From Winternights to Summerfinding … and Summerfinding is fast approaching. Well, I don’t think anyone knows for certain what date or exact period was celebrated as Summerfinding in the Viking period, but modern heathens usually take it as May Eve/May Day – which is exactly half a year after Winternights if you take that as being Halloween. Which I do.
Is any of this relevant to Howe, apart from representing a convenient length of time to work within? I think so. Perhaps these festivals were never celebrated in England, but I like to imagine that they were, and that hills and burial mounds might have served as a focus for some of the activities. If nothing else, the evocative words help me to remember that all that ever happened in the landscape – and landscape is every scrap of land under our feet – is potentially still there, and part of who we are now.
At this point I should come clean and admit that Summerfinding will only mark the end of phase one of the project: the next phase will take place between Summerfinding and Winternights … and so on, if I keep getting ideas and they seem worth developing! Self-directed projects have their pros and cons, but it’s a definite plus to be able to decide for yourself what you’re going to do and how long to do it for. The downsides, of course, include the need to stay motivated, the financial constraints and lack of feedback.
We’ve been regular attenders of the monthly Late Shift at Norwich’s SCVA. It’s a lovely buzzy event, the only thing of its kind I’m aware of in Norwich and an opportunity for installation and performance artists to set something up for one night only. Previously, there’s been an unthemed open submission procedure, but last month proposals addressing the question ‘What is a museum?’ were invited. I applied, proposing an enhanced version of the newspaper ‘hill of hills’ that I constructed last summer for the Forge show. Much to my surprise – the proposal had been very last-minute – I was accepted.
In order to maximise the idea of my hill as a ‘museum’ or archive, I planned to place the cut-out newspaper letters spelling out the names of Norfolk hills (cut from the local Norfolk newspaper) in small brown envelopes. Each envelope had the hill name typed on it using an old-fashioned typewriter, and after pasting its contents onto the growing ‘hill’ I planned to file the empty envelopes alphabetically in an open index box.
I began by systematically searching for hills on local large-scale maps. Hills that bear the name of their nearest village were discounted, but anything else was fair game. I was already aware of plenty of bizarre names like ‘Lambpit’, ‘Tumbley’ and ‘Dunfer’, as well as gruesome ones like ‘Gallows’ and ‘Deadman’s’. But the systematic search – which isn’t over yet as I need to acquire more maps! – yielded a huge number of new ones, and my numbered database is now up to well over 300.
For the Late Shift, which lasts from 6 – 9 pm, I guessed that there wouldn’t be time to paste up more than the 120 names that would fit into the number of brown envelopes I’d bought. It was hard to guess just how big the hill might grow in that time. For the Forge installation I’d had a ‘leisurely’ nine days, although that did include finding names on the map and cutting them out piecemeal as I needed them.
In the event, I worked feverishly (OK, with a short coffee break I admit!) but only managed what might be termed a hillock. It was much harder on the knees than I’d imagined. Next time I’ll take a cushion … and I’m really excited to say that there will be a next time. I contacted Alistair the lovely curator at Cromer Museum who I hoped might be interested in giving me a space in the museum for a day so I can make my hill a bit more respectable. Another performance … and he likes the idea and said yes! I’m going to see him to discuss it next week.
