A Greenstone Primer

I'm curious about the secret life of this blog which ordinarily features postings of Greenstone Gothvos (sea pebbles) placings made by people in a variety of geographic situations. 
Since google is running (ruining) my life with absurd demands for greater and greater security measures, some of those stories seem to have slipped beneath some sort of imposed horizon, a non event horizon, which leaves me feeling almost as fraught as if they had survived and were being held aloft as examples of illiteracy.

GAVRINIS ISLE 

Guirv Enes and Guerg Enes, respectively. The old Breton word Guergis not related to gavr, but to parallels such as Gaul gwery, or Old Irish ferg, signifying "wrath".

Upwards and Onwards: this May we went to Carnac, Brittany, to see The St.Michel Tumuli a massive barrow containing a passage grave in which several Greenstone objects, Jadeite Axe Heads and other extraordinary findings and the Island of Gavrinis.

 

The Gulf de Morbihan from St.Michel Tumuli

Currently we may value Jadeite for its intrinsic value, measured in monetary terms infact we're almost obliged to refer to it in that way directly from our DNA: money and capital have existed for a long time now, who is to say there were no localised or quasi- currencies in existence five thousand years ago? I want to entertain the notion that if any currency did exist, it would be a very different undertaking than our present tokenised money, such is impregnated into small plastic cards and pixelated screens and our coinage or paper money, I do realise that the process of polishing Greenstone for many hundreds of hours, presumably to imbue it with a(n unknown) value possesses similar visual outcomes /attributes to impregnated magnetic-strip-plastic. The hazy idea of quid pro quo or bartering is a separate ordeal centred on the market place and trading, although that could form an eventual over generalised concept of what drove these people, I'm looking for values be they moral and or aesthetic. Instinctively (for that is the territory) I'm drawn to a limited shared value within a syndicate of interested parties, And I'm reading ritual all over the scant but compelling evidence.

 The fact substantiated by an accretion of studies presented by Neil MacGregor, that the Jadeite craftsmen were an enormously influential cult that smothered the areas Bronze age Morbihan in Southern Brittany and their creations have been matched with the high quarries in Monviso with emanating  examples found all over western Europe creating sub-cults - certainly in Britain via the quarrying of Elvan Greenstone; Mylor Slates and Gabbro in such locations as Penlee Gear Rock Cornwall. The retrieval of these beautiful artefacts (stone axe heads) is almost exclusively pointing to their investiture within water and water sources, already giving rise to Arthurian excalburian romance but more poignantly a value system embodying a social gratitude for the elements and for the environment.

The Entrance to The Passage Grave, there are about twenty nine stones all about two metres by one with radiating arcs grooved into their granite surfaces.

Click on the link above for a little intense movie.

Penlee Greenstone at Gavrinis Passage Grave 

The idea of pilgrimage springs forth when attempting calculations of walked mileage between Gavrinis island where the Axe heads are venerated in stone and stories to the quarries in Monviso, the Italian Alps are about a thousand miles / two thousand Kilometres in the most directly taken route, its no big undertaking when you compare the distances apart where the Greenstone Axes have been found, presumably physically carried there and usually deposited in a watery place. The idea of pilgrimage is partly inspired by my ignorance about the people who went each year to Piedmont Monviso were they Breton, Dumnonian, it was thousands of years ago and so much research is questioning the received ideas that have gone largely unquestioned in mainstream debates. I had the sense when I was there that the mountains were a place like a centre for a radius of locations, not just a single destination for an isolated group.

A lot of discussion seems to recognise an epic global event when humans received a go-ahead moment, regardless of their whereabouts, a green light to proceed in the quarrying and making of greenstone axeheads, some of these may have performed utilitarian functions but they are extremely "beautiful" objects, the line of their form is exceptionally fine by any sophisticated or inherent standards. Axe Heads and Adzes seem to be the main object quotient in the western areas, but during this universal Greenstone moment many societies in far flung locations looked for and exploited their own local "greenstone" as in New Zealand where Maori craftsmen produced nephrite objects and axeheads during this concerted moment. These visits, makings and détournements are synchronised with the torturous business of the Government of the United Kingdoms ejecting itself from its European status and re establishing itself as something uncertain, I use the term détournement because my intrusion is slight and temporary, "quiet" I have heard said, (generally of my work) I think such intrusions are the only sure way we can ever know what these objects and events mean, it is fair to say there are no truths in a given field, in this context certainly, when I am present in the spaces the history of five or seven thousand years simply falls away, I am in a poem or certainly the situation is poemic in my interpretations of my quest, I've come to realise that factual information doesn't exist around these places.

At the foot of Monte Viso a Greenstone oblation from Penlee.

On Ferragosto (August 15th) we visited Monviso, Piedmontese for a few days bringing greenstone from Cornwall to the foothills quarries and at Lago Fiorenza. 

