ARTISTS TALKING

# 24 [25 March 2010]

Bowscale Tarn is on the swim circle and therefore  (roughly) the same distance from Blea Tarn - the centre - as all the other tarns. Yet try as we may it felt like we were going to some sort of extremity. True it was the furthest north but there was an emotional distance here that transcended previous swims.

That intuition was confirmed when we arrived to find that the tarn had retreated behind a frozen screen and would refuse, for the moment, its part in the performance.

While I mused on the way natural processes had conspired to cause Bowscale Tarn to 'opt-out' of our project, I had become aware of our determination to press on round the circle and this feeling became lodged in an image of Paul's posts - an image of the posts back through the months at various tarns - arranged in a way that each was almost superimposed on earlier posts - I saw them forging forward round the circle.

When I got back I started work on the image.

# 23 [23 March 2010]

13th March 2010 Bowscale Tarn

We approach Bowscale Tarn from the northeast, from outside the circle, having driven up the M6. The tarn sits on the north side of Blencathra on Bowscale Fell and it's the most northerly point of the swimcircle. Facing north, it gets very little direct sun and we know it will be cold.

As we near the mountain, the landscape is very different than in the central Lake District. Here it's more open with more distant horizons and the large mountains of Blencathra and Scafell dominate.

At the tarn side, we find it completely enclosed in five inches of ice. The only loose water is where the outlet releases a small beck down the hillside. Its clear there will be no swim today, so we symbolically immerse feet and hands and splash our heads in the icy water. This swim is still to be done but it will have to wait until later in the year. It owes us a swim.

I set my post with a stone from Loweswater beside a large rock, out of immediate siight of walkers and take film of the water surface and photos of the frozen tarn.

Walking down afterwards, the sense of knowing the body of water by swimming in it is missing. To some extent it remains a stranger.

Paul

# 22 [27 February 2010]

19th February 2010

Friday, 4am - Fire starts in offices at rear of Green Door Studios where I have studio space. It spreads into the studios and fire engines are called to Kendfal from across South Cumbria, an aerial crane being brought from Barrow.

The fire spreads and devastates the studios. All my work related to the SwimCircle project is not burnt but is exposed to smoke, water from the fire fighters and after the roof has to be ripped off, falling slates and debris and whatever the weather brings to the exposed building.

Over the next few days we learn it could be arson but nobody can get into the building because its fabric is damaged. Even the police can't complete their scenes of crime enquiry.

Such an intrusion into the process of the swimcircle must be considered and reacted to. It seems everything in the studios for each artist is lost. All my work over the last ten years that was stored in my studio appears gone, although its still standing locked in an unsafe building.

The impact of this on the project for me is as yet unknown. But already I know I want some burnt timber and ash from the fire to use as pigment.

Whilst others studio members reel from the loss of work, equipment and livelihood, I can see new ideas for future work. Its like a forest fire creating space for new growth.

See the Green Door rising blog for more comments about the studio fire.

http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/608734

Paul

# 21 [3 February 2010]

 Loweswater 29.1.10

 It is impossible for us to be here and not remember our first efforts in 'Swimming Home' a couple of years ago on a warm summer day:

 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/459997/0/1/asc

 Now it is midwinter and the other side of the year. We walk in and arrive at the same place on the shore. Paul immerses himself in the lake, while I immerse myself in preparations for transforming a tree, a tree whose fruits are to be painted stones.

I paint the stones while snow settles on them and reflect that bathing in a tarn is best, but bathing or immersing myself in the performance of art is good also - 'dipping' into 'Swim Circle' has that same invigorating and transforming effect. Even thinking about 'Swim Circle' while engaged on some mundane task - washing up - has that effect on me - this is the power of 'art'?

We are engaged on a project whose fruits are memorable experiences; and these are organised into a frame of mind, a structure of meaning - Swim Circle.

When we finish we walk away from the shore and into the woods, two walkers pass us - it is grim weather and their demeanours seem to increase the general grimness of the day. Our fantasy is that they walk along and discover the pieces we have constructed and that their discovery starts them talking, so that they feel uplifted - their day is redeemed and enlarged by our work - they are happy, we are happy, our experience has had a positive effect on theirs.

We skulk around in the trees trying to see what they do, trying to confirm our fantasy. They definitely stop in the vicinity of the work - beyond that all is guess work. They talk? About what? About the two pieces of work or what they see as litter? Are they outraged or appreciative. But then maybe art should evoke outrage?

They move on and we walk back along the shore in a cloud of unknowing. All this has to find its place in the 'big picture' - Swim Circle.

