Remote Performances in Nature and Architecture

Bruce Gilchrist, Jo Joelson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317066606
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Outlandia is an off-grid artists' fieldstation, a treehouse imagined by artists London Fieldworks (Bruce Gilchrist & Jo Joelson) and designed by Malcolm Fraser Architects, situated in Glen Nevis, opposite Ben Nevis. It is performative architecture that immerses its occupants in a particular environment, provoking creative interaction between artists and the land. This book explores the relationship between place and forms of thought and creative activity, relating Outlandia and the artists there to the tradition of generative thinking and making structures that have included Goethe's Gartenhaus in Weimar, Henry Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond and Dylan Thomas's writing shack in Laugharne. Based on a series of residencies and radio broadcasts produced by London Fieldworks in collaboration with Resonance 104.4fm, the Remote Performances project enabled twenty invited artists to consider and engage in transmissions, sound performances and dialogues on their artmaking strategies immersed in this specific rural environment of mountain, forest and river; flora and fauna. Some artists engaged in dialogue with people living and working in the area with a range of specialisms and experience in, for examples, forestry, mountain culture, wildlife, tourism, and local history. This book explores the ways in which being in the field impacts on artists and permeates through to the artworks they create. It considers the relationship between geography and contemporary art and artists' use of maps and fieldwork. It charts these artists' explorations of the ecological and cultural value of the natural environment, questioning our perceptions and relationships to landscape, climate and their changes. The book is an inspiring collection of ways to think differently about our relationship with the changing natural environment. The book includes essays by Jo Joelson, Francis McKee, Tracey Warr and Bruce Gilchrist, and texts, images and drawings by the artists: Bram Thomas Arn

Index

All index entries shown here correspond to the page numbers within the printed edition only. Within this digital format these page numbers allow for cross referencing only.

Illustrations are shown in bold.

adaptation 56–7, 62

Anderson, Willie Plate xviii

Anthropocene 47, 49, 52–3, 87

architecture xvii, 1–9, 12, 46, 59, 86; see also huts; hutopia; inhabit

archive xiv, xvii, 45, 50, 58–9; see also taxonomy

Arisaig Highland Games 37, 41

Arnold, Bram Thomas xiii, 49, 105–11, 153

Reading Particle Physics to a River 49, 108

Reading Poetry to a Rock 49, 109

Swearing An Oath to a Scottish Glen 49, Plate xxix

Throwing Rocks at Trees 49, 107

art 2, 6–7, 44, 50–51, 141–50, 151

and ecology xiii, xv, xvii, xix, 2, 16, 45, 50–52, 59, 83–90, 105–11

and fieldwork xix, 6, 15–20, 37–41, 50, 69–72, 73, 73–5, 77, 83, 83–90, 93, 101–4, 137–8, Plate xxv, Plate xxxiii

and geography 16, 50, 52, 80, 115, 125, 151

and history xiv, xix, 2, 9, 12, 14, 16, 18, 45, 48, 52, 57–8, 65, 68, 93, 157–8

and maps xiv, 6, 12, 49–52, 59, 66, 74, 115...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Plates
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• A Survey of the Terrain
• Kelpies, Banshees and Pibrochs Heard in these Parts
• Like Like
• Selections from The Hut Book
• From a Train
• The Sound of Lochaber
• Geo Graphy
• There’s a Monster in the Nest-box
• In Search of Silence
• Composing with Place
• A Sense of Distance
• Notes for a Video
• The Contemporary Remote
• Second Sketch for Ascent and Descent
• Euphonium at Sea
• Notes After a Week of Wandering
• Echo. Genius Loci
• Into Outlandia
• High-Lands
• Endnotes on Remoteness
• Further Resources
• Index
• Plates