Saturday, September 20, 2014

"Land to Sea" Performance

In 2012, Richard did a performance piece called "Land to Sea" at Bournemouth. 
A line of neon light was placed where the waves met the sand. He and a team of volunteers moved the line for a full tide cycle, keeping it constantly just out of reach of the waves.
(You can see that work, and some more of Richards stuff, here)

He decided to do the second edition of this performance in Caithness on the last night of our class. It wasn't technically part of the course, but we were all invited to take part in it. It was really cool to see Richard's work happening first hand, after having seen images of lots of his projects. 
(Photography by Angus Mackay)


Richard picked a small cove near Dunbeath Harbor.
The tide was followed through the night from 7 pm till 7 am.

This is Richard and Wil at sunset, having just wired up the first bank of neons. 

Moving the first bank into place. The completed light line ended up being 3 (or was it 4..) times this length.


It got quite dicey in the middle, because the low tide revealed heaps of algae-covered rocks which were hard to navigate in the dark. We could see a little by the neons light, but because it was so bright it blinded you to everything past a foot or two. I don't think we had any falls, but there were several feet accidentally sploshing in puddles!

A 1:30 am(ish) move.

Most of the night looked like this -- huddled around a beach fire with a bottle of red, while Richard ran up and down the light line making sure it was out of reach of surges.


This is the dawn to dusk crew! Mind you a few of us didn't survive the whole thing..



Billy, Sasha and I slept a good few hours in a blanket nest that we made on top of a pile of stones.


Richard and Wil, capturing the dawn light just before 7 am.


It was an awesome work, and really great to be part of.
Richard - if you end up reading this - cheers for the experience!

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