Things are sprawling, like a Japanese knotweed, across the grounds of a vast space.
I continue collecting voices, sounds, and begin the epic task of transcribing text from audio recordings.
Next, I will engage in a process of ‘coding’ all of this text – identifying shared themes, repeated language, reccurring attitudes or ideas. I hope then I might see the bones of this beast a little clearer.
I spend an afternoon just looking through things, into things, under things. Finding ways of seeing this place.
There seems to be much beneath the surface, which I have not yet seen, heard, understood. So much buried, waiting to germinate or sprout. It almost feels like doing the outside pieces of a jigsaw but not being able to see what the picture is, as it is without centre. It is difficult to know whether to try to dig down here, knowing that this disturbs the undergrowth, or whether to tread lightly, let things be as they are, not to make cuts in the ground.
Instead, perhaps, it is the everyday-ness and subtleties of being here that is to be celebrated and honoured? The sheer ‘Nonumental’ of the day to day. The tiny and invisible, and the absolute commonplace.
Two women laughing,
Chive plants flowering,
Fledglings growing.
Being here everyday means I see everyday come into being.
Perhaps what is at the centre of all this is the place itself. Having been here far longer than any of its inhabitants, perhaps this place takes the central position.
Or, perhaps, there is no centre at all, and instead there’s just space here in this anomaly-green-portal, on Glenapp Street, just off Albert Drive, full of things cohabiting in various ways.
It seems that this smallness – I am thinking of it as a kind of invisibility – has and continues to be a theme in this project. Quietly existing here, in this shared space- waiting, listening, not forcing, but letting it grow around and about me slowly, at its own pace. I feel also that the audience member, who will enter these gardens one at a time, should almost be invisible too. As they listen through headphones they can move almost silently through this place. They will have everything they need to traverse the gardens without much impact or disruption.
” It’s just…what’s the word…. it’s not…..it’s just got an energy to it. It’s almost like two different balancing energies, one of the very calm kind of… not so much peaceful as just quite contemplative feeling as you come in the door… I mean you hit the gardens and it’s just this kind of growing energy. I don’t know if you know what I mean.”