Key Pages
ProjectsDerrida writes in 'On cosmopolitanism and forgiveness' (2001): hospitality evokes ‘not simply one ethic amongst others' but the whole question of our throwntogetherness: ‘it’s a manner of being there, the manner in which we relate to ourselves and to others, to others as our own or as foreigners, ethics is hospitality'.
Doreen Massey writes: 'A relational politics of place...involves both the inevitable negotiations presented by throwntogetherness and a politics of the terms of openness and closure. But a global sense of places evokes another geography of politics too: that which looks outwards to address the wider spatialities of the relations of their construction. It raises the question of a politics of connectivity' (2005, For Space, p. 181)
Margaret Ames writes: FIRST PERCEPTIONS. Whilst wandering/stalking/walking through one of the firing ranges/valleys, I noticed the shock of bright yellow flag irises (Gelej) - very tall and thick as they flourish in bogs. Surrounding these natural occupants were wires that pull targets into place, empty bullet catridges and the general debris of rehearsals of war. This place is a huge outdoor rehearsal studio. Here moves are marked through in slow time, actions committed to memory an built in to kinetic chains in muscles and joints. Here the lessons for survival are studied and re-enacted, each time a closer similtide to the real thing - the real theatre of war - wherever that land may be.
I spent my evening back home with a friend, attempting to fulfill Mike's task of telling - and knowing neither of us will ever go there (again). What had been ocurring, and this work of recounting became ever stronger, was the sense of the surreal - the impossible reality of 2 worlds (at the very least) in either a collision or competition with eachother, for space in my perception and in my memory. I thought I understood this 'land' as not being so very different to the place I live in...I thought I knew mountains in mid Wales...I thought I knew skyline and field, river and earth, brids and air and was familair with crossing those places, from ridge to ridge - ael y bryn i ddyffryn a dringo lan unwaith eto trwy'r brywn, cors a phorffa - Well i did - I do - but I am incorrect also. Mynydd Epynt is all this and with the specifics of red earth, a green that is truly 'glaswyrdd' this May, and as Ifor suggested this is heightened by the colour of sandstone, the craters of exploded mortars and scars against hillsides speak of another world within the usual frame of the wild rural. The origin of my anxiety walking these old contours (through this army terrain) was (as Heike suggested) the potency of the place - for me, immanence of terror. The terror of chaos, of injury of death and my terror of learning how to kill or be killed. That is the job of a soldier. I talked with my friend not about 'the land' not about its history, but about the regime of discipline and fear, comfort and solace, confidence in comrades, food and bed and certainty that an army life apparently offers. The soldiers presences were in my minds eye - the crack of bullets above my head (as Carl described it) were imaginary yet about to materialise at any moment - and by today or later this week, will be truly heard by others. Those other bodies that are trained to fall - a neurological impulse in order to survive - trained to stay low and move through the river water, hunker down in the earth and hurl grenades through that air. This is the same air, the same molecules of air that farmers breath, that sheep graze through. The same grazing that sustains (barely) a fragile economy of farming. Invisible Guerilla farming i begin to feel - the farmer's only armaments are stubborness and need (no this is ridiculously romantic) This gorgeous place of green and climbing high is occupied. This occupation of war and farming, and this occupation of clearance and forcible removal, and this occupation of professional dangerous soldiering, colliding, has only one outcome. I am reading this as Uffern (hell). Not as fiery, but as seductive. Not as punishment but certainly as an ethical dilemma. Not as the opposite to heaven, but as the only outcome. This is not religous, this is about terrible beauty, pride in skill and professionalism and a loss that amounts to another unspeakable blasphemy in the history of Wales. I know this is too much - way too much and shouldn't be said - how can I justify such words! But it was Peter who used the word blasphemy first and I found myself in agreement and further to quote Chris speaking at the capped remains of the walls of the chapel, 'this church was de-consecrated very quickly' No this is not about religion and yet the experience of Mynydd Epynt is inevitabely ciphered through this cultural white noise of non-conformism - a constant in our conscious and unconscious processes, the earlier shaper of this land's history, with the constant presence of a history of forced absence, of clearances in the name of the greater good - Iwan reminds me again in his perfectly informative breif history of Tryweryn. The place of the horse - Epynt. This is not an empty place. We all know this.
Angela Piccini writes: In addition to the farming communities who continue to graze the land, the people of Sennybridge we met in the pubs, SENTA itself (the MoD, Landmarc, the catering team) and visiting soldiers training on the field, Epynt group participants were: Mike Pearson, Heike Roms, Roger Owen, Margaret Ames, Iwan Bala, Tim Cole, Stephen Daniels, Peter Coates, Ifor Davies, Richard Huw Morgan, Moira Gavin, Carol Stevens, Iain Biggs, Angela Piccini, Jo Carruthers, J D Dewsbury, Louise Richards, Peter Merriman.
