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	<title>The Falmouth Convention</title>
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	<link>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com</link>
	<description>Art - Time - Place</description>
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		<title>The Falmouth Convention in Retrospect</title>
		<link>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/the-falmouth-convention-in-retrospect</link>
		<comments>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/the-falmouth-convention-in-retrospect#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Nov 2010 14:41:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>jo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Keynote: Lucy Lippard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Record]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/?p=1669</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Six months on from The Falmouth Convention, Axis, the online resource for contemporary art, commissioned Lucy Lippard to reflect on the event. Lippard&#8217;s text is published here by kind permission of Axis. 
In retrospect, the Falmouth Convention was a model of organisation and content.
The field trips, everyone has agreed, gave it a grounded, local flavour that suffered only from [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>Six months on from The Falmouth Convention, Axis, the online resource for contemporary art, commissioned Lucy Lippard to reflect on the event. Lippard&#8217;s text is published here by kind permission of <a href="http://www.axisweb.org/webzine/lucylippard" target="_blank">Axis</a>. </em></p>
<p>In retrospect, the Falmouth Convention was a model of organisation and content.</p>
<p>The field trips, everyone has agreed, gave it a grounded, local flavour that suffered only from the fact that we couldn’t go on every one of them.</p>
<p>I came out of the Convention dubious about the necessity or perhaps even the possibility of taking part in an already formed, controlled, and conceptualized international Manifesta, and wildly enthusiastic about an independent, long-term project that would have time to learn from its own successes and failures.<span id="more-1669"></span></p>
<p>Cornwall is already ahead of the game, given the large number of vital, often young artists involved in the issues put before us. At least that’s my impression from the talks and the information I received afterwards.</p>
<p>The RANE (Research in Art, Nature and Environment) program at the University College, alternative energy projects, artists taking on the role of independent tour guide, quirky takes on cultural geography, and so forth.  (I am intentionally not mentioning names for fear I’ll forget someone.) These are all impressive, and usually collaborative, models for rural communities everywhere.</p>
<p>Similar projects are also flourishing in Devon (although Falmouth has just inherited Dartington, which was a lively centre for such ideas). An independent project could be extended into a south-western collaboration, though I don’t know the extent to which provincial nationalism would prove an obstacle.</p>
<p>Such an undertaking would obviously take extremely inventive long-term planning and community involvement. And of course fundraising in these hard times will be challenging to say the least.</p>
<p>Maybe BP would be interested?  I couldn’t resist that, as a joke, given the Tate’s crucial support for Falmouth and the protests around the Gulf of Mexico oil spill from the art community (myself included) about BP funding.</p>
<p>But it’s probably no joke for the Tate, which has been so important in supporting innovative programs like this one. In any case, a project that lasted over years would be preferable to the one-shot, over-the-top hit of an Olympics or Biennial.</p>
<p>If funding is really scarce, it might be a good idea to begin by supporting and promoting existing projects, and allowing them to propagate.</p>
<p>I was not on the ground long enough to be able to analyse the amount of non-art community support that the local collectives could count on. The voices of the visited need to be heard by the visitors.</p>
<p>Some art events could grow from the grass roots rather than being forced to fit into outside organisers’ preconceptions.</p>
<p>Local politics, awareness of local problems and local sensitivities as well as local privacy are clearly as important as encouraging local talents and initiatives. (For instance, if events take place over time, traffic problems would be allayed: One of that weekend’s memorable experiences for me was the incredible skill of the coach drivers manoeuvring those narrow lanes.)</p>
<p>One of the Convention’s subtexts was change, lack of change, recording change over time, the relationship between tradition and innovation.</p>
<p>Right after Falmouth, I was in Totnes, Devon, and visited its Image Bank and Rural Archive. It reminded me that newspapers are good partners in community projects, as are the County, Municipal, and National representatives already involved by the Convention.  But I suspect art events and artists’ photographs are not often documented in local archives, and the fact that some of them might generate historical and scientific material is rarely recognised.</p>
<p>A ‘multi-centred’ biennial or project must think long and hard about how to differentiate itself from the crassest kinds of conventional tourism, and ally itself with the best the tourism industry has to offer, crossing the boundaries as often as possible so that participants/audience/visitors are confused into seeing afresh the places they may take for granted.</p>
<p>The difficulty is always how to accommodate international participation or audiences, and at the same time keep the benefits at home, creating jobs for local people (and artists) who are enthusiastic about revealing deep maps of their places, providing contexts for the artworks.</p>
<p>A by-product could be encouragement for people willing to represent their farming practices or alternative energy plans or local history and artisanal groups, or to begin new cottage industries.</p>
<p>The artists are already seeking out ‘social energies not yet recognised as art’ and incorporating (not appropriating) them as new kinds of ‘ready-mades.’</p>
<p>I see collaboration as the social extension of collage – juxtaposing very different realities to form a new reality. Along these lines, I’d like to explore the notion of a ‘Community Biennale’ that I mentioned in my talk.</p>
<p>Another issue is what stays in Cornwall when the event is over?  (I mean ideas or initiatives rather than objects or architecture, unless it’s something on a scale that would be truly useful to the area.)</p>
<p>I think of the lessons learned by ‘social sculptor’ Suzanne Lacy over decades of collaborative work with communities.</p>
<p>It’s difficult enough to make real human contact over a short period as a ‘visiting artist,’ but Lacy has often raised the issue of what happens when the artist leaves. How can a fragile young collaborative relationship be prolonged and maintained so that the project doesn’t fizzle as soon as the external energy departs?  This happens only when the internal energy is its solid base.</p>
<p>For all my own obsession with the familiar, I keep in mind Tacita Dean’s contention that ‘ignorance is helpful and knowledge is destructive.’ It works for her. I wouldn’t go that far, but since I tend to didacticism, it reminds me how necessary it is to allow artists the full scope of their ideas and their own obsessions.</p>
<p>The Convention was exemplary in the span of work and experience represented and referenced, and for its international participation, which extended the concept of the ‘local’ into so many different corners of the world.</p>
<p>For once the abyss between community arts and ‘high arts’ (which is not as marked in the UK as it is in the US) was, if not invisible, easily traversed.</p>
<p>Finally, from the field trips I retained some metaphors offered by the ancient mining industry in Cornwall (digging deeper) and the ‘first transatlantic broadcast’ transmitted from Poldhu – metaphors that give the imagined upcoming events a historical reservoir and a precedent for contemporary ‘broadcasts’ into the winds of global change.</p>
