The 10 summer movements from the Black Walnut Grove just came back from Chris Turnbull in Kemptville, Ontario. Differences in outcome compared to spring; where all the lines were washed away, the summer movements are dominated by spoors and dots. The solar paper, that was attached under the staff paper, creates an unintentional hommage to Josef Albers' series Homage to the square.
From Delinquent, deliquescent:
Geography often occurs out of a series of disruptions — it epitomizes conceptions of territory and boundary, conglomerations of habitats, and reverberates with emerging and concomitant conceptual, built, and ecological shifts. Scoring, or marking, can be considered a seasonal practice within geographies — a way of recording and sparking ecological or atmospheric activities, of identifying “here”, as well as ensuring future presences and interactions.Think of deer season, scrapes and hoof marks; flowers turned to seed and subsequent (temporally different) dispersal; nesting activities and migrations of multiple species. Sometimes these occur as mutually advantageous — an example would be the black walnuts dropped to the ground, the timing useful for small species that are readying themselves for hibernation; the structure of the black walnut handy for longer term caching by these same species.
Jordheim’s “Summer” movements, and the extension of this project into planting her scores seasonally, is a nod to musical legacies; they are also staccato verbalizations/visualizations (near ephemeral) dispersed by unscored, mostly unseen, species interacting within their particular locales, their geographies. Of particular interest is the impact of the microscopic and minuscule on Jordheim’s scores. The late summer/early fall transition has resulted in scores marked by multiple spores, seeds, and small species in a much more evident manner than the winter scores. Beneath them, I have placed sunpaper which is recording additional impressions, and at some point before the end of this ‘season’, will make a sound recording of the black walnut grove, the movements in/out/around/above it.
My last visit to the grove followed a fierce rain and wind storm. I found several of the scores on the ground, some at a horizontal distance from their placard. This exposed the sun paper to greater amounts of light, as well as exposing the scores to ground moisture and leaf litter. I put them back in their placards.
Seasons result partially from the tilt of the earth’s axis and the earth’s rotation. The year, divided into 4 quarters –winter, spring, summer, fall — is a timing device that clues us in to things happening regularly, as if a pattern we can follow through the actions of species. And yet, this is primarily a large-visual form of attendance — were we to attend to other seasonal indicators — acoustic, or microscopically visual, would the seasons seem as clear cut — what sorts of variations does an acoustic focus produce? How does the articulation of geography, elements of geography, change? How are impacts recorded and composed, spoken?
