Gair Dunlop
I am an artist, film maker and researcher at DJCAD in Dundee. I use digital video to work with people, archives and places, to find out how decisions from the past impact the world we live in. We may have freedom to act and we may desire to change attitudes and develop community agency- but to do that we need to find ways of fully understanding where we are and what we can do about it.
I have made work in a variety of environmental and climate-based contexts, including films exploring the legacy of Britain’s nuclear research programme, using archive footage paired with new filming of the sites as they exist today and with voices and insights from those involved.
“Soundings”, made in collaboration with North Norfolk coastal communities and geographers from the Open University, is a film which takes a different approach to documenting climate change, through working with communities, experts, landholders and schools about how we might become more active in thinking about our lives and communities through sound. We made experimental music, a live community music performance, a 24 hour radio station on International Dawn Chorus day, field recordings, schoolchildren interviewing their relatives, and many more activities. The results included contributions to the area environmental plans, evidence to the House of Commons Environment Committee, a set of playful and focussed creative events, and enhanced community cohesion.
Room-based session- with internet connected laptop and, if possible, a larger screen so the group can all see and participate easily.
Duration 1 to 1½ hours, with potential follow-up of 2-3 hour outdoor session.
Plan for workshop
In a small group (around 5 people) with a facilitator who has previous experience of working with online mapping systems suggested (NLS side by side and/or Google Earth).
Choose a centre of energy production or distribution on a map, somewhere that intrigues you, that has a direct relevance to your community or has a relevant history of some kind.
1. If you are in the UK, go online and visit https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/
Zoom in on the current site and go to an older map in parallel. Travel in imagination to your chosen site using the old map, paying attention to absences, presences and overlaps in time.
As you discover previous structures, land features and settlements, try to find archive imagery of them, paying attention to how the places are remembered by those who lived and worked them, and more official overviews.
If outside the UK, use Google earth and its time layers to travel in the same manner.
2. Using mobile phones (you can use more elaborate equipment if you have it, but it’s not necessary) record your different responses to this issue. Try to understand and bring in perspectives from the voiceless- those not listened to, children, the voice of nature, as well as your own feelings. Try not to preach for people or nature but to reach for their genuine interests. Upload these sound recordings and some stills from the imagined journey to a dedicated web folder.
Consider the evolution of the current places you examine; how might they change or be changed over increasingly distant eras into the future? What role can people residents and politics have in this change?
3. OPTIONAL Take the route for real, walking the route you discerned as a group in the online session. What traces and atmospheres of place can be sensed in the real world that are not mapped- and what is not traceable despite being mapped? Take photos, video clips and sound recordings on phones or whatever equipment is handy along the way, and compare them to the sound files and archive materials generated by the virtual journey.
Discussion ( 10 – 30 mins depending on group )
Questions to ask group, choose from some of these, not all of them!
- What words come to mind to describe how you feel watching video?
- What is a metaphor ? describe one you know already.
- Why did artist use buoyancy as a metaphor?
- What does the word ‘adrift’ mean to you, and how does this relate to climate crisis ?
- What does the word ‘response’ mean to you and how does this relate to climate crisis?
- What uncertain journeys do you think we face ?
- How might communal action help?
- What role does singing play in the beach event ?
- What do poems add to events?
- The last line of the poem ‘New lands will rise like growling whales’ what could that mean in this context?
- What is the importance of ceremony in this event, what does it remind you of?
- What are the audience contributing and also getting from being here?
- How do the people involved here feel about the sea?
- Which part of this is art? The boat? The poem/ songs, the audience, or the whole experience?
- Any other comments or ideas that you want to share?
What audiences will get from it
I would hope that participants will gain an insight into how exploring maps across time can be a research tool in itself, can open the mind to approaches to people and to social forces, and how the immediate in-the-moment feel of video can be extended by thinking of the past and the future.