<p>© Lucy R. Lippard October 2010, commissioned by <a href="http://www.axisweb.org/webzine/lucylippard" target="_blank">Axis</a>.</p>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>&#8216;The Theory of Applied Enigmatics&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/the-theory-of-applied-enigmatics</link>
		<comments>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/the-theory-of-applied-enigmatics#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:44:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>jo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Conference Presentations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[General]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Record]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/?p=1660</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Bassam el Baroni read from ‘The Theory of Applied Enigmatics’ in his presentation for the Convention and has kindly made the text available for internal study and reference purposes. It may be accessed here in jpg format and may not be copied, pasted, quoted or otherwise turned into text. It will be published in the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/bassam-el-baroni-2" target="_self">Bassam el Baroni</a> read from ‘The Theory of Applied Enigmatics’ in his presentation for the Convention and has kindly made the text available for internal study and reference purposes. It may be accessed here in jpg format and may not be copied, pasted, quoted or otherwise turned into text. It will be published in the catalogue of Manifesta 8.</p>
<p>&#8216;The Theory of Applied Enigmatics&#8217; (jpg) &#8211; <a href="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/Theory-of-Applied-Enigmatics_page-1.jpg" target="_blank">Page 1</a>, <a href="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/Theory-of-Applied-Enigmatics_page-2.jpg" target="_blank">Page 2</a>, <a href="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/Theory-of-Applied-Enigmatics_page-3.jpg" target="_blank">Page 3</a></p>
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		<item>
		<title>John Cage short story</title>
		<link>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/john-cage-short-story</link>
		<comments>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/john-cage-short-story#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:14:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>jo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Conference Presentations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Record]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/?p=1657</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In his concluding remarks on Saturday 22 May Jeremy Millar read a short story from the collection Indeterminacy by John Cage.  Click here to read the story.
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In his concluding remarks on Saturday 22 May <a href="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/jeremy-millar" target="_self">Jeremy Millar</a> read a short story from the collection <em>Indeterminacy</em> by John Cage.  <a href="http://www.lcdf.org/indeterminacy/s.cgi?n=86" target="_blank">Click here to read the story</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>Audio and Video Recordings</title>
		<link>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/audio-and-video-recordings</link>
		<comments>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/audio-and-video-recordings#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:09:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>jo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Conference Presentations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Record]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/?p=1651</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The conference at Woodlane Lecture Theatre, Falmouth on Saturday 22 May was recorded on University College Falmouth’s Echo 360 recording system.
An annotated version of the conference programme is given below, to assist with navigation of the Echo 360 recordings. Click on the headings for Parts 1 to 4 to link to the recordings.
The most complete [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>The conference at Woodlane Lecture Theatre, Falmouth on Saturday 22 May was recorded on University College Falmouth’s Echo 360 recording system.</em></p>
<p>An annotated version of the conference programme is given below, to assist with navigation of the Echo 360 recordings. Click on the headings for Parts 1 to 4 to link to the recordings.<span id="more-1651"></span></p>
<p>The most complete recordings are in audio format and can be accessed through the Screen Reader Version when you follow the links. Where video recordings are available, they can be viewed on the High Speed Version or Low Speed Version. (Please see note below regarding video recordings).</p>
<p><a href="http://echo.falmouth.ac.uk:8080/ess/echo/presentation/3988c908-1812-4c73-88f7-93b0253b091a" target="_blank">PART 1</a></p>
<p>00:00:05 &#8211; 00:08:19 Welcome by Teresa Gleadowe, Convenor of The Falmouth Convention</p>
<p>00:08:20 &#8211; 00:15:00 Introduction by Dr Virginia Button, Course Leader, MA Curatorial Practice, University College Falmouth</p>
<p>00:15:09 &#8211; 00:53:00 Tom van Gestel: &#8216;A walk in the Countryside&#8217;</p>
<p>00:54:40 &#8211; 01:22:50 Tacita Dean: &#8216;Being Commissioned&#8230;&#8217;</p>
<p><a href="http://echo.falmouth.ac.uk:8080/ess/echo/presentation/b3d753ce-7747-4305-9300-c537e8490e82" target="_blank">PART 2</a></p>
<p>00:01:14 &#8211; 00:24:00 Hans Ulrich Obrist: &#8216;Everstill&#8217;</p>
<p>00:24:30 &#8211; 01:01:44 Panel discussion: Tom van Gestel, Tacita Dean, Hans Ulrich Obrist, chaired by Dr Virginia Button</p>
<p><a href="http://echo.falmouth.ac.uk:8080/ess/echo/presentation/856a7c6a-b49d-482f-91bb-eec5e920d119" target="_blank">PART 3</a></p>
<p>00:00:00 &#8211; 00:03:37 Introduction by Martin Clark, Artistic Director, Tate St Ives</p>
<p>00:03:45 &#8211; 00:27:58 Kitty Scott: &#8216;First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is&#8230;&#8217; Artist-led residencies at the Banff Centre, Banff, Canada</p>
<p>00:29:24 &#8211; 00:46:50 Simon Fujiwara: &#8216;Impersonator&#8217; 2009</p>
<p>00:47:45 &#8211; 01:07:30 Andrzej Przywara: &#8216;Warsaw Experience&#8217;</p>
<p>01:08:40 &#8211; 01:43:52 Panel discussion: Donna Lynas, Director of Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire, Adam Sutherland, Director of Grizedale Arts, Cumbria, Kitty Scott, Andrzej Przywara and Simon Fujiwara, chaired by Martin Clark</p>
<p><a href="http://echo.falmouth.ac.uk:8080/ess/echo/presentation/0f2d6357-0105-44ac-9dda-f6944b0e66b1" target="_blank">PART 4</a></p>
<p>00:00:00 &#8211; 00:02:20 Introduction by Dr Virginia Button, Course Leader, MA Curatorial Practice, University College Falmouth</p>
<p>00:02:25 &#8211; 00:35:12 Bassam el Baroni: Manifesta 8</p>
<p>00:36:05 &#8211; 00:45:09 Jeremy Millar: response to the day&#8217;s presentations</p>
<p>00:45:30 &#8211; 01:06:40 Panel Discussion: Kadar Attia, Geoffrey Farmer, Jeremy Millar, chaired by Dr Virginia Button</p>
<p>01:06:40 &#8211; 01:11:00 Closing remarks by Andrew Nairne, Executive Director, Arts, Arts Council England</p>
<p>01:11:00 &#8211; 01:19:40 Closing remarks by Sir Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate</p>
<p>Presentations in the Woodlane Lecture Theatre are recorded on video with a camera fixed over the lectern. The camera does not record presentations made in other parts of the lecture theatre; thus the Echo 360 system does not provide video recordings of panel discussions. The Echo 360 system records Powerpoint presentations where these have been loaded onto the system, but does not record other projected visuals such as slide presentations.</p>
<p>Speakers retain copyright © but have kindly given permission for links to these recordings to be provided through the website of The Falmouth Convention.</p>
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		<title>Field Trip 5: Teleport &#8211; Adam Chodzko&#8217;s response</title>
		<link>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/field-trip-5-teleport-adam-chodzkos-reponse</link>