Richard

# 20 [3 February 2010]

Loweswater            29^th January 2010

After another pause in the swim circle’s progress, this time due to the severe weather, again we’re back on track and heading for Loweswater. The first swim of 2010. Loweswater was also the first swim of last year’s Swimming Home project and we walked to the same point where we swam across the lake and back. This time the water is barely 4C and a snowstorm is about to start. It could only be a symbolic submersion for a few minutes.

It felt good to be making progress once again. On either side of the entry point we whipped a stone from the last swim to the branch of a tree and hung painted stones above and trailing into the water. We had made a gate through which the water had been entered.

The snow, when it came, came horizontally and marked all the trees in the wood that came down to the water’s edge. The far side of the water and the surrounding hills were lost in the blizzard. After the snow ran out, the sky cleared into bright sunlight and lit the mountains for the rest of the afternoon.

We left the stones in place, wondering how they would be received by those that came across them. As we were leaving, two sullen walkers came by, avoiding eye contact with each other, perhaps after an argument. Would they see our gateway or would they walk by angrily unaware? We watched them through the trees. We saw them stop and look. Perhaps they started talking because of their discovery. Art can change perceptions and lives.

Paul

# 19 [5 December 2009]

Bleaberry tarn, Buttermere 1st December

After a considerable gap we are underway again - but it's necessary to adjust to a new situation. Health problems have beset both of us but for me it means I won't be able to swim until it gets warmer again. So the swims are down to Paul to do on his own while I will do what? That was a question we needed to resolve - how the new balance of involvement would work.

At once when we set off from Buttermere the feeling of being 'back on the trail' lifted us as we walked across recently flooded tracks to woods in the wintry light. Once in the woods we ascended steeply to the concealed hanging body of water above. We caught no glimpse of it until we stood on its very edge.

Having so thouroughly engaged in the performance/swim on previous trips, I now had the chance to observe 'from a distance'. So as Paul got ready to enter the tarn, I climbed on up to a shoulder high above to get a veiw of the whole show - minute figure, tarn and the big picture beyond.

It was far more awesome than I had anticipated - to see this (now) tiny, fragile figure, launch into the lake and begin to paddle across the surface, making painfully slow progress, surrounded by immense arms of rock and more distant snowy summits. It was easy to see it in heroic proportions: ' humanity dwarfed by the forces of nature defiantly pressing on' - a Turner painting of the sublime come alive.

And for me the conflicting desire to be both part of that performance, that art, and yet also to simultaneously witness it   - the perennial conflict of how to be inside the adventure and to see it from the outside - one or the other not both.

Was my new role to be solely a witness?

I hastened down the hill to reengage in the performance. 

Richard

# 18 [1 December 2009]

Bleaberry Tarn    30^th November 2009

After delays in the project caused by periods of sickness for both Richard and I, followed by the Cumbria flooding, we finally made it out to Buttermere for the ascent to Bleaberry Tarn.

Last year, during our Swimming Home project, we had seen the fold of the high ridge that holds Bleaberry Tarn high above the surface of Buttermere. We had imagined it dark and cold - unforgiving in its north-eastern aspect. It was then that we decided to swim this tarn and now, finally, we were climbing the 45 degree zigzag path that kicks upwards from a corner of Buttermere where two men watched a third operating a small digger removing stones and flood debris washed into the outflow towards Crummock Water.

We started the climb at midday. At last a clear bright but cold day after what seemed like months of rain. The sun was already past its highest point, scarcely cutting much of an arc in the sky with a full moon hot on its heels. The snow-clad tops were electric in the clear sunlight, although our entire walk up was in the shade of the peaks to the south.

Above the tree line, we looked round and could take in the whole of Buttermere and Crummock Water below with snow tipped Grasmoor straddling above them timelessly.

I had been thinking about swimming in Bleaberry Tarn for over a year and it had gained epic proportions in my mind, yet, on coming face to face with it, it was both a surprise and a delight. It was smaller than anticipated despite having seen it on maps and on Google Earth and not as bleak and unforgiving as imagined, but sitting snugly below Red Pike, almost welcoming.

The air temperature was dropping fast and the water in the shallows barely 5 Celsius, the deeper water even colder. But the water, though cold when swimming, was so clean it was invigorating to drink.

On the ascent, Richard and I had continued developing our ideas for a public art application we intend to make in the New Year – the energy from this stage of the Swim Circle project feeding ideas for hopefully our next.

