Me in the centre?

I wonder how I could explain to myself and others what it is that I am doing here. 
I go for runs, to feel the environment, myself and the movement, and I claim to thus produce an experience that is relevant. Relevant not only to myself but also to others? 
Running is a physically engaged way of moving over land, over surface, inside the environment. This creates a multi-facetted experience as it generates feelings, sensations, thoughts, brings up old and creates new memories, is breathing, being blank in the mind,...
I can try to record some aspects of these many facettes. 
Using stretchy lines  to install a response  into the environment where the running takes me is just one more, very deliberate response to engaging with the environment and with my mode of moving through it. 
I like the idea of the following metaphor to explain this: The Earth or, in a smaller context, 'the environment' is an organism. It undergoes constant change and it emits sounds, scents, has atmosphere. By running over it, it is like the runner touches the surface of this big organism, creating friction and, as a result, resonance, like the sound created by a thumb that touches and strokes over a string instrument. What is created is an interplay between runner and environment. The resonances of this interactions can be seen like voicings of the momentary.  Aili Bresnahan's article  'Improvisational Artistry in Live Dance Performance as Embodied and Extended Agency' seems to relate to this. 

Drawings and photographs, end of year show, Chester Universiy

Here is my little display of drawings an photographs....

Artefacts of a year's work on show

As part of this year's degree shows at the University of Chester, the MA students' work can also be seen at the side. This display with more of my sketchbooks on the table behind is in the textiles room and there is a display of drawings and photographs in the hallway. The whole show is still open this week. 

'In other tongues', Symposium at Dartington Hall, Totnes

I participated in 'In other tongues', at Dartington Hall, Totnes. This was a symposium organised by Art.dot.earth. Researchers and artists from various fields congregated to exchange views on our ways to communicate with other creatures and nature. A very inspiring event! I got the chance to show my little video "Moving lines' in the Thursday night's video screening session. I participated in a workshop with Tatia Nichols-Arles and Patricia Brien, and in another workshop with Stuart Mugridge. 
Stuart Mugridge currently works on a PhD where he bases the production of text and language on the basis of the exhaustion component of the running experience! Well, that made for truly interesting conversations and Patricia and Tatia's workshop made us participate in a deep listening exercise. Both workshops were highly relevant to my practice. 
Many of the symposium's presentations pointed me in the direction to view my running/drawing practice under the header of 'gesture'....as an expression of inner events, as a response to things going on outside and to the relevance of metaphor in my work. 

Instruction for a running journey (and commenting about it later)

Planning a running journey, then, afterwards, referencing it. And planning for the next one. 

Paper territory

The making and unmaking of paper surfaces, re-using previous contexts and building a new one....feels like claiming territory, using it, with line, assembly techniques, the concept of a sketchbook.

Stay-at-studio workbook

This works well! I can use drawings, photographs and other bits an pieces from my carry-around-workbook and transfer them to this much larger book, where elements can congregate in new visual and material contexts. 

Sound of lines and skylark

The sound of vibrating lines, attached between fence, drystone wall and ground, and a skylark. 

Carry-around-workbook

For all those years, I have been searching for a way to have a sketch-book that allows me to take out the individual sheets to then transfer them to a larger book, where again the sheets can be assembled in varying contexts. Thanks to a friend, I have found out how I can make such a book and customise the punched sheets myself. 
This allows me to use the paper surfaces as a territory that forms, unforms and re-groups in different ways. Like a landscape that can become built and unbuilt. 

Field notes

I  found a way organising my field notes. There are two categories of text now, or 'words' that I bring back from my running journeys: There are 'side notes', and there are 'annotations'. 
The side notes are mainly thoughts of relevance for my ongoing practise. 
The 'annotations' are words which are more direct responses or expressions as they are generated by the running, the impressions, the being out there, and they may be disorganised, some people might call them 'poetic' (or not), they are disjointed....and often have to do with physical impressions, visual and audible ' impacts', anything that seems to 'come in' or wants to 'get out'. 

1 tone stream

As the last running journey of a small project, this one had the agenda of 'one tone stream'. 
During this run, I recorded a small section of sound (the sound of an opening and closing stile) and I carried it forward with me, to replay it further on during the run, to sound out in the next surrounding. I recorded this again, and moved on, to replay both previous sounds in the next location where I stopped. This led to an accumulation of sounds that got more and more eroded and overlaid by themselves and new ambient sounds. 

Carry bag

For each of my 5 runs, which formed a short term project called '5 mile sky', I took a paper bag on the hill with me, with a sharpie marker pen inside. The paper bag was folded and sewn out of newsprint that still had wax on it, as it had been previously used by another artist, Lindsey Piper, to soak off the excess wax off her batik textile surfaces. The wax made the newsprint material resistant to moisture, the sewn seams and folds gave it extra stability. I thought the pre-used material was a good choice of paper, because in the context of environment and natural landscape, all materials are pre-used. 
I also took with me 20 tent pegs, about 150 metres of stretchy rubber bands, a sound recorder and a small camera. 

2 turn thoughts

As the penultimate of 5 separate runs undertaken on different days and with each of their own agenda, this running journey asked for two thoughts to be used as they came to me, and to be made changers to the trajectory. The photograph shows the line construction made on the land, the accumulation of paper shows how I assembled experiences of all unfolding runs as part of the whole project. 

3 pace place

Moving at at three different paces, this was part of the third run that I undertook in the context of '5 mile sky', a five-run short project where I went on 5 different runs on 5 consecutive days, each run with their pre-described agenda. 
'Place' and how line installations might be able to describe it, was also part of the plan. 

4 minute surface

Land as surface and scribing....to focus on different aspects of surface, at 4 minute intervals. 
This was part of run two of five running journeys, each of which was undertaken at a separate day, with its own thematic agenda. 

People, lines, landscape

Some friends volunteered to come out with me onto the hills in weather that would be best described as a proper storm. The lines stretched between them oscillated in the wind and made furious sounds. I wonder in which way social features of interaction with people and land could become expressed with this method of line installations.

Circles

In the context of my many attempts to produce representations of running journeys with the medium of drawing, the circle seemed to be an ever recurring theme. Circles is what we do when we return to the start. It is what the sun does, what our live does, it marks a focus....endless possible meanings.....
I wonder if it is a general feature in Semiotics and Art History that one symbol is used by even the same artists, or scribes, though it means different things at different times.