Deep Encounters - a multifaceted mapping of a small piece of land

Deep Encounters is a project involving 13 artists working in different areas/locations. Working collaboratively, but from different parts of the world, there will be periodic conversations about how we are each representing our piece of land, and ideas for shared activities. Identifying their area of study via Google mapping / OS map / w3ws, each artist will walk the perimeter of their area, tracing the outline, recording what it contains using photos, words, drawings, maps, sound etc. Walking our chosen places, getting to know them, activities and engagements will develop gradually from a growing familiarity. And we will be playful in our responses!

Artists participating: Zoe Ashbrook , Ruth Broadbent, Alison Berrett, Sara Dudman, Ffin(vc Price), Tamsin Grainger, Richard Keating, Melinda Hunt, Janette Kerr, Rachel McDonnell, Amanda Steer, Sally Stenton, Amanda Steer, Molly Wagner.

This is an exercise in deep mapping; an intensive look at a particular place that might include geography, history, and ecology. Some call the approach ‘vertical travel writing’, while archaeologist Michael Shanks compares it to the eclectic approaches of 18th-early 19th century antiquarian topographers, or the psycho-geographic excursions of the early Situationists.

‘…..Places are not stable; they mean different things to different people – even different things at different times. The deep map recognises the slippery identity of place, and seeks to visualise the multiple identities that go towards constructing the human experience of place'.

https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/lakesdeepmap/the-project/gis-deep-mapping/

We increasingly need to work in “the curious space between wonder and thought” a space where….“there is no single Disciplinary (in an academic sense) voice” (geographers Stephan Harrison, Steve Pile, Nigel Thrift), …. the: “space–between representation and reality, language and life, category and experience” (feminist philosopher Geraldine Finn).. (see https://www.iainbiggs.co.uk/2014/10/deep-mapping-a-partial-view/)

Glenarm - either side of the river

My chosen place is a patch of land in Glenarm, Co. Antrim, a river, a bit on either side (one a temperate rainforest type bit of woodland which is an Ulster Wildlife Trust reserve, one pasture), and a bridge crossing the river on one side of the patch I’ve chosen. It used to be part of a Deer Park, so both sides of the river started out from the same place, but what has been done since has left them as very different places.

It’s where my Dad was from, about 15 minutes walk from his house, which is visible on the top right of the map of my walk, and is somewhere I spent a lot of time when I was young. We used to have picnics in the woods, and I’ve done the same with my kids. I’ve been wanting to do some work there for a very long time, and as I’m going to be coming and going quite a bit in the coming year as my Dad left me his house, which needs quite a lot of attention, I thought this might be the moment to make a start. There’s so much going on in the woods and around, it’s hard to know where to begin, so the commitment to someone other than myself is probably the only way I’ll get going. I am hugely looking forward to getting to know the place in a different way.