		<comments>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/field-trip-5-teleport-adam-chodzkos-reponse#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:48:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>jo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Field Trip Reports]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Record]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/?p=1571</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Adam Chodzko was asked to give his response to the Teleport field trip to the Lizard peninsula.  He has sent the following text as a record of his presentation at the Convention on Sunday 23 May.  He writes: ‘Attached is my memory of my field trip response. It is taken from a few [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/adam-chodzko" target="_self">Adam Chodzko</a> was asked to give his response to the Teleport field trip to the Lizard peninsula.  He has sent the following text as a record of his presentation at the Convention on Sunday 23 May.  He writes: ‘Attached is my memory of my field trip response. It is taken from a few sketchy notes I made at the time and tries to fit with the sequence of images I showed (which I know are in the correct order). So I guess it is the skeleton of my talk as I remember it now in Cove Park, 17 July 2010.’<span id="more-1571"></span></p>
<p>It’s been two days since the Teleport field trip. Our experience of it is evolving, eroding and accumulating in relation to what has happened since, and what we anticipate happening next.</p>
<p>‘There’s a storm coming’, said Andrew Nairne. But perhaps it will be a productive one. Not one that annihilates. In order to survive we have to change how we live.</p>
<p>I live in a kind of ‘rural’ with many of the same possibilities and problems as here. But here is better, whereas my ‘rural’, in relation to the capital, is in the shadow of the ‘big house’.</p>
<p>I think yesterday Hans Ulrich Obrist quoted Rem Koolhaas: ‘The future is the countryside’.</p>
<p>Or was that John Prescott?</p>
<p>The outer urban where I live doesn’t really know what it is. Cornwall has a much clearer identity. Has (re)invented itself. And I always feel a very productive kind of defiance here.</p>
<p>So, Telecommunication! Dematerialisation. Of place. ‘The end of geography.’ (There is no periphery).</p>
<p>Yet also the specificity of place. These points in the landscape are crucial and will never be repeated. As is our encounter with them.</p>
<p>The recurring question as our group began to meet each other is ‘so, where are you from?’</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1572" title="FALMOUTH.002" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.002-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="192" height="144" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1575" title="FALMOUTH.003" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.003-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="192" height="144" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1576" title="FALMOUTH.004" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.004-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="192" height="144" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1577" title="FALMOUTH.005" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.005-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="192" height="144" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1579" title="FALMOUTH.006" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.006-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="192" height="144" /></p>
<p>The evolution of our group dynamics</p>
<p>About a group. How we stood together, how we talked with each other and how that talking evolved &#8211; an inadvertent by-product of our sharing of an experience.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1583" title="FALMOUTH.007" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.007-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1584" title="FALMOUTH.008" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.008-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1585" title="FALMOUTH.009" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.009-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1586" title="FALMOUTH.010" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.010-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1587" title="FALMOUTH.011" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.011-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1588" title="FALMOUTH.012" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.012-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1589" title="FALMOUTH.013" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.013-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1590" title="FALMOUTH.014" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.014-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /></p>
<p>Teleport; transmission of data. A fantasy of our own dematerialisation and rematerialisation across time and space.</p>
<p>And here we are in state of transmission.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-1593" title="FALMOUTH.015" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.015-620x465.jpg" alt="" width="620" height="465" /></p>
<p><a href="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/steven-rowell" target="_self">Steve Rowell</a> and Daro Montag, clearly did huge preparation and research for this trip yet acknowledged their position as ‘outsiders’ by the inclusion of a series of incredibly enthusiastic local experts.</p>
<p>Our bus would pull into a lay-by and an expert would get in and guide us through the complexity of local communication history.</p>
<p>The quantity of detail and exactitude and pleasure with which they mediated these sites was remarkable. It was information that flowed but was impossible to contain or consume.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1595" title="FALMOUTH.016" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.016-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="180" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1596" title="FALMOUTH.017" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.017-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="180" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1597" title="FALMOUTH.018" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.018-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="180" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1598" title="FALMOUTH.019" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.019-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="180" /></p>
<p>There is no periphery. But clearly we experience this as an edge. And in this bit of Cornwall all the big settlements are on this edge.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-1600" title="FALMOUTH.020" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.020-620x465.jpg" alt="" width="620" height="465" /></p>
<p>Is information the same when transmitted as when received? What is the delay or duration? Is this a series of vectors, or a flow?</p>
<p>Up and down the coast from Falmouth lie landing sites for the world’s submarine telecommunications cables, carrying the bulk of Internet and phone traffic to and from the Americas, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. At Bude to the north, Sennen and Porthcurno on the Penwith Peninsula, around Lizard Point and up to Kennack Sands – data flows by the terabyte.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1601" title="FALMOUTH.021" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.021-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="180" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1602" title="FALMOUTH.022" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.022-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="180" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1603" title="FALMOUTH.023" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.023-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="180" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1604" title="FALMOUTH.024" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.024-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="180" /></p>
<p>Wireless communication history was also made in Cornwall with Marconi’s first transatlantic broadcast to St John’s in Newfoundland from Poldhu in 1901. Satellite communications were first brought to England via an earth station built in 1962 at Goonhilly Downs, transmitting TV signals via the Telstar 1 satellite orbiting 6,000 km above.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-1606" title="FALMOUTH.025" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.025-620x465.jpg" alt="" width="620" height="465" /></p>
