Re-Enchantment & Reclamation : Workshops

Completed 16 April - 5 May 2007

Water Log was led by choreographer Jennifer Monson of iLAND (USA), in close consultation with dance artist Nigel Stewart of LICA and Sap Dance, UK.

Monson and Stewart worked on the Aldcliffe Marsh - a composite of mud flats and grass lands, gouged with creeks, in-between the River Lune and a dismantled railway line south of Lancaster - and the vast sands of Morecambe Bay. For part of the time they led workshops for Northwest dance professionals, primary school children, and adults from the Bay who work in cognate disciplines, such as photography, coppicing, theatre and therapy. For the rest of the three weeks, Monson and Stewart developed movement exercises and improvisation techniques for increasing perception of the dynamic eco-systems of zones in-between land and sea, allowing for responses and interactions with even the most ephemeral eco-phenomena (e.g., patterns of washed-up debris, evaporating footprints).

Future plans involve public site-specific peripatetic performances on both sides of the Atlantic.

Completed 29–30 May 2008

Ecologies of Narrative consisted of a day-long workshop on Thursday 29 June led by performance maker and sound artist Graeme Miller in consultation with landscape writer Carl Lavery of LICA. This was followed by a symposium on Miller's work on Friday 30 June. Miller explored the concept of landscape as memory by discussing his previous work and by demonstrating some of his techniques for gathering material from people and the places they inhabit. The symposium consisted of a number of papers that explored Miller's work in terms of a politics of aesthetic perception.

Completed 15 - 20 October 2007

Natural Interventions was led by film-maker Chris Welsby (UK/Canada) collaborating with video makers Emma Rose and Neil Boynton ( LICA ). It was presented in association with Folly Media as part of the Velocity Festival and a podcast of an interview with Chris Welsby was available as part of the Velocity Festival - a major North West community event.

The workshops included a walk across Morecambe Bay with guide Alan Sledmore including interested professionals with an interest in contemp or ary arts and culture , and smaller focussed events involving Welsby, Rose and Boynton who visited several sites of interest in the Morecambe Bay area which they recorded on camera. Both workshops formed the basis of discussions about the role and use of digital technology to create meaningful artworks able to convey issues centred on ecology and the political dimension of re-enchantment and reclamation. Images resulting from the workshops were used as the basis of technological experiments to develop a further project involving internationally located artists around the world with cameras linked to weather centres able to stream images into a single image via a complex processing programme. This will form the basis of an ambitious future project.

Chris Welsby's lecture presentation took place at the Dukes Theatre in Lancaster and was attended by members of the public as well as rsearchers from the university. Welsby's lecture linked visual technology to ways in which atmospheric conditions can play an active part in film making and this was discussed within its wider ecological and political context.

Completed 2–6 June 2008

Listening to Land was led by Ambrose Field (University of York) and Neil Boynton (LICA).

Field demonstrated how developments in technology have radically changed the way composers work. Through recording on location in Ingleton and the Lune Industrial Estate, Lancaster, comparative recording techniques were examined. The source material was critically auditioned and different methods of surround presentation were assessed.