Remote Performances book

I’m delighted that my short story ‘High-Lands’ is included in the forthcoming Remote Performances in Nature and Architecture edited by Bruce Gilchrist, Jo Joelson and Tracey Warr. The book will be published by Ashgate on 5 October, and there will be a launch event with readings and performances in London (more info on this shortly).

Based on a series of residencies and radio broadcasts produced by London Fieldworks in collaboration with Resonance 104.4fm, the Remote Performances project enabled twenty invited artists to consider and engage in transmissions, sound performances and dialogues on their artmaking strategies immersed in this specific rural environment of mountain, forest and river; flora and fauna. Some artists engaged in dialogue with people living and working in the area with a range of specialisms and experience in, for examples, forestry, mountain culture, wildlife, tourism, and local history. This book explores the ways in which being in the field impacts on artists and permeates through to the artworks they create. It considers the relationship between geography and contemporary art and artists’ use of maps and fieldwork. It charts these artists’ explorations of the ecological and cultural value of the natural environment, questioning our perceptions and relationships to landscape, climate and their changes. The book is an inspiring collection of ways to think differently about our relationship with the changing natural environment. The book includes essays by Jo Joelson, Francis McKee, Tracey Warr and Bruce Gilchrist, and texts, images and drawings by the artists: Bram Thomas Arnold, Ruth Barker, Ed Baxter, Johny Brown, Clair Chinnery, Kirsteen Davidson Kelly, Ben Drew, Alec Finlay & Ken Cockburn, Goodiepal, Sarah Kenchington, London Fieldworks & Mark Vernon, Lisa O’Brien, Lee Patterson, Michael Pedersen, Geoff Sample, Tracey Warr and Tony White,reflecting on the notion of contemporary remoteness and creative responses to Outlandia and its wider context.

You can listen to audio of Resonance 104.4fm’s live broadcast of ‘High-Lands’, with live soundscape accompaniment from Johny Brown here.