<p>Despite or due to our environment a conversation over lunch was the attempt to remember every RCA curators’ course degree show.</p>
<p>We couldn’t. At least not in the right order and with work displaced from its existence in one show and now imagined in another.</p>
<p>In relation to art, remember the comment from earlier: ‘We just want good art…not work which is just good enough.’</p>
<p>So, here is the means, but what is the content of all this telecommunication? Given the opportunity do we have anything worth saying?</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1608" title="FALMOUTH.026" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.026-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="180" /> <img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1609" title="FALMOUTH.027" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.027-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="180" /></p>
<p>Look at the following evolution of content during the first successful transmission of our voices and then our appearance:</p>
<p>Samuel Morse stretched a wire between Washington and Baltimore in 1844. The first message he sent with his code was ‘What hath God wrought!’</p>
<p>1876: The first sounds transmitted down a wire were Alexander Graham Bell saying ‘Mr. Watson, come here. I want you’.</p>
<p>1901: Marconi test to Isle of Wight: ‘Near m biat three tis n n …seems about the same.’</p>
<p>Marconi sent an ‘s’ code, for success.</p>
<p>1962: Goonhilly, the first transmission of Telstar video: the first words were: ‘There’s a man’s face! That’s the picture!’</p>
<p>The cable-laying frenzy that occurred during the late-nineties dotcom boom.</p>
<p>At a secret location on a Cornish beach: Apollo: enough bandwidth for 20 million people.</p>
<p>It is 6m beneath the beach so a child with a plastic spade might reduce your download speed.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1611" title="FALMOUTH.028" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.028-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="192" height="144" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1612" title="FALMOUTH.029" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.029-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="192" height="144" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1613" title="FALMOUTH.030" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.030-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="192" height="144" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1614" title="FALMOUTH.031" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.031-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="192" height="144" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1615" title="FALMOUTH.032" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.032-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="192" height="144" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1616" title="FALMOUTH.033" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.033-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="192" height="144" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1617" title="FALMOUTH.034" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.034-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="192" height="144" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1618" title="FALMOUTH.035" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.035-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="192" height="144" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1610" title="FALMOUTH.036" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.036-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="192" height="144" /></p>
<p>At Goonhilly: Future World</p>
<p>We were advised not to ask the people who worked there about the future. Was this Andrew Nairne’s ‘storm’ approaching?</p>
<p>But we did ask and we were told: ‘The future will be exciting!’</p>
<p>Here are some images that I took on a previous visit to Goonhilly a few years ago. It was in the past. Pre-Future World (which has now closed down). It was a previous idea, a visitors’ centre which, in the final image, you can see packed up and very over.</p>
<p>But, as they say, what happens next will be ‘exciting’!</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1625" title="FALMOUTH.037" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.037-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1626" title="FALMOUTH.038" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.038-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1627" title="FALMOUTH.039" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.039-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1628" title="FALMOUTH.040" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.040-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1629" title="FALMOUTH.041" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.041-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1630" title="FALMOUTH.042" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.042-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1631" title="FALMOUTH.043" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.043-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1632" title="FALMOUTH.044" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.044-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1633" title="FALMOUTH.045" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.045-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1634" title="FALMOUTH.046" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.046-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1635" title="FALMOUTH.047" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.047-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1636" title="FALMOUTH.048" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.048-240x180.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="108" /></p>
<p>On the bus, entering Helston, Steve Rowell screened the trailer for the feature film Future World, ‘The ultimate vacation resort’.</p>
<p>‘It is safe!’ they keep asserting. It’s a trailer, so we know this information can only mean it’s going to be very unsafe.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-1638" title="FALMOUTH.049" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.049-620x465.jpg" alt="" width="620" height="465" /></p>
<p>The Future World film poster asks the question: “Is this you…or are YOU you?”</p>
<p>That makes my head hurt. So, we must move on to these final images.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-1640" title="FALMOUTH.050" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.050-620x465.jpg" alt="" width="620" height="465" /></p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-1639" title="FALMOUTH.051" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/FALMOUTH.051-620x465.jpg" alt="" width="620" height="465" /></p>
<p>So, here we are a few days ago looking at some ruins. But actually the ruins of the visitors centre for the Manifesta that might be held in Cornwall in a few years time.</p>
<p>Or maybe they are to look like that. Because, really, it is an artwork put in some years after the Manifesta happened, in the end, somewhere else. And they refer to the ruins of a fictitious visitors centre that might have been, but dematerialised, existing now only as its own ending and therefore the starting point for something else.</p>
<p>Photographs and text by Adam Chodzko.</p>
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		<title>Video highlights from artcornwall.org</title>
		<link>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/video-highlights-from-artcornwall-org</link>
		<comments>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/video-highlights-from-artcornwall-org#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 09 Jul 2010 09:15:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>jo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Conference Presentations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Record]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/?p=1550</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Visit artcornwall.org to see video clips of some of the conference presentations.
