Undercurrents

Undercurrents - A Watery Imaginarium

Bristol Harbourside: Exhibition Experiment, June 2017

An Imaginarium or bricolage of watery explorations...

 Antony Lyons & Maggie Roe 
In collaboration with Nick Hand (Letterpress Collective)

This project aims to expand, critique and reflect on our relationships with, and via, water, and is a component of the UK-based AHRC Towards Hydrocitizenship Project

We set out to produce an experimental exhibition – initially through a lens of the ‘non-human’ - as represented by two species - Kittiwake and Eel.
(CONT...)

The project developed as an intensive and creative exploration of the often-uncharted connections between mind, body and water. Our journey is through some of the complexities, and undercurrents, of non-human/water/human relationships, using sensory and associative, conscious and unconscious avenues. The ‘dark ecology’ (i) of these relationships is addressed through a geopoetic perspective.

project imagery/text

Kittiwakes & Eels

The initial focus is on the Kittiwakes of the River Tyne and on the Eels of the River Severn/Avon.  Both these species travel long distances by, with, from and in water. They rely on water and water is their habitus. They exist in liminality. The associations and stories surrounding each are very different, and varied. The lifeworld of Eels of the Severn remains mysterious and elusive. These creatures travel over 4,000 miles from the Sargasso Sea to eventually move upriver, in surges, in Spring every year.  Cultural associations, including fishing and culinary traditions, are reasonably well-known locally, the eel being viewed as primarily a commercial commodity.  

The Kittiwakes that nest on the Tyne Bridge, and some nearby buildings, in Newcastle are the furthest inland colony in the world and are probably the only such seabird assemblage to inhabit a large city.  They nest from March until August, travelling long distances to feed in the North Sea and Atlantic. There exists substantial scientific data about this colony, collected since the 1950s, plus an active community of naturalists and locals who observe and record Kittiwake activity.  

Both species connect fresh and salt water through Tyne+North Sea coast (Kittiwakes) and the Avon+Severn Estuary coast (Eels). Both have Atlantic journeys as part of their life-cycles. Both have extensive periods in their life-cycles where being part of a vital community is important.  Both are on the Red List of threatened species. Not only the survival of the species but also their cultural associations and meanings are under threat.

The Eels and Kittiwakes’ stories are considered in terms of complex interwoven strands where body, mind, myth, memory, waste, food, soul, politics and history are entangled and their interactions between humans and water become muddied and provoke mixed emotions.  

project imagery/text

Ostranenie: “seeing the familiar in a new light”

(why Tea-Towels and T-shirts?)

An ordinary, everyday item that has developed from a domestic necessity to an essential designer kitchen furnishing, the common tea-towel is often of standard size, form and material. Whilst familiar and often overlooked, they are also vehicles for concise messages - both visual and textual. These are often pithy observations, recipes and souvenir images of attractions and tourist sites. The objective of using this format in our exhibition is to provoke, through stealth, a ‘double-take’ by the observer (or shopper). What you think you see, is perhaps not what you get. By extension, we have used the T-shirt format because it is commonly recognised as providing opportunities for self-expression, advertising, souvenir messages, and political protest. T-shirts provide low-value ‘wearable art’ and while often exhibiting immediate messages, our designs aim to provoke a second glance, a second thought…and maybe a conversation..?

The first public showing of the Undercurrents 'happening' was at the Harbourside Market, Bristol in June 2017, assisted by the the WaterCityBristol team. WaterCityBristol is a component of the larger Towards Hydrocitizenship research project.


Notes

(i) Amongst other connotations, this is the title of a book by Timothy Morton; also we nod to the Dark Mountain Project (Paul Kingsnorth etc), Derek Jensen and others.

Selected References & Sources:

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Bachelard, G. (1983) Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter (Dallas, Pegasus).

