Gothvos Mis En Abyme

The Guilemene by Elizabeth Howard.

Tramore (Irish: Trá Mhór, meaning "big strand/beach") is a seaside town in County Waterford on the southeast coast of Ireland. This Gothvos stone was placed there by Elizabeth Howard, a performance artist from Tramore, who I hope will contribute further when she writes a little about the experience - or not the experience, perhaps some other matters will be prevalent in Elizabeths perception in this event. When I received these photographs I was really overjoyed.

The Tramore Gothvos: Tramore is my homeplace and the town where I grew up. My parents still live there, but I moved away when I was eighteen, and I have lived in many different places since then. When I am asked to close my eyes and think of a peaceful place, I imagine that I am flying over Tramore Bay on a sunny day.
The bay is horseshoe shaped, and is full of rocks which makes it very dangerous for boats to sail in, and because of it's proximity and similarity in size to the haven of Waterford harbour, it was often mistaken for the safe passage, and sadly, many ships were wrecked there. As a result, the headlands on either side of the bay are marked with tall stone pillars. The two pillars that you can see in the picture are on Brownstown head, and out of view but just to the right of where the photo was taken are three pillars, one of which hosts 'The Metal Man' who is said to warn the ships with the rhyme 'Stay out, stay out, stay out from me, for these are the rocks of misery.' There is a four mile gap in between the two headlands and my granny was the first woman to swim from one to the other. Ninety years later my sister swam the same route. The day the picture was taken was the day after I had discovered that I was about to embark on a PhD course of study, and it was also the day before my boyfriend asked me to marry him. The picture was taken at a point in my life when big change was afoot, with new journeys starting. However, it was taken in the place that will always be home, where I will always be that girl who grew up in that house. It is the significance of integrating change into the constant that made this experience extra special for me.

Elizabeth Howards placing of the Cornish Gothvos Stone in the Guillemene Tramore Ireland.

Tremadhevas in Ynys Gybi

Mynydd Twr Holyhead Mountain, Caer Gybi.

Gothvos at Wylfa ,Trwyn Pencarreg

Tremadhevas at Ynys Gybi looking across the "inland sea" from a standing stone near Treardurr beside a disused windmill, the causeway from Ynys Môn to Caergybi/Holyhead. Performing amelioration and  composing with ameliorative effects.
How did this come about, in view of the supposition that there was no major influx of population into the island of Britain during the iron age, nor for that matter during a thousand years and more before the iron age? This is one of the considerations which caused Myles Dillon to argue that it was the Beaker Folk, around 2000 b c, who brought the Celtic language or languages to Britain. He asserted that the celts carried the indo-european inheritance westwards from the heartland of Indo-Europa in southern Russia at much the same time as the Aryans carried it eastwards, to India. This theory helps to explain the survival of some of the earliest elements of that inheritance among its westerly legatees - the celts - and among its most easterly ones - the Aryans. The theory also helps , argues Dillon, to explain the substantial differences which developed between the British version (P-Celtic) and the Irish version (Q-Celtic) of the original Celtic tongue.
The Beginings, Paviland, Tinkswood and Llyn Cerrig Bach; A History Of Wales by John Davies, a thoroughly excellent introduction and in depth study of Wales.  isbn 0-14-014581-8  

 Walking, Photography and Intervention around Ynys Gybi, Walking and placing: Pedestrian Mobility in Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts from the Eighteenth to the Twenty-First Century

Walking is our fundamental mode of relating to the environment, of comparing ourselves to a sense of place and space. In the modern period, this human practice has also become a literary theme, a mode of writing and performance as much as a form of movement in space. Thus it represents a mediation between man and the world at large: the corporeal movement in space and time, and the reflection of that movement in literature and the arts. It is from this two perspectives that the exploration of  walking has been turned into both an aesthetic framework and a form of ‘mobile’ contemplation, from John Gay to Paul Auster, from Wordsworth and Thoreau to Richard Long and Harriet Tarlo, from Rousseau to Rimbaud and André Breton.