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Visit <a href="http://www.artcornwall.org/features/The_Falmouth_convention_videos.htm" target="_blank">artcornwall.org</a> to see video clips of some of the conference presentations.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Lucy Lippard interview with artcornwall.org</title>
		<link>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/lucy-lippard-interview-with-artcornwall-org</link>
		<comments>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/lucy-lippard-interview-with-artcornwall-org#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 09 Jul 2010 09:12:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>jo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Keynote: Lucy Lippard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Record]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/?p=1546</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Visit artcornwall.org to read Rupert White&#8217;s interview with Lucy Lippard on place, places and conceptual art.
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Visit <a href="http://www.artcornwall.org/interviews/Lucy_Lippard.htm" target="_blank">artcornwall.org</a> to read Rupert White&#8217;s interview with Lucy Lippard on place, places and conceptual art.</p>
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		<title>Field Trip 6: Tristan and Iseult in Cornwall</title>
		<link>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/field-trip-6-tristan-and-iseult-in-cornwall-2</link>
		<comments>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/field-trip-6-tristan-and-iseult-in-cornwall-2#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 04 Jul 2010 10:22:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>jo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Field Trip Reports]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Record]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/?p=1208</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Tristan and Iseult: A Cornish Pilgrimage
by Matt Cox





Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
Thanne comen May whan artfolk of sondry ages
Longen to goon on Kernow pilgrimages
Twice upon a time, there lived in Cornwall a handsome Knight and a beautiful Princess, Tristan and Iseult.
Of course that isn’t strictly [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Tristan and Iseult: A Cornish Pilgrimage</strong><br />
<strong>by Matt Cox<span id="more-1208"></span><br />
</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1212" title="Lych by Matt Cox" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/Falcon-Lych-31-620x440.jpg" alt="" width="496" height="352" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;">
<p style="padding-left: 120px;">
<p style="padding-left: 120px;"><strong><br />
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote<br />
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote<br />
Thanne comen May whan artfolk of sondry ages<br />
Longen to goon on Kernow pilgrimages</strong></p>
<p>Twice upon a time, there lived in Cornwall a handsome Knight and a beautiful Princess, Tristan and Iseult.</p>
<p>Of course that isn’t strictly true: they lived many more times than twice and their story has found a home in many other places than Cornwall. But it is here, in the Cornish landscape that these lovers are embedded, and in the church of St Sampson, the destination for our pilgrimage, that their tale is enshrined.</p>
<p>As the cruel April weather gives way to a blazing May sun, I meet my fellow pilgrims on the Falmouth waterfront where we have come to trace our story to its source, straight from the mouth of the River Fal.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1221" title="Golant by Matt Cox" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/Falcon-Golant-620x465.jpg" alt="" width="496" height="372" /></p>
<p>Escorting our merry throng is the poet/translator Jane Tozer who has come to lead us by the tale. The artist <a href="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/jeremy-millar" target="_blank">Jeremy Millar</a> accompanies us too. He has travelled with Tristan more than most. We are joined by a sculptor, a teller of tales and an artist who does things with light; a juggler, a dauber, a dilettante warbler and a man who prefers the night.</p>
<p>Each takes their turn to tell their story.</p>
<p>For those of our flock who fell by the wayside, I will re-cap our Tristan’s tale. Tristan and Iseult is a medieval Celtic romance with a love triangle at its core. Tristan sails to Ireland to collect Iseult as a bride for his uncle, King Mark of Cornwall, but Tristan and Iseult fall in love with each other. Set against the dramatic scenery of a wild and wooded Cornwall, the story plays out the trials of physical and courtly love. The protagonists navigate stormy seas and treacherous waterways as their fortunes, and the narrative, ebb and flow.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1223" title="Tristan and Iseult" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/Tristan-and-Iseult.jpg" alt="" width="220" height="131" /></p>
<p>But this is not just a Cornish tale. It is also a monomyth, a tale of archetypes. Its universal themes are found as far away as Papua New Guinea which has its own version of Tristan and Iseult, <em>Tokinana sola Bosubasoba</em><em> </em>- a story which Jeremy Millar recounts when he takes his turn and delivers the Millar’s Tale. It is a story that has been transformed into opera, appropriated by the Third Reich, made colourful by Bollywood, watered down in<em> Tristram Shandy</em><em> </em>and eponymized in the island of Tristan de Cunha. As our poet reminds us, mere fact, location and detail do not comprise the soul of story, it ‘takes place in the imagination and the heart, and not a certain piece of land. Exactitude is not truth.’</p>
<p style="padding-left: 120px;"><strong>And forth we riden a litel moore anon<br />
Unto the churche of Seint Sampson</strong></p>
<p>Having passed the site of King Mark’s Castle Dore, we arrive at Golant and the beautiful St Sampson’s church with its graveyard overlooking the River Fowey.  Bees stumble busily in the lilac bushes, butting the heavy, scented spikes before staggering off, giddy with their load. Ancient oaks shade ancient bones from bleaching in the sun, and hoary roots embrace the dead, for fear their spirits run.</p>
