Distance
Made Good: Flow Lines is based on a set of 34 walks taken by the
artists with people who live or work in Morecambe and Lancaster.
The walkers were invited to take them to any location they wanted,
with the suggestion that the walks, or journeys in some way represent
who they are in conjunction with a landmark for the city they live
in (e.g. a dog walker living in Morecambe took us for a walk along
the seafront, as for him the seafront represented Morecambe, and
it was a route he regularly took when walking his dog).
These walks were recorded using a global positioning
system (GPS) device. The GPS uses satellites to determine where
it is on the surface of the earth, in terms of latitude, longitude,
and altitude. If taken on a journey it records a string of these
co-ordinates, like a trail of breadcrumbs dropped along a route.
When these dots are joined together an exact drawing of the route
taken is created. Each of the 34 journeys were mapped in this way.
A map can be seen as an abstract generalisation of
a landscape. It can not tell us about the way in which people use
that environment. A city is made up of more than buildings, roads,
and railways, it is also shaped by the activities of the people
who use it. The gps device allows us to make a new map that shows
the routes of the inhabitants of Morecambe and Lancaster. Through
the walks around the different geographies of the two places patterns
began to emerge and perhaps describe the significance of geography
for the people that live there. This new installation for Folly
brings together the abstraction of maps, with the physical and spatial
experience of an urban or rural environment.
The exhibition can be described as two outsized, double
faced maps, folded into the gallery. Each made from 13 wooden panels
they are also like long screens or room dividers. These map/screens
themselves create a 'route' or routes through the gallery. An internal
route coloured blue and yellow, evoking the sea of Morecambe and
the sandstone of Lancaster. Pierced with wooden posts (matchsticks)
describing the turning points in 34 walked routes, it remains abstract
with no key or clue. On the reverse, 'behind the scenes' the matchsticks
are a support system for threads describing each of 34 walks, just
as behind the scenes in Morecambe and Lancaster local residents
shape the nature of the both places. There is a stringy-ness, a
busy-ness, an activity and noise to this side. It is unfinished
and more brash than the front. It has a look of craft and do-it-yourself
and is purposefully left in progress. Loops of extra thread collect
where journeys stop at the edge of panels. For each walk a different
coloured thread is anchored at its start by an individual sandbag
made of patterned fabric. Written on the back of the boards are
the names of people who took each of us on our walks.
Behind the scenes you see the chaotic trails of 34
walks begin to make a co-herent geography, the busy centre of Lancaster,
the sprawling sinuous wave of the seafront in Morecambe. Although
the back of the screens are expressing a lived and personal experience
they are also the most 'map like'. The fronts of the screens, whilst
more abstract like a map are also more evocative of an experience
of place. The sweeps of matchsticks appearing to flock, to group
like isobars, to flow like tides.
In this way each side of the two maps is both an abstraction
and evocative of the lived landscape.
The construction in the gallery serves to make three
definite routes through the work. As the process of taking walks
with people was integral to the work we didn’t want the process
to stop when we started installing, thus the process of installation
was also a process of play, and the process of viewing the work
is also a process of travelling through the work, seeing multiple
readings from multiple view points. Indeed as the screen/maps are
on wheels they imply mobility in themselves (although they cannot
be moved by the audience). As modular and mobile structures they
also imply a continuing process, they could move into different
shapes, they could be added to as further walks are made, indeed
the screens and sandbags necessary are in the gallery ready to enhance
this implication.
Jen Hamilton is an artist based in Saskatchewan, Canada.
Jen Southern is an artist based in Huddersfield, UK. Their collaborative
work with GPS has been exhibited in Canada and the UK. They are
currently working on a research commission supported by FACT, the
Foundation for Art & Creative Technology, Liverpool, UK, NESTA
and the Arts Council of England.
