Images 004
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TC—007
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TC—007
Pubs Shut Till Xmas
During the lockdown - I have found myself very moved and at times frightened at how fragile everything suddenly seemed to me. Not only the fragility of society itself, but the fragility physically; literally, of all of us as individuals and as animals and the security that we build around ourselves and the things that we hold closest to us. Not able to leave the flat I have been unable to explore these thoughts as I usually instinctively would - with a camera. I have found myself recounting a journey I took in 2016, to the archaeological sites in Britain where evidence of the very first human species had been found - species that have since become extinct. I photographed these sites but I also recorded the sound of each site and my journey generally. In the context of an international pandemic these recordings seem to take on a new significance. For some reason I have found myself spending many days listening to them, merging them with sounds from my quarantine and abstract compositions on a small synthesiser. I guess as a meditation on the past, present and the future, but also to somehow explore my own emotional processing of the moment in which we find ourselves. I simply hope that by sharing this very personal experience it may encourage others (who are fortunate enough to be afforded the time and mental and physical space to do so) to reflect on and process their own emotional experience of the situation.
The sound is accompanied by photographs of the sites themselves, paired with quotes from various world leaders since the outbreak of the virus. I've called it Pubs Shut Till Xmas: taken from The Sun newspaper’s strange front page story on April 20th - that for me, seems to somehow capture the complete surreality of the situation in which we find ourselves. May 18th, 2020.