<p>It is here that Iseult, now reconciled with her King, rides to give her prayers.</p>
<p>Saint Sampson’s tale, like that tale of Tristan and Iseult, is woven together from a number of Celtic strands. He was the son of a Welsh king, a traveler to Brittany and a founder of the Cornish church. His roots are deep and wide.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1227" title="Web by Matt Cox" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/Falcon-Web-465x620.jpg" alt="" width="372" height="496" /></p>
<p>It is here that our poet captures her congregation in a web of story. Looking up, we realize she has caught us in her net.</p>
<p>She tells us of Mark’s honour and the virtues of the Knight, of the hunted hungry lovers, and their tender tragic plight. But there is only sufficient time to tease us with parts of the Tristan tale. Like the fisherman’s net, it is a series of holes tied together with string, facts and fictions slithering in and out.</p>
<p>We stand by the lich-gate, where the lovers kissed to the scent of honeysuckle. As soon as we enter its shadow, it becomes clear that this is the true genius loci, the hub of our tale and the heart of our pilgrimage.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1229" title="St Sampson by Matt Cox" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/Falcon-St-Sampson-465x620.jpg" alt="" width="372" height="496" /></p>
<p>The floral archway which points to the heavens appears to sanctify Tristan and Iseult’s love and celebrate their union. Below however, in the earthly domain, their names are carved on separate gates, each dominated by the struts of imprisoning bars.  Lich is the ancient name for a corpse, the lich-gate the place where the body is set down to await the clergyman’s arrival. It is a passing place, a threshold between two worlds. It is one of those places our poet might call a ‘Thin Place’, somewhere ‘the veil between this world and the otherworld is so delicate that we can sense another dimension.’</p>
<p>Everything is brought together at this Place. It is here we feel the story, the palpable holes in the net, the invisible membrane between fact and fable and the tissue that separates 850 years.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1231" title="In Memory by Matt Cox" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/Falcon-Memory-620x465.jpg" alt="" width="496" height="372" /></p>
<p style="padding-left: 120px;">
<p style="padding-left: 120px;">
<p style="padding-left: 120px;">
<p style="padding-left: 120px;"><strong>The Burial of the Dead</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 120px;"><strong>April is the cruellest month, breeding<br />
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing<br />
Memory and desire, stirring<br />
Dull roots with spring rain.</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 120px;"><strong>T.S Eliot</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 120px;">
<p style="padding-left: 120px;"><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 120px;"><strong>May with its light behaving</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 120px;"><strong>May with its light behaving<br />
Stirs vessel, eye and limb<br />
The singular and sad<br />
Are willing to recover,<br />
And to each swan-delighting river<br />
The careless picnics come<br />
In living red and white</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 120px;"><strong>Our dead, remote and hooded,<br />
In hollows rest, but we<br />
From their vague woods have broken,<br />
Forests where children meet<br />
And the white angel-vampires flit,<br />
Stand now with shaded eye,<br />
The dangerous apple taken.</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 120px;"><strong>W.H Auden</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 120px;"><strong><br />
</strong></p>
<p>Words and images by Matt Cox.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/field-trip-6-tristan-and-iseult-in-cornwall" target="_self">Read more about Field Trip 6: Tristan and Iseult in the Programme listing.</a></p>
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		<title>Field Trip 5: TelePort – A Tour of the Lizard’s Landscape of Telecommunication</title>
		<link>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/field-trip-5-teleport-a-tour-of-the-lizard%e2%80%99s-landscape-of-telecommunication</link>
		<comments>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/field-trip-5-teleport-a-tour-of-the-lizard%e2%80%99s-landscape-of-telecommunication#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 04 Jul 2010 10:20:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>jo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Field Trip Reports]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Record]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/?p=1246</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Steven Rowell devised this field trip with Daro Montag, to explore the many telecommunications sites on the Lizard peninsula. The tour started at the Marconi Museum in Poldhu and with a visit to the monument that commemorates the Marconi Company’s first trans-oceanic wireless communication between Cornwall and Newfoundland in Canada. Other points visited on the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/steven-rowell" target="_blank">Steven Rowell</a> devised this field trip with Daro Montag, to explore the many telecommunications sites on the Lizard peninsula. The tour started at the Marconi Museum in Poldhu and with a visit to the monument that commemorates the Marconi Company’s first trans-oceanic wireless communication between Cornwall and Newfoundland in Canada. Other points visited on the trip included the Lloyds Signal Station and Marconi Wireless Station on Lizard Point and the Goonhilly Satellite Station on Goonhilly Downs. The group stopped for lunch in Britain’s most southerly café, above the old Lizard lifeboat station at Polpeor cove.<span id="more-1246"></span></p>