Walking is an empowering aesthetic consideration, a form of reflection, an ambivalent metaphor; particularly in consideration of walking from the perspective of  historical, ideological, aesthetic, philosophical, and poetical implications. How can we delineate the semantic field of ‘walking,’ ‘rambling,’ ‘sauntering,’ ‘roaming,’ ‘hiking,’  ‘perambulating,’ but also of the Aristotelian ‘peripatetic school' , The “flâneur.”Walter Benjamin, Andre Breton, Baudelaire.  How are these values compared to such practices? Can walking increase or broaden ones knowledge of a place? What are the differences between rural walking and urban walking? To what extent has walking questioned the distinction between the rural and the urban? If major texts in this tradition, such as Rousseau’s Reveries of a Solitary Walker and Wordsworth’s The Excursion, focus on the rustic, walking is not only a rural phenomenon, but is also a reality of contemporary urban life. Walking as a literary genre evolved throughout the modern period, and, how, following its heyday during the Romantic period, has it been redefined in connection to modernist issues? To what extent does the aesthetics of the ordinary and of chance, which seem to be associated with walking, relate to aspects of postmodern nomadology? 

Limitless cultural strands and approaches and literary history are found in all philosophical aspects of walking. Alternatively, while analyzing representations and practices of walking, we are equally interested in studying instances of (inter)textuality and cross-disciplinary fertilization. For example, how is the activity of walking related to literary genres: are aesthetic depictions or representations of walking intrinsically narrative or poetical? The various links between walking and writing or reading, the connection between walking and creativity, or the diverse ‘textual transcriptions’ of walking might also be considered. Furthermore, the complex temporality of walking, next to its relation to space, is also crucial. This temporality is usually marked by an ‘intensified’ temporal awareness, which is antithetical to the modern emphasis on speed as a symbol of modernity, and which privileges a sense of place over that of space. One may also think of the connection or analogy between the rhythm of walking and that of a poetic text (as in the notion of ‘foot,’ traditionally the basic unit of poetic scansion). In all of these different senses, walking encapsulates both the physical and spiritual dimensions of human existence; it thus turns into an important cultural symbol, a site where the outside world meets with the intimate realm of human reflection and creativity.

From Glastonbury Tor in secular conditions.

The Logos of Gothvos

 A narrative may extend beyond the limits of verbally conveyed text, it may function as a containing concept for all modes of signification including the anecdotal, in this case :photographs and rituals or actions .

 The Logos as a signifier with an extending mode of signification may be theoretically challenged with a discourse narratology. 

Discourse narratology is an option analysis that determines the form of a narrative (Jahn 2003) in attempting to describe in which way these choices are embedded in broader socio-cultural situations. In this way, narratology can be integrated into a systemically oriented history of Performance / Scenography in which the interaction between the closed system of the performance and its Umwelt, the larger cultural, historical, social, and artistic context occupies a core position, which references the more specific study of narratology with the broader framework of systemic theory. As a consequence, discourse narratology exceeds the more traditional 'story narratology' which limits itself to the construction of several narrative units into a story, as if a narrative were a self-containing unit, independent of the external worlds.

From Mulfra

In 1987, Patrice Pavis suggested a theory regarding the translation of dramatic works. The idea of 'verbo-corps' has been described as "highly theoretical" and criticized for leaving "a gap between theory and translatory practice which cannot be closed". The theory suggests a culture-specific union between language and gesture used subconsciously by every writer. Pavis suggested that the translator needed to be to able to comprehend the union in the original and reconstruct it in the translation

Boskednan stone circle with Gothvos completing the gap between theory and translatory gesture.
 (grid reference SW434351)  A partially restored prehistoric stone circle at Boskednan, around 4 miles (6 kilometres) northeast of Penzance in Cornwall, United Kingdom. The megalithic monument is known as the Nine Maidens or Nine Stones of Boskednan, although the original structure may have contained as many as 22 upright stones around its 69 metre perimeter.