The astounding peak of the Mountain is given no justice in this photograph which only attempts to fix the documentation of the stone-placing-action. Ferragosto although a holy-day of St.Mary is also a day bringing families to picnic, to enjoy the outdoors together including walking and feasting in the mountains. The location, when approached as fearfully as I did gave me confidence but thin air, I was walking on paths of greenstone, alpine plants some oddly familiar, what the hells Ground-elder doing up here? thriving up here? higher and higher, my sandals were terrifically pagan and pilgrimesque but truly unsuitable even in the refugio bar, the light can be extremely haunting, the drama of the light is one thing but the sheer scale and perspectives associated with height and cloud are truly breathtaking, btw so is the mountain driving on hairpin surfaces that appear to be on the move themselves, superb engineering.

The spectacle of the Greenstone occupies a locus that defies my appetite for understanding, a poemic type of understanding partly I trust this is as a result of my initial interest seeming so arbitrary, I remind myself of Arthur Stace walking the streets of Sydney surreptitiously inscribing the word Eternity on any surface he thought nobody else was looking at. I mean of course the method in which Stace "received" his involuntary infatuation with the word Eternity. Arthur Stace was attending a bible meeting at which the pastor's use of the word "eternity" indelibly imprinted itself into his psyche and he was enthused with the purpose to take the word as far and wide within his city bounds as he could. Why Greenstone? Ask mr Ottery my geography teacher.

Oncino

Epistemological Solipsism blowing down the backroads heading South. by Jonathan Polkest

The Other Sided unresolvable otherness.

For someone spending or having spent a vast amount of potentially solipsistic activity loitering behind theatrical scenery or more propitiously manufacturing said devices, or aspects of manufacturing: urging, planning, drawing, painting, constructing or “shifting” scenery or scenic affects, for someone of such ilk it remains a mystery to me why such a person nurtures a deep fascination for “the other side”, the Dark Theatre, the over-scribed and under scryed about-face, the dusty void and out-of-hours, the lock-in, the type of deserted railway platform after the train departs and not the railway platform before the train is arrived, a slackened emptiness of departure and not the tense anticipation of pre-arrival, for someone of such a disposition I am neither surprised nor unconscious  that such a person is me and possibly you if you have read thus far.

The great drama that played out in the devising of the device, the orthodoxy of the system fuelled by the pyramid of authority borrowed for the fleeting two dimensional reflex from the visceral three dimensional desensitised loutish reality. Great humour and craic but sweaty hours and schemes, all night get ins and get outs and chemically overloaded neurones. The preparation for the Ritual of Performance is out-performing the Ritual, we have sacrificed the bull too soon. Such is improvisation a slightly bit unplanned and therefore more ceremonially sacred than the comparatively cliched Ritual, and yet the Ritual is good because it is functioning at the right time in the proposed place, a sacred place made more sacred with flattage, raked floors, controlled drapery, lighting effects, sound effects, all the attributes of a spectacle, a special time, a special place that proceeds 

a procession of acts and actions.

The Buds of Bloomsbury

But my friends we have come too late.

The Gods live up there in a different world.

Endlessly they act as if to spare us,

Little they seem to care whether we live or do not.

Holderlin.

I recall an image of a beautiful Ben Nicholson painting in a book by Norbert Lynton, pretty sure I’ve got that authors name right, I have a fascination for Nicholsons work on the Line, but the feature I loved best about this particular example of Nicholsons works were the two photographs - one taken of the front of the canvas showing clearly the figuration, the tonalities, the slight blurring using a wash over the incisive modulating graphite line and the accompanying “twin” photo of the reverse of the same painting, showing the chalked codes of various galleries and curators, labels, numbered raffle-ticket labels, customs and excise, framers labels even postage stamps which I presume were used as a type of legitimising authority, in the days when authority was presumed, visible, represented by such paraphernalia as the queens head on a postage stamp, rubber stamped evidence of a process of judgement and validation, the stamp itself concealing something powerful and unknown, as official as pound notes and fivers but it would be blasphemous to stick actual money on there, representations of power not actual power.

The modus operandi was to display the “tyre tracks” in the gritty journey of the painting between being shown in one place and travelling to the next gallery, more stamping, more signing, translation, more validation. The validators accretion spoke about a lot, more than its travelling history, for me it spoke about its other sidedness in way that brown paper, bubble wrap rags, unprimed flax, textured masonite are equally as eloquent.

The Dark Theatre

These signals are all the scrape marks and scratches of the Dark Theatre, a peculiar smell emanating from dust being heated in the coloured gels of a theatre lantern, a faint whiff of fire retardant soaked drapery and in earlier times the smell of glue size, the right place at the wrong time, the wrong place at the dark time, against nature. 

Seasons are marked by ritual and ritual is the perfect emphasis to seasonal variation, to elevate the ordinary to the sacred, the arboretum in autumn as the sugar content in the sycamore leaf drives the green to yellow, the yellow to orange and orange to vermillion, leaving us with burnt umber everything winter. and so it was that we walked to Charleston along the South Downs but it was winter and everything slumbered but such a heavy, heavy slumber.

Object Theatre - The Dark Theatre