<div id="attachment_1462" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 630px"><img class="size-large wp-image-1462 " title="by Steven Rowell" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/1-620x413.jpg" alt="" width="620" height="413" /><p class="wp-caption-text">David Barlow, amateur radio specialist and volunteer at the Lizard Wireless Station, gives a history of wireless communication as the coach heads as far south as it can go.</p></div>
<div id="attachment_1464" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 630px"><img class="size-large wp-image-1464 " title="by Steven Rowell" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/2-620x413.jpg" alt="" width="620" height="413" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Approaching the Marconi Centre, historic antenna site, and monument. Tour co-organiser, Daro Montag, is visible in the rear-view mirror, behind the driver.</p></div>
<div id="attachment_1465" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 630px"><img class="size-large wp-image-1465 " title="by Steven Rowell" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/33-620x413.jpg" alt="" width="620" height="413" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Tour participants on the trail, towards the Marconi Monument, at Poldhu.</p></div>
<div id="attachment_1466" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 630px"><img class="size-large wp-image-1466 " title="by Steven Rowell" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/41-620x413.jpg" alt="" width="620" height="413" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Keith Matthew, Hon. Sec. Poldhu Amateur Radio Club, engages with the group, engaging with the Marconi Monument - a granite pillar commemorating the first transatlantic radio transmission on December 12, 1901 between Poldhu and St. John&#39;s Newfoundland.</p></div>
<div id="attachment_1470" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 630px"><img class="size-large wp-image-1470 " title="by Steven Rowell" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/51-620x413.jpg" alt="" width="620" height="413" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Inside the Lizard Wireless Station, watching David Barlow create an electric arc on some of the historic equipment there.</p></div>
<div id="attachment_1471" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 630px"><img class="size-large wp-image-1471 " title="by Steven Rowell" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/61-620x413.jpg" alt="" width="620" height="413" /><p class="wp-caption-text">The group, outside the Lizard Wireless Station, soaking up sun and stories. The white cube structure in the background, the Lloyds Signal Station, is the oldest surviving purpose-built wireless communications station in the world.</p></div>
<div id="attachment_1474" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 630px"><img class="size-large wp-image-1474 " title="by Steven Rowell" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/7-620x413.jpg" alt="" width="620" height="413" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Approaching the Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station. All equipment on site is currently inoperative and the theme park there is now closed. Something wonderful is happening, or so they say at BT, in regards to the possible future of this site.</p></div>
<div id="attachment_1476" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 630px"><img class="size-large wp-image-1476 " title="by Steven Rowell" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/8-620x413.jpg" alt="" width="620" height="413" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Visiting the &quot;Arthur&quot; antenna dish at Goonhilly. Signals were received and sent from here to Andover, Maine, USA, via the Telstar Satellite in 1962, another first in telecommunications for the Lizard Peninsula.</p></div>
<div id="attachment_1478" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 630px"><img class="size-large wp-image-1478 " title="by Steven Rowell" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/9-620x413.jpg" alt="" width="620" height="413" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Interpretive plaques and bush at RAF Drytree, a disused collection of partially buried foundations that once housed experimental radar equipment during WWII. RAF Drytree was part of the defence network along Cornwall&#39;s more vulnerable coastal areas.</p></div>
<div id="attachment_1480" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 630px"><img class="size-large wp-image-1480 " title="by Steven Rowell" src="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/101-620x413.jpg" alt="" width="620" height="413" /><p class="wp-caption-text">At RAF Drytree: visible in the distance from a building dubbed the &quot;Happidrome&quot;, is a clearly defined line in the ground, running south across Goonhilly Downs. Beneath this line of disturbed soil lies one of the (somewhat) hidden subsea fibre optic cables that runs to Kennack Sands, then out to sea and to points beyond, at the speed of light.</p></div>
<p>Photographs and captions by Steven Rowell.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/field-trip-5-teleport-a-tour-of-the-lizards-landscape-of-telecommunication" target="_self">Read more about Field Trip 5: TelePort in the Programme listing.</a></p>
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		<title>Field Trip 4: Studios and Stones: new perspectives, new stories</title>
		<link>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/field-trip-4-studios-and-stones-new-perspectives-new-stories-2</link>
		<comments>http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/field-trip-4-studios-and-stones-new-perspectives-new-stories-2#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 04 Jul 2010 10:16:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>jo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Field Trip Reports]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Record]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/?p=1202</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Stories in the Stones
by Lynn Parr
The stones of Cornwall are like the bare bones of the soul. Elemental, wind-scoured. History looking back through the glazes of centuries, untouched by the human melée; not even noticing the frenetic dance of life.