Mise en scène: In film theory (film theory: film theory seeks to develop concise, systematic concepts that apply to the study of film/cinema, mise en scène [mizA~sEn] refers to everything that is to appear before the camera (camera: Equipment for taking photographs (usually consisting of a lightproof box with a lens at one end and light-sensitive film/instrumentation at the other)) and its arrangement – sets, props, actors (actors: A theatrical performer) , costumes, camera movements and performances. The term was coined by early French (French: The Romance language spoken in France and in countries colonized by France) film critic (film critic: more facts about this subject) s and means literally "put into the scene" or "setting in scene." In auteur theory (auteur theory: the auteur theory is a way of reading and appraising films through the imprint of an auteur, less creative director (director: Someone who supervises the actors and directs the action in the production of a show) s are sometimes disparagingly called "metteurs en scène"

Chûn Castle looking towards Watchcroft.

GASTON BACHELARD, in The Poetics of Space, invites recognition of the ways in which interior and imaginative landscapes, such as cupboards,houses, and forests, resonate in the phenomenological worlds of poets, novelists, explorers, and artists. Gothvos: in placing and re presenting paralingual indicators, resetting their composition.

Gothvos ha Tremadhevas

Morvah Well Gothvos

Gothvos in the Embodied Memory

The area of 'embodied memory'. According to Paul Connerton the body can also be seen as a container, or carrier of memory, of two different types of social practice; inscribing and incorporating. The former includes all activities which are helpful for storing and retrieving information: photographing, writing, taping, etc. The latter implies skilled performances which are sent by means of physical activity, like a spoken word or a handshake. These performances are accomplished by the individual in an unconscious manner, and one might suggest that this memory carried in gestures and habits, is more authentic than 'indirect' memory via inscribing.

The first conceptions of embodied memory, in which the past is 'situated' in the body of the individual, derive from late nineteenth century thoughts of evolutionists like Jean Baptiste Lamarck and Ernst Haeckel. Lamarck’s law of inheritance of acquired characteristics and Haeckel’s theory of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny, suggested that the individual is a summation of the whole history that had preceded him or her. (However, neither of these concepts are accepted by current science.)

Gulfwell

Trevaylor Woods Stream, Gulfwell: History and Geography of Cornwall by the Rev. J.J.Daniell. Truro 1894.3rd edition published by Netherton and Worth, Truro.Parochial History. ST.GULVAL pp439 - St.Gulval -Deanery of Penwith, Pop 1623, acreage 4355.-Gulval was anciently called Lanestly. The church is architecturally one of the most interesting in Cornwall, or at least in Penwith. It is early English [sic] with perhaps some still older British walling, the remains of an ancient oratory. All the windows are filled with stained glass and there is a good organ.
Between the churches of Gulval and Madron a stone serves as a foot bridge called the Bleu Bridge bearing this inscription 'Cnegumi Fil Enans' Enans is said to have been the first king of Amorica.
In draining land between Marazion and Penzance there was dug up an earthen pot containing a thousand Roman coins of the emporers between A.D. 260 and 350.
In this parish is Gulfwell or the Hebrew Brook over which an old witch used to preside and divine things past, present and future by incantation of it waters.
Vebatim and not necessarily the views of anyone other than Rev.J.J.Daniells.

Descendant of the Sun-Goddess: Nao Nagai takes the stone to the mountain

The following story is retold via an unorthodox translation from a tour and heritage guide to Mount Kirishima in Japan where Nao Nagai, took the Gothvos stone to place at the foot of a sacred tree. A long time ago in mythical times the gods ruled the world, when the gods looked over into the lower world from a pontoon bridge from the  heavens, there was an unformed thing like an island in the sea showing dimly through fog. The Gods took a trident which became an emblem to the island. This is said to be the origins of the name Mount Kirishima.“A trident dropped down by the Gods piercing the top of the mountain”  An oracle was received from the Sun-Goddess (Amaterasu Oomikami from Takamagahara Field). Ninigi-no Mikoto descended on top of the Holy Mt. Takachiho-no-Mine. If you can believe a fantastic narrative regardless of the actual appearance of the Holy Mountain, and see the rusting three toothed trident " Ama-no-Sakahoko - Heavenly Upside  Down Trident " staked on top of the Mt. Takachiho-no-mine. You must believe this is not the devil's pitchfork.