I planted a post with a stone from Greendale Tarn into the almost frozen ground by the side of the tarn and took a film of the water’s surface. As we started to walk away, two honking ravens flew back into the amphitheatre to reclaim their territory.

Paul

# 17 [1 September 2009]

Greendale Tarn - 24th August 09

A change from the planned swim venue. Greendale replaces Ennerdale water, introducing a new for us, high body of water standing on a shelf above Wastwater. The climb up is through a steep channel of falling water, growing in strength with each additional beck that joins it. The rain has fallen heavily in recent days and the run off from the tarn and hills is fast. Today's break in the rain brings hot sun and the ascent is demanding. Sweat runs from every pore and we rest frequently. Behind us lies the valley bottom running away to the sea beyond Ravensglass.

Today the image of glaciers cutting out this landscape is vivid.

We reach the tarn. It's smaller than expected despite having seen the maps. It is a welcoming place despite the blanket of weeds that clearly delineates the shallower contours of what lies beneath. It is just 8 meters at its deepest point. Today, because of the rain, it's 12 Celsius. Immersion brings instant invigoration.

We use a rock to drive in the post with the stone from Burnmoor Tarn beneath a standing boulder. I film the water surface and eventually find a small stone to take away before the hard descent. Footholds are small and tricky with my big boots and legs are soon tired again. The descent is always the riskier journey.

Almost down, the light over Wastwater has changed and now strikes the cliff directly. Steep rock cuts into deepest metallic water. The dynamic forces are inescapably evident.

Paul

# 16 [31 August 2009]

 Greendale tarn 24^th August

We ascend the beck from near the edge of Wast Water. Dramatic waterfalls are disclosed by the curved valley and we stop frequently to look. Neither of us has visited this tarn before so there is more charge and anticipation in the air.

Finally we see it beneath the cliffs on one side and the curve of Seatallen on the other and in the distance Haycock and beyond Steeple.

Each tarn feels special and unique, each has its own valuable  personality. Many tarns have the circular shape of a corrie - but then there are tarns like Sprinkling (sparkling) tarn and Angle tarn (at Patterdale) that are full of bays cliffs etc where the direction of exploration is not so much down and under as round the edges, into the inlets, and across to islands - these are reasons to linger,  de-focus from any particular goal,  leaving room for the aesthetic experience to enter which otherwise fails to appear in the presence of a too-insistent-objective . If we're too focused on the goal we end up with the feeling of an immanence of something that fails to come to pass.

Greendale is the sort of tarn that lies between the two - not circular but nor is it as intricate as Angle tarn.

Another realisation  occurs at this tarn - my/our style of art has changed as a result of the swims; but not only style  - the format, for me, has changed from rectangular to circular. ( I think that Paul's idea for the 'Full Circle' project on Morecombe Bay, which we completed two years ago, put the circle on our agenda.)

But there are further ramifications of the performance of 'Swimcircle' which are relevant - complete immersion in the subject of the art, immersion in the forces and sensations of the water; dissolving into the physical world rather than looking at it from a distance, from dry land; viewing the world from a horizontal swimming position,  rather than standing;  complete mingling with the subject matter rather than looking at it through the window of perspective produces a different art, necessarily involving  the forces experienced in the immersion. Maybe this is all stuff already written in academic studies of performance art but this felt first-hand and therefore had depth to it.

Paul swam up and down, while I swam less this time having to adapt to the cold. Finding a small rock to use for the next post proved difficult as the tarn had a dark weedy bed strewn with boulders, but we finally locate one near the outlet just as we leave another fabulous body of water.

Richard

# 15 [17 August 2009]

Burnmoor tarn

Another chance to enter what for me is an enchanted domain above Eskdale and this time the weather is brighter. We weave our way through the furns past Eel tarn and on towards the horizons that we looked longingly at last time, knowing that over the lip of one shoulder lay hidden Burnmoor tarn - infact it lay hidden for most of the journey there. Something about the shape of the hills round here, their lazy slow curves and unobtainable colour I find hypnotic. Later I read that Burnmoor refers to 'Borrans' or burial mounds on the moors. We cross a bridge over the river before the final slope to the edge of the tarn. I long to linger and somehow penetrate and possess the secrets of the place, where the river divides. This must all constitute the aesthetics, the art of the project and yet it remains terribly elusive.

Arriving at the edge of the water and looking across, the need to deal with practicalities steals the moment. We have a good and relatively easy swim despite a breeze wiping up some waves and emerge tired.

Afterwards the magic qualities of the place give way to a more mundane effort to get ourselves back, carrying packs that get heavier by the moment, and down for refreshment and rest.

Richard