My project is based on local history as told through the story telling and bardic tradition of the area. Before arriving here I knew little of Eilean Nan Ron but have since found myself completely seduced by the stories that surround the island and its inhabitants. Ideas of territory, Utopia and its impossibility have emerged time and again in my work and there is certainly an element of the Utopian in the stories that I have heard surrounding the Island. Over the next three months I am committed to developing a work that will both communicate the sentiment and culture of the area whilst opening up a new dialogue between island and mainland, past and present.
I have already been here for two weeks now and have spent most of my time meeting people from the local community, all of whom have been very welcoming and supportive, but as my intentions for the project become clearer, I have decided to organise my first small event. On the 29th of July, I will be hosting an evening called’’ Story Telling in Progress’’, an opportunity for the local community see what I have been up to, opening up a space for discussion in an informal atmosphere which will hopefully encourage the locals to share more of their stories about the area and the Island with each other, and myself.
I have invited Essie Stewart, a character well known in these parts not only for the skill with which she tells stories but also as one of the ‘’Summer Walkers’’ (as they come to be known) who with her family would spend the summer months of her youth travelling through the Highlands, selling their wares and skills and sharing story, song and poetry as they went. It should be a good evening and presents me with a short term date to work towards.
So far my research has all been text based but over the next two weeks I hope to open up the stories I have collected so far into visual form.
Earlier this week I made my first visit to the island. Looking out at the island from the main land, it is a sad image, somewhat like a ghost ship moored not so far away with the empty houses staring back. After the evacuation of the island, the houses were apparently quite habitable for a long time, some still having furniture and sugar left behind by the final occupants of the nine traditional croft houses. However, the houses have been claimed by the elements and the motley crew of feral sheep that live on the island have filled the two best houses with sheep dung. The other seven houses sit crumbling.
Billie a local crofter and boatman took me over on the boat along with some foreign visitors keen to do some fishing. As he left me at 12 noon, he said he would return for me after 6pm and well, he would try and remember me. I hoped he was kidding. So I spent 6 hours wandering the island, investigating the houses and small port that is a sympathetic collaboration between natural rock and early 19th century masonry.
I saw a seal!
Nearly got eaten by two rather large birds in a Hitchcockesque stand off at the back of the island and when Billie finally did come to get me, we went for a trip around the island going into one of the caves only accessible by boat. As the sea was quite choppy that day, we couldn’t venture into any others. Not being much of a seafarer, the strength and size of the waves as we chugged around the island were quite alarming, bit of a roller coaster really, but fun. I’m looking forward to my next trip back.Live happenings documented on camera have formed the body of my work over the past few years and it looks set to continue that way. I am envisaging a large projection work on the island, visible from the mainland. I have worked on one similar piece back in 2002 when I projected a film I made whilst resident in one of the huts on Carbeth Estate, onto an 8ft by 8ft screen, which floated on the estate’s derelict, outdoor swimming pool. In this case, as with my last large out door work, ‘’Bearing Witness’’ 2004, I would invite the audience to view the work through a lens, either a telescope or set of binoculars.
One of my favourite books, a novella by the Argentine writer, Adolfo Bioy Casares, holds many similar ideas for me as are contained within my interpretation of the island through its stories. In the book, The Invention of Morel, the main character, an unnamed man, flees to an uninhabited island escaping the authorities for an unknown crime. The island has several buildings on it and for a long time he believes himself to be alone. Then suddenly figures appear around the main building on the island. He observes the figures not hallucinations but real people he believes. They wear antiquated clothes from a time long gone. A woman sits alone at the same place every day and slowly becomes the object of the fugitive’s affections. (Forgive me if I get some of the details wrong, I haven’t read it for a while). He falls in love with her and sits out of sight, nearby her each day. Finally he realises that this daily ritual is wrong, she is unaware, and she can’t see him. He discovers after investigating the main building that she is the product of a projector invented by Morel. A projection machine so powerful as to make the viewer believe the images are real. The projections are shown in an effort to catch a perfect time for all eternity. She is, as all the figures are, just a projection. The lonely fugitive is left to wonder about her existence, is she still alive, dead, where is she now and why did they leave?
The literal parallels between the book and island are obvious: Eilean’s first inhabitant is said to have been a fugitive pirate shunned by society to live on the island and then there are the empty buildings. However, what I find most fascinating are the ideas of projection and romance held within this tiny island, and the affection it evokes in people who have no direct link with its past. When we look out at the island, the distance we feel over the waves is not only geographical but also a sense of distance through time. A time lost and with it a tiny society almost Utopian in its blissful isolation, so near and yet so far away.
At this point these are still ideas but mental images clear enough for me to continue with. The logistics of making a projection on the island are still tricky enough for it not to happen but a lot can happen in two months so I am not putting all my eggs in one basket yet.
Will write again next week, ciao ciao.