This is a dangerous place to descend upon from Heaven. The Kirishima Mountain Range has 23 volcanoes, 15 craters and 10 caldera lakes. At the end of the Edo Period, on the second year of Keio, in 1866, Sakamoto Ryoma made the first honey moon trip in Japan to Satsuma. He climbed Mt.Takachiho-no-mine  with his wife Oryô and saw the Holy Hoko with his own eyes and touched it. He sent a humorous letter to his sister Otome writing about the details of the honey moon trip with some illustrations The trident lance " Amano Sakahoko " is rusted. It belongs to the gods and not human beings. The preservation of it is up to the gods. It is not a cultural heritage object which might exist in the pragmatic world. Mt. Takachiho is the major summit within the Kirishima mountain range.  The hike to the peak of Mt. Takachiho starts after you clear “Uma-no-se”.  On the way to the peak of Mt. Takachiho there is a shallow canyon called, “Senri-ga-tani” better known as, "Ama-no-gawara", but long ago it was called “Haimonkyu”.  It is said that, “Haimonkyu” was the site of “Setaogongenkyu” (former name of Kirishima Jingu Shrine) built about 1400 years ago.  Specific details of “Setaogongenkyu” are unknown, but it was destroyed during the eruption of Mt. Ohara and later rebuilt at the foothill of the mountain.

By whom it was staked ?  Presumably by God Ninigi-no Mikoto ! Once upon a time it was here that we received the oracle of the Sun-Goddess (Amaterasu Oomikami), and monkey Tabiko of seven God and guidance gives hand an order for three kinds of sacred treasures (sarutahikonomikoto), and grandchild God niniginomikoto gets down out of Japanese Olympus (takamagahara) on earth. When the Japanese founding of their country myth and the history began from Takachiho peak where they wrote down the first step of a "descendant of the Sun-Goddess advent" to be told that God once came down here to earth from heaven.

Nao Nagai works in visual and sonic references in live performance and is inspired by the "little" interesting things that happen in everyday life, i.e a man jumps out from nowhere in front of her while cycling and shouts “What time is it?”

Nao Nagai takes the Gothvos to the sacred tree

*

Gôze Saner . Fiction & Non-fiction Gothvos in Pedasa

Contrasting images of the same Gothvos Stone placed among the stones of the Pedasa locale by Goze Saner,

The softly focussed Diana camera utilizes 120 rollfilm and 35 mm film. The camera uses a simple plastic meniscus lens, the Diana has been used to specifically take soft focus, impressionistic photographs somewhat reminiscent of the Pictorialist Period of photography, using contemporary themes and concepts, known as lomography. The low-quality plastic lens has been celebrated for its artistic effects in photographs, normally resulting in a slightly blurred composition that can evoke a 'dreamlike' quality and atmospheres not ordinarily encompassed in the detail of digital photography. Goze takes two photographs to prove the contrast between these differing media and two stories of the same situation in her walk in Pedasa Turkey.

An interest in the past, an interest in collective and individual memory, is extremely resonant to our contemporary thinking. Finding methods to articulate and express individual and collective identities, which find themselves under pressure, transition and dominated by consumer processes, all these considerations are becoming increasingly important. National, regional, religious and/or local cultural identities present today link back as consistent entities, today they may be observed as nothing more than actions, changes or conflicts usually associated with secularization, industrialization, globalization, migration, or many other political, economic, cultural and/or religious. From this position, culture is seen as shaped under the influence of processes that exist in constant mutual tension.

. 

Such processes referring to the term memory occupy a central role.

The Gothvos project aims to contribute to the study of cultural memory by unlocking narratives about the past (and their canonization), and to offer relevant critical observations on the manifestations of cultural memory that are not essentially ‘narratives’. This approach provides a kind of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary access to cultural memory taken from various perspectives.

Faced with the following questions: how do we recall, remember and forget? 

Which stories are ‘permitted’ and which are ‘forbidden’? 

How does the past determine the present and shape the future? 

How do the various discourses of the past determine the social and personal identities?

 How are our deepest emotions, desires and fantasies articulated in the present through the discursive space of memory?

 What are the relations between memory and monuments, archives and museums? 

How can we understand the dual nature of monuments: as tools of ideologically driven memory (fixed memory) and/or as constant sources of creative construction and opening up of memory?

 Does technological development influence the process of remembering the past? What are the implications of a digitalization of memory?

