Lines of text are like layers in the strata of sedimentary rock, sentences as conglomerates of words, letters the grains. Paragraphs are treated like fossils, literally sandwiched into the text of a C19th book about Geology, which in excellent pedantic detail tours Great Britain’s underlying rock formations, from Oxfordshire chert to the shelly limestone of Portland. Started in 2017 the process has been characterised by interruptions.
Travelling between two places, I was enchanted by the fact of a shared underlying limestone formation between Portland and the Dalmatian coast. I started writing a diary whilst on the KURS Artists and Writers Residency in Split. The initial material has been developed into a longer piece of writing ostensibly describing local walks and swims. I am also filming with an underwater camera and as a solo tourist, my writing trace the contours of an internal anxiety which is tidal, intermittent and intense. The geography is Split’s Marjan Park Forest, a promontory of the spectacular landscape famous for its quarries. The writing is visual, fragmentary and chopped up.
Archive
2019 Notes of an Urban Pedestrian
Mecklenburgh Square, London
curated Clare Stent
Reading from Limestone Interruptions.
Thanks
Abigail Robinson, Neli Ruzic, Neil Chapman, Spike Golding, Nick Berkeley.
Found text
Andrew Crombie Ramsay; The Physical Geology and Geography of Great Britain, 1878.