British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) (2015) Kittiwake. Available: https://www.bto.org/cy/node/60339

Cassell’s Household Guide being A Complete Encyclopaedia of Domestic and Social Economy and forming a Guide to Every Department of Practical Life (c1869) (London, Cassel, Petter & Galpin).

Chen, C., MacLeod, J. and Neimanis, A. (eds) (2013) Thinking with Water (Montreal, McGill-Queen’s Univ).

Cocker, M. and Mabey, R. (2005) Birds Britannica (London, Chatto & Windus).

Coulson, J.C. (2011) The Kittiwake (London, T&AD Poyser).

Couzens, D. (2017) Songs of Love & War: The Dark Heart of Bird Behaviour (London, Bloomsbury).

Cresci, A., et al. (2017) ’Glass eels (Anguilla anguilla) have a magnetic compass linked to the tidal cycle’, Science Advances, 3(6).

Deakin, R. (2014) Waterlog: A swimmer’s journey through Britain (London, Vintage).

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Grass, G. (tr. B. Mitchell) (2010 [orig. 1959]) The Tin Drum (London, Vintage Books).

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Hátún, H., Olsen, B. and Pacariz, S. (2017) ‘The Dynamics of the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre Introduces Predictability to the Breeding Success of Kittiwakes’, Frontiers in Marine Science, 4, 123.

Hoestlandt, H. (ed) (1991) The Freshwater Fishes of Europe 2: Clupeidae Anguillidae (Wiesbn:  AULA-Verlag).

Henderson, P.A. et al. (2012) ‘Evidence for a population collapse of European eel (Anguilla anguilla) in the Bristol Channel’, Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, 92(4): 843–851.

Illich, I. (1986) H2O & the Waters of Forgetfulness: Reflections on the Historicity of "Stuff" (London, Boyars).

Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) (2017) Black-legged kittiwake Rissa tridactyla. Available: http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/page-2889

Kitchiner, W. (1817) Apicius Redivivus; or, The Cook's Oracle (London, Bagster).

Knights, B. The European Eel: facts and myths www.Sustainableeelgroup.com

Makel, J. (2011) Memories of egg collecting at Bempton Cliffs.  Available: news.bbc.co.uk/local/humberside/hi/people_and_places/nature/newsid_9382000/9382433.stm

Mathieson, C (2016) (ed) Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present (London, Palgrave).

Merritt, M. A (2016) Sky Full of Birds (London, Rider/Penguin).

Miller, M.J. (2009) ‘Ecology of Anguilliform Leptocephali: Remarkable Transparent Fish Larvae of the Ocean Surface Layer’, Aqua-BioScience Monographs (ABSM) 2(4): 1–94.

Morton, A. (2016) Dark Ecology (New York, Columbia Univ. Press)

Natural History Society of Northumbria (2017) website http://www.nhsn.ncl.ac.uk/activities/conservation-research/tyne-kittiwakes/

Nicolson, A. (2017) The Seabird’s Cry (London, Collins).

Probyn, E. (2016) Eating the Ocean (Durham, Duke University Press).

Prosek, J. (2010) Eels (New York: HarperCollins).

Reading, P. (1983) ‘At Marsden Bay’ in Diplopic (London, Martin Secker & Warburg).

Roe, M.H. (2016) Vile Bodies in the Water Hydrocitizenship Blog 16 Feb 2017 14:29:33.

Schweid, R. (2004) Consider the Eel: A natural and gastronomic history (North Caroline, Da Capo Press).

Schwenk, T. & Cousteau, J-Y.  (2014 [orig. 1989]) Sensitive Chaos (Forest Row, East Sussex, Sophia Books).

Strang, V. (2004) The Meaning of Water (Oxford: Berg).

Tsukamoto, K. and Kuroki, M. (eds) (2014) Eels and Humans (Japan, Springer).

Turner, V. (1969) ‘Liminality & Communitas’ (Chapter 3) in The Ritual Process, Structure & Anti-Structure. (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press) pp. 94-130.