 What kind of history is created by the massive use of digital technologies (i.e., online archives that are encoding/decoding their users’ memories in virtual space)?

 How do the systems used for production affect the ways that use, protect and work with memory?

 In what ways is cultural tourism associated with memory? How does it reflect the local and global histories in terms of which narratives are being produced and consumed?

Gothvos in Iasi.     Genovel Investigating Geographical Spatial Histories

As a contained element of the space One’s body might be perceived as a modifier of the space being engaged in its continuous transformation.

At its own pace, one’s body moves writing the space, tracing shortcuts or building distances - reaching with clarity a spot or wandering through the labyrinth of the space.

Its driven energy, walks the body till the point where eventually stops in the intuited space.  

The particular space is now converted in a practiced one by the presence of ones body. The site becomes specific and framed by the presence of the released Gothvos stone.

Its constructed removal from the aboriginal place started weaving horizontal chromosomic expansions with the conscious land.

In its potency the signifier might become the consciousness of an alter-space in space, sharing its ancient Cornish alchemy with the fertile ruins of the mediaeval princely courts, bridging the city and the neogothic palace. 

The unpredictable site would now be exposed to an auspicious omen.

The body in its new state, nurtured by the performed action pauses for a moment then moves, leaving the space unpracticed until a new body that already started moving would practice it afresh.

The stone would stagnate for a moment too. The body in its consciousness would arrive, invited to unveil those vertical circular heights and depths raising its question. The question might dissolve into answers, which, at their turn would melt into more questions like a never fulfilling yet wholesome search.

Genovel Alexa

Iași (Romanian pronunciation: [jaʃʲ]; also historically referred to as Jassy or Iassy) is one of the largest cities and a municipality in Romania, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life.

"The Bard is often accused of anatopism -- that is, getting his geography wrong. Why else would he, in The Taming of the Shrew, put a sailmaker in Bergamo, a landlocked city in Italy, ask critics?"
D. Murali; Shakespeare, 'Literary Equivalent of an Electron'; The Hindu (Chennai, India); Dec 2, 2007.

Exeter College Oxford - Floreat Exon.

Exeter College Oxford

"Homer may have taken some slight and temporary liberty with the facts, but it does not amount to the major anatopism that some commentators have found in it and should not be taken as evidence that Homer did not have firsthand knowledge of the area."
John Victor Luce; Celebrating Homer's Landscapes; Yale University Press; 1998.

Exeter College is the real life basis for the fictional Jordan College in Philip Pullman's novel trilogy His Dark Materials. The 2007 film version of the first novel, The Golden Compass, used the college for location filming.

Exeter College is the fourth oldest college of the Oxford University.

The college is located on Turl Street, the location where it was originally founded in 1314 by Walter de Stapeldon as a school to educate clergymen. From its foundation Exeter has been associated with a number of notable people, with one of the most notable being the novelist J.R.R. Tolkien.

Gothvos Godhvos Jonathan Polkest

Gwennap Pit, Nr Carn Marth Redruth
An Opportunistic subterranean collapse creating an amphitheatre in which John Wesley would presumably have spoken from the lowest tier.

In Cornish Archaeology no 33 1994 HENDHYSCANS KERNOW. There is a fascinating and well researched paper by Ann Preston - Jones :Decoding Cornish Churchyards in which she looks in detail at churchyards in Cornwall, to see exactly how many are curvilinear, and to see wether it is possible to substantiate the claim for a very early 5 - 7th century origin which most church sites boast.
Churchyard plans are examined and discussed. This is very interesting from the point of view that Cornish languages survival owing in part to a playtext coming to light in Wales where it was presumed to be written in Welsh. Many of the Cornish plays that survive are miracle ordinalia, telling of Biblical/ Old Testament stories usually enacted in these circular churchyards (where the players could respectfully appear to be dissociating with their pagan origins whilst remaining in blissful physical contact with the sacred ground) I'm taking my cue from the contemporary phenomena of Tourism, how tourists are an initially distrusted but an economically vital element in which gradually displace the original inhabitants by becoming more business like and welcoming as a vital economic reality. On one level this could be seen as a cyclic action which assumes the unique character of each generational wave of those who are visiting and those who are hosting, changing places or moving on but gradually creating larger and smaller societal impact which gradually transform the perceived demographic, there is a romance inferred about the old ways, the old boys, the dialect and attitudes but these become shared memories, an imagined past, sepia tone nostagia.

