Blog: Mine the Mountain - Installation
On Thursday and Friday this week I installed my two pieces at the Botanic Gardens and Deadman's Walk as part of my forthcoming exhibition, Mine the Mountain. What was interesting for me was how, even though I'd planned the work and visualised it in my mind, it appeared so different when actually installed - how new connections between the works were made due to the effects of things one wouldn't have accounted for, such as, for example, the sun. It was also gratifying for me how members of the public, particularly in Deadman's Walk were interested to know what I was doing, and more importantly, interested in the work and how it fits with the rest of the exhibition. Being able to speak about things directly is one thing of course, having the work do it for you is another.
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See images from the Mine the Mountain exhibition
Mine the Mountain : Deadman's Walk
Family Heritage Blog: A Murder in Jericho
So given the dire position in which my great-great-great-grandfather found himself in May 1852, how was it that he lived to marry Sophia Kinch and father seven more children before his death in 1889? Returning to the library I turned again to Jackson's Oxford Journal. I had thought at first to try and look at the Assizes records but these are held at Kew. I also tried to find the dates of the Assizes held in 1852 but to no avail. However, knowing that there were three Assizes in the year including one in summer, I assumed that Elijah's trial would take place soon after his appearance before the magistrates at which he was committed for trial.
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Places: Będzin
A strange sense of foreboding drifted above us as we approached, something to do perhaps with the steely grey sky and the enormous power station from which that strange and dreary sense seemed to claw its way out towards the sky. As we drove towards the town, we knew instinctively that this was a place we didn't want to stay in and the closer we got so this sense increased. But I wanted to see the castle, to see the place where a few of the victims of the Holocaust (as I'd found in my book of photographs from Auschwitz) had stood almost 70 years ago. At least there would be that. But there wasn't even that anymore.
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Projects: A Journey to 8th May
I was born on 8th May 1971. On the 8th May 1915 my great great-uncle Jonah Rogers was killed in the battle of Frezenberg Ridge, part of what has come to be known as the Second Battle of Ypres. Having discovered on a gravestone in Cefn-y-Crib, Wales, the identity of his battalion (2nd Monmouthshires) I bought a book on the battalion's history and found in the book, a detailed account of the journey taken by my great great-uncle from Crumlin in Wales to Shell Trap Farm, the location of his death. The aim of this project will be to make that journey myself and visit the site on the 94th anniversary of his death - my 38th birthday.
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See also: www.8may.org
Family Heritage Blog: A Suicide in Cefn-y-Crib
I'd always heard that one of my ancestors on the Welsh side of the family had been killed in a mining accident, but I've never found anything to even vaguely corroborate the story. Of course accidents were common as my grandmother recalled, remembering how blinds would be drawn in all the windows when another body was brought back up to the surface. Having seen Henry Jones' grave, I decided to obtain a copy of his death certificate to see if perhaps he - having died young - had been killed in an accident of some kind. As it turned out, the truth was indeed tragic, but for altogether different reasons.
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Blog: Ancestry
As well as being a huge database of names, Ancestry can be seen as being a database of moments, the more of which we discover for ourselves, the greater our understanding of history becomes. This, in light of the project's origins at Auschwitz-Birkenau, is particularly pertinent; the Holocaust, as a defined historical event, becomes millions of moments and the Holocaust itself not one single tragedy, but a single tragedy repeated six million times. In effect, Ancestry allows users to map themselves onto history and the family tree becomes not just a network of relationships between hundreds of people but a kind of physical and geographic biography of the individual. Places we have heard of but never been to, places we have never known before become as much a part of our being as the place in which we were born and in which we live. For example, if there's a place with which I can most identify physically or geographically, then that place would be Oxford, the town in which I was born, grew up and in which I live. Its streets which I have walked and its buildings which I have seen countless numbers of times, all hold memories - and what are we in the end but these.
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See also: Memory: Family Tree
Blog: Walking in the Distance
Standing in Pantygasseg and looking at the surrounding hills therefore, I got the sensation that I had become a part of that distance, or that I was at least closer to it than I had ever been. I was reminded at this point of a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke's 'The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge' where he writes: "Is it possible that one believed it necessary to retrieve what happened before one was born? Is it possible that one would have to remind every individual that he is indeed sprung from all who have gone before, has known this therefore and should not let himself be persuaded by others who knew otherwise?" In Pantygasseg, I was indeed 'retrieving' the past and reminding myself that I was not only sprung from all who have gone before, but that I was also sprung from this very place.
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