drawing, a hugely magnified image of a tiny fragment of bark, makes it more akin to an aerial map of wild terrain.
Frontier
Photopolymer etching on Somerset paper. 41 cm x 33 cm. The etching records the interface between inside and outside, man-made and wild. The image captures that moment of contact between two surfaces or modes of being.