Their working ideas/thoughts/reponses/provocations will emerge over the coming weeks.
Presence:
In response to Ian Russell, we visited Capel Babell a few times, remembering those who were evicted, but trying, too, to think critically about these stories. Artist Iwan Bala asked why it is that Tryweryn is remembered and not Mynydd Epynt. Roger Owen talked about the notion of the curse of the land and the period between WW2 and the late 1950s, the sense that the land was turning against the Welsh farmers. Jo Carruthers worked with Thomas' one-act play on Epynt, The Sound of Stillness. This was a different order of eviction to those of the nineteenth century - recent and still raw and new enough that we can try to find other ways to think through its reverberations in contemporary Wales.
In the end we didn't need a full set of instructions, because we all came prepared in some way. We did some things on our own: sitting and looking, placing items onto the ground, reassembling materials, taking photos, drawing, writing, talking, watching. We also gathered in 3 groups of 6 to consider collective perceptions. Group activities gathered around things that seemed to bubble up. Rather than try to pinpoint how we each approach site, we simply got to work to see what might emerge. We're all post-disciplinary now as what bound us together was far more significant that our practical differences as we found we all worked in similar ways in these initial stages anyway. But we will each produce something very different from this interdisciplinary practice.
In response to Matteo: play of surface, simulation, a fetishising of the authentic, the presence of rules of engagement, play in all of its senses, mounds that look like old hedges but turn out to be bunkers, the magic of the reveal, the specific ways in which bodies can behave in this place, the ways in which both visible and auditory materials call out to delimit the place, sharply defined lines on maps and in the heads of our guides, which slip away when we try to find their edges in practice. The whole area is a training ground, a place for incorporating expertise in battle yet. Effort and resource expended in making it 'real', yet at the same time clearly not: giving steets in the German Village Welsh names but they're juxtaposed with Albert Square (TV show Eastenders) just to show it's a joke.
And now we turn to consider how we presence Mynydd Epynt (as a bounded place, as a place that is imbricated in a huge range of global relations, as a set of specific places in which we spent time and worked, as an imagined place) at a future gathering. What might we tell to people who come to a symposium? What might be made? Who for? What for? How might we contribute to the formation of new relationships between the MoD and the various communities who have a stake in this place?
Posted at May 28/2007 21:26PM:
A practical tip for whoever it was that i was talking to regarding the lack of detail on google maps. Try www.192.com/maps. Initially it seems rather disappointing, with few place names, but once you get about half way through magnification levels it comes to life with incredible detailed aerial photography. The impact zone takes on an entirely different understanding, and the contrasting occupying land use and traditional land use patterns are fully revealed. It is a pity that the photographs are replaced by very simple maps at a scale far too small to allow an overview of the entire range, but a minor drawback in comparison with its advantage of detail over google. (ps what is the etiquette for adding to this page - new posts at top or bottom of page?)
richard huw morgan
Posted at May 29/2007 03:11AM:
AngelaPiccini: Thanks for this, Richard. Funnily enough I was reading about 192.com in the newspaper yesterday.
As to etiquette, these kinds of personal comments and asides can go at the bottom.
In terms of contributions to the body of writing, just click 'edit this page' and change what's here already. If you want your writing, images and files to be specifically attributable to you personally, then it's probably best to add to your personal pages. This page should be another manifestation of 'throwntogetherness' whereby something emerges through collaborative practice.
Iain Biggs writes: In a number of respects my experience of trying to "tell" this place having left it (it has yet to "leave" me) reflect some of what I read in what Margaret says above. My overriding impression is of trying to live with being in a double site, one in which the two "faces" it presented constantly slipped in and out of focus as fascination and fear animated my engagement with it. There is something extraordinarily sad about the Army's pride in the return of the salmon and red kite to this place when taken alongside its complete indifference to the exile of the horses. That lack hit me most when Iwan Bala spoke in passing of The Mabinogion and I remembered Rhiannon, herself a memory of a "Celtic" Divinity the Romans referred to as Epona, the Horse Goddess, which returns us to Mynydd Epynt ('the place of the horses'). As a poet put it: "No Gods but in things".
(Iwan Bala writes) Nice to read the comments. I spent a week in west Wales following the experience on Epynt, and realised that in 'telling' the experience I felt that most people were interested in the Army stories (or so it seemed to me). Maybe this was because it was a new story for me too, I had more interest in 'telling' that. On my way westwards, I passed a signpost to Babel, and I followed the road which formed a loop, coming eventually right back to where I started. There is little there in terms of a 'village' except a Babel Hall.. to serve the surrounding community. (No village green etc as Chris insinuated was a 'real' village). I imagine that the Epynt society and landscape (very wooded) might be the same had the army not moved in. However, 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' as they say. Of course, the name Babel had symbolic significance for me also. Further thoughts will come, no doubt.
Group Discussion