Sculptors may try to make stone look like something else; yet it is still stone. It [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Stories in the Stones</strong><br />
<strong>by Lynn Parr</strong></p>
<p>The stones of Cornwall are like the bare bones of the soul. Elemental, wind-scoured. History looking back through the glazes of centuries, untouched by the human melée; not even noticing the frenetic dance of life.</p>
<p>Sculptors may try to make stone look like something else; yet it is still stone. It will always be stone. Nothing can change its nature except the slow drip of time itself.<span id="more-1202"></span></p>
<p>Barbara Hepworth knew this. She didn’t try to carve new patterns into the surface of stone, nor pretend it was anything other than it was. She merely polished and enhanced what was inherent and let the stone speak for itself. Thus, the sculptures in her garden at St Ives sing stories that the plants know, and that we ourselves recognise. They belong.</p>
<p>This natural resonance echoes through her workshop, even though it was reconstructed after the fire that interrupted her time here. Her tools, her overalls wait for her to resume her work; a scruffy chair in the conservatory sags as if she has only just stood up. In her reception room in the Palais de Danse opposite, untouched since she left it, time has no meaning. Torn cotton drapes at smeary windows cast shadows over Fifties furniture; peeling lino speaks of countless feet dancing, dancing. The clock, thick with dust, has stopped to mark time standing still. There is the smell of age and celebration and secrets. Downstairs, the outline of the monumental Single Form still stains the floor; her papers are stacked and strewn on her desk. There’s no doubt that, on a still summer’s evening, when the sea is that glassy St Ives teal, you can hear the tap-tap of Barbara in her workshop as she polishes another pearl from the earth. She is still here.</p>
<p>The Porthmeor Studios have less of that resonance of a single mind, since they have hosted a succession of artists since 1880, from Ben Nicolson to Francis Bacon. The Modernists came with ideas garnered from Russia and Paris, but then “reconnected with older forms, such as standing stones and the sea,” explains Tate’s Martin Clark. What must have Alfred Wallis and other local residents thought upon seeing the weird and wonderful abstracts coming out of the Modernists’ studios? Wallis’s answer was to resolutely stick to what he knew best – his fishing boats. He didn’t even let his own growing fame get in the way of real life: artist <a href="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/simon-fujiwara" target="_blank">Simon Fujiwara</a> recounts how, when chased up for paintings for a Tate exhibition, he admitted he’d given them all away to cheer up children in a hospital. He must be bemused by the pilgrims trudging up the graveyard hill to pay homage at his grand tiled grave.</p>
<p>This part of Cornwall has an ancient beauty. On the winding lanes out to Zennor, prehistoric walls mirror wind patterns on the sea while bluebells pool in field corners. Zennor’s pub and church float in a green ocean, echoing the tale of the mermaid who took the squire’s son beneath the waves and who is remembered on a chair in the church.</p>
<p>You either love Zennor or you hate it, says local resident Catherine Penhaul. Zennor people are known as goats, adds her husband, Chunky, while St Ives people are known as hakes. The wild Atlantic is docile today, but it’s a different story most of the time. “Winter has its own draw,” says Catherine with quiet understatement. Goats are good at clinging to windy crags.</p>
<p>Atop its own windy crag, Patrick Heron’s Eagle’s Nest is being “Tateified”, as his daughter, Katharine, puts it. Her husband, Julian Feary, recounts the work done on the house, which was the centre of an arts web across the peninsula. Virginia Woolf complained it was the coldest house in Britain: once you got into bed you couldn’t turn over. WH Hudson stayed there; George Mallory climbed the massive boulder in the garden. DH Lawrence wrote Women in Love in Zennor – and was asked to leave because he and his German wife were suspected of being spies. Local tradition has it that Catherine Penhaul’s progressive grandmother was the inspiration for Lady Chatterley’s Lover since she married the farmhand: but Catherine says not. The infamous writer Aleister Crowley lived nearby and was the centre of a cult of sado-masochism and black magic. And then there were the artists, who frequented the local pubs and found inspiration in the heathered hills overlooking the sea.</p>
<p>“I like to think of this huge matrix of movers and shakers,” says Katharine. “The place gave people space and time to think and be creative – but through it was this dark stream of black magic.”</p>
<p>So now the house has been stripped bare and rebuilt inside, where do Patrick Heron and his friends reside? Perhaps in the garden, with its narrow paths redolent with jasmine and azalea, lichen-spattered granite and atlas cedar; the garden wrapped around moorland stones like water settling around beach rocks. Perhaps in the textured weave of the land as it flows down to the sea; or up on the crags where the buzzards wheel and the quoits bridge the ages. You can feel the power of this corner of Cornwall even now, when the sun is warm and cuckoos call from the woods: how much more magnificent it must be when gales whip up the Atlantic and rain crosshatches the sky.</p>
<p>The stories of Zennor and St Ives will go on, with new ones accumulating like sand on the beach. Even this one brief day brought tales to arrest and stir as conversation flowed in the spring sunshine. An identity shock as a young woman discovered she was partly Romany, thanks to her own non-conforming grandmother; yet she also realised that the jigsaw pieces of her life were slotting into place, among people she’d always been told to avoid – just as Simon Fujiwara was inspired by the ‘degenerate’ St Ives artists he was warned about at school.  Perspectives challenged; experiences exchanged; the journey shared. Talk of outsiders coming into a rural Irish community generations ago, as in Zennor: but unlike Zennor, remaining aloof and despising the locals: their arrogance displayed in a museum exhibition of ‘anthropological’ photographs, for which local people were measured like Easter Island heads. Experience of Santa Fe, New Mexico, which – like St Ives today – is a centre of the arts where no one who creates those arts can afford to live. And echoing the Cornish walls that surround us on this journey, a story about the night the Berlin Wall came down, and how people from the East filled the West’s supermarkets to buy up all the bananas; and No Man’s Land between the two states now reclaimed by nature.</p>
<p>Strange truths. Yet somehow they all fit in this wild landscape of sea and wind and stone. Perhaps that’s what the stones of Cornwall really are – stories condensed by wind and weather and time into crystal-filled geodes waiting to be cracked open and shared once more.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.lynnparr.co.uk" target="_blank">www.lynnparr.co.uk</a><br />
<a href="http://www.creative-liaisons.net" target="_blank"> www.creative-liaisons.net</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/field-trip-4-studios-and-stones-new-perspectives-new-stories" target="_self">Read more about Field Trip 4: Studios and Stones in the Programme listing.</a></p>
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