Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, 24-29 January 2011

HUDDLED together in the foyer of an old storehouse, on the street and on the pier, the harbour lapping the stone wharves, occasional cars surfing down the flagstoned road meandering through Stromness, we waited for the geopoet to begin reading.

We were told the room wasn’t quite ready but as our chatter rose and fell, the sound of two slates tapping emerged through our waves of talk and not quite silence fell.

On site at Ness of Brodgar

Street Sounds; I long for silence but no silence comes, day and night – an anguished plea from the city dweller which Norman Bissell once was. He turned down the corridor, taking us on his journey from urban noise to island sounds; sometimes it’s hard to tell the sound of the wind from the sound of the waves.

Sound artist Bill Thompson’s recordings and the plaintive notes of Gemma McGregor’s wooden flute and the abrupt gasps of an accordion’s bellows, carried us on as Norman asked: “Can you hear it?”

More slate percussion brought us into Norman’s ‘island on the rim of the world’, the Isle of Luing in Argyll. He sat among cup-marked Neolithic stones to recite Na H’In Ban, an ancient name for the Garvellach Isles where a solitary monk contemplates life and death as the wind howls around him.

We had hung back at the beginning of this journey through the Pier Arts Centre, slightly nervous of our participation and of what was expected of us. Now we were in full flow as the poet took us with him to Lichen Circles, as artist Brian Hartley drew two perfect circles on the wall and choreographer Claire Pencak mirrored his movement.

Sitting down to listen to the last lyrical readings we had collaborated in the experience of Slate, Sea and Sky, as artists and archaeologists had during the week, creating the installations which had added so much to the journey and poetry.

Art should not be a spectator sport, said Norman during the following discussion; we want to discuss how to engage the audience more.

“Art, archaeology, choreography and poetry. This must be a first for collaboration between these forms of expression,” Norman added.

His appearances were part of a week-long collaboration at the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, called Test Trenches. This was a collaborative residency; the culmination of a choreographic fellowship awarded to Claire Pencak of the Tabula Rasa Dance Company.

The artists and archaeologists worked together on installations using sound, projection and objects. Most of the work focused on the Ness of Brodgar site in Orkney, where Neolithic painted stones were discovered last summer in a monumental building.

The artists made sound recordings and drawings and Glenda Rome shot videos of the archaeologists at work on site. The installations included methods used by archaeologists to record and draw at digs and films which depicted their work like a performance, shown among the modern spoil buckets, trowels, planning frames and strings.

The mud and muck of an archaeological dig was brought into the gallery, while the ancient stones became exhibits under the spotlights, not as art but bringing them down to earth in a dig context.

Norman Bissell at the Pier Arts Centre

Collaboration was the buzzword the next day at Norman Bissell’s lecture when he set out his case that the key to renewing the economy of Scotland’s fragile island communities is through embracing the natural and cultural heritage. Collaboration between artists, thinkers and scientists can form the basis of a radical cultural renewal, involving artists and archaeologists too.

The title of his talk, Atlantic Poetics: Of the Islands I Speak, is a nod to George Mackay Brown’s For The Islands I Sing, the title of his posthumously published autobiography, which was taken from his poem ‘Prologue’, in The Storm and Other Poems, 1954. The title of the forthcoming anthology of Scottish islands poetry edited by Kevin MacNeil is likely to be These Islands We Sing.

He spoke of the connections between Atlantic islands through culture, wildlife, weather and history, and that all the North Atlantic islands face common challenges of declining population, the disappearance of traditional languages, expensive travel links and maintaining viable island communities.

On Luing the population has declined from 207 three years ago to 178 now, which is why the Luing Community Trust plans to build the Atlantic Islands Centre with a café, restaurant, art gallery, museums, workspaces, a gift shop and exhibition space.

The Trust visited other community trusts and saw good examples of renewal at Lismore Gaelic Heritage Centre. Projects like North Uist’s Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre combines arts and heritage, and on Gigha, where the community bought the island, there has been renewal, job creation, population growth and revenue for the community. We can learn much from these positive examples and how different islands tackle these challenges.

The Year of Scotland’s Islands is an opportunity to learn from each other.

Norman suggested that a deep appreciation of our rich natural environment and the value of our cultural heritage are crucial to the future of the islands and should underpin everything we do as individuals and communities.

This, he said, is where geopoetics comes in, as it is concerned, fundamentally, with a relationship to the earth and with the opening of a world.

Norman outlined some of the collaborations he has done with artist and designer Steve Pardue and composer and musician Mark Sheridan. And he feels Claire Pencak has broken new ground in her Test Trenches residency by working as a choreographer with archaeologists, music makers, visual artists and writers in a way that, as far as he was aware, has never been done before.

How archaeologists use some approaches used in the arts, like creative imagining, can be crucial to the science of archaeology.

As the discussion was opened up for a further hour, there was positive reaction about further collaboration and much interest in the plans for the Atlantic islands Centre and the challenges faced within the island’s community where dissenting views had been voiced. Further explanation was requested and supplied to explain the philosophy of geopoetics.

Overall, the feeling at the Pier Arts Centre was that pioneering work had been achieved during the week and there is more to follow.

© Catherine Turnbull, 2011

Links

• Pier Arts Centre
• Norman Bissell