I Wander Weather - walking is better than talking

As sure as paths lead us through places, they also lead us across time, revealing the histories and legacies of places and people. And just as the paths we tread are eroded and diverted by circumstance, so are the tales we tell of them. This is folklore.

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The first leg of my project was to take myself out into nature and photograph, just to submit to its awesomeness. I went to St Leonard’s Forest in Horsham where both my parents walked as children. The photos I took here also held a moment for me where I could access my parents’ past. The next step was to then film the static photographic prints, in order to reactivate the moment; to let my personal history walk on alongside my parents’. (Another hope is that this will challenge the viewer’s initial perception, encouraging them to look closer at nature). I projected this footage across a room filled with intercepting screens of fabric and paper. The beam of the projected image illustrates space, and the intercepting screens represent time; the moments at which different people inhabit a space and cross paths with others. I also set up a smaller slide projection in a corner which shows slides of typewritten texts about walking and the landscape (both my own and others’) to show the inadequacy of communication through language as the words click on; the click of the typewriter mirroring the rhythmic beat of a walker’s footfall.

The brief perception one is allowed of the frames in the film and of the text on the slides makes sure the viewer can never get the whole experience of what I saw in St Leonard’s Forest; and no experience of my parents’ and their parents’ lives there. The intercepting screens the break up the projected image also further confuse perception. This all works together to hopefully tantilise the viewers into wanting to see more for themselves – to walk. And even if they don’t appreciate the concept, they cannot deny that standing before a great wall of Fir and Pine trees as they tower magnificently above, is anything but humbling.