St.Just Plen an Gwarry

As far as I know there is no evidence of a church adjacent to this Plan - an - Gwarry, or Playing Place.
Critically there exists no specific model of performance occuring everywhere under all circumstances. Nor is it easy to specify limitations on what is treated potentially as performance.
If "universals are desirable they may be identifiable in didactic processual models arguing about the validity of one or a group of genres against the validity of another single or group of genres. Origins and digression is unavoidably met head: on The St.Just Plan an Gwarry is a theatre outside of theatre, it is a place evolved from Gothvos, performances take place there in different cultural settings though not all are named performance, events and activities take place there by unidentified and known scholars. We may be inside the boundary of the anthropologists field. Victor Turner; Are There Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual and Drama Essay 1985



The Moment and the Continuum.

Kernow or Cornwall, the source of this venture is dominated by a geological spine of huge granite bosses (plutons).

 The five main ones are Bodmin Moor, Hensbarrow, Carnmenellis, West Penwith, and the Isles of Scilly. Lesser granite intrusions occur at Tregonning Hill, Carn Brea and Carn Marth in the west, and Kit Hill and Hingston Down in the east. Further west beyond the Scillies there is a submerged pluton beneath the sea area Fitzroy.

North Iron - South Lead - East Tin - West Copper.

 Associated with the granite bosses are extensive areas of metamorphic aureole – surrounding rocks which have been altered by the heat of the intruding granite. Mineralization occurred during the cooling of the granite and metamorphic aureole, resulting in  the intrusion of tin and copper in lodes (seams) running east–west, and lead, zinc and iron in lodes running north–south. At a later stage some granites were altered, the most widespread instance being the formation of Kaolinite (china clay) which is found most extensively on the Hensbarrow granite. 

Lizard. 

Away from the granite areas the surface geology of Cornwall comprises three main elements. The oldest rocks in Cornwall, likely to be Pre-Cambrian in origin, are found on the Lizard peninsula. Most of these rocks have undergone subsequent 

metamorphosis and the Lizard Complex is a nationally important mass of intrusions, most notably serpentine, gneiss, schists and some granite. 

In the far northeast of Cornwall are Carboniferous rocks forming the western edge of the Culm Measures which characterise extensive areas of west Devon. These deposits contain black shales, sandstones and thin limestones.

Mylor Slates. 

The underlying geology of most of Cornwall, however, consists of Devonian rocks. There are slight variations between the Lower, Middle and Upper Devonian beds, but generally these Killas, as they are known, are characterised by clays, shale, slates, 

siltstones and sandstones. 

During Pleistocene times Kernow was in a periglacial zone subject to freeze/thaw processes. In the post-glacial period Cornwall has been subjected to sea level rise, resulting in a coast of submergence. Extreme low tides expose submerged 

forests at several localities (e.g. Mount’s Bay) and submerged prehistoric fields (e.g. on the sand flats in the Isles of Scilly).  Rias, or drowned rivers, are another feature of the submerged coastline (e.g. the rivers Fal, Fowey and Helford). 

Discarded Spoil Cairns: Signifying the entropy or Amplifying it.
Often assumed to have but one function: superfluos material awaiting dispersal or stripped of purpose. Homogeneous stuff with which to fill a void / ballast. Our ground is dense in mineral and message, one persons logic is another persons confusion. The Fly Tippers Hiekku:' Tip that rubble there'. Not necessarily untouched by hand or disconnected from its author the heaped performative, from scattered boulders to placed stones, those placed by "nature", offering shelter and enlightenment to a spectrum of species. No sooner the pillar of stone is constructed it becomes a system of orientation, growing up and declining into a spiral of equilibrium.

Pure Purposefulness at Boscawen ûn Stone Circle
Although the taking of this photograph lacks a little of the theatre of ritual observed sans adjustable analogue film equipment, the site's spatial qualities conspire to create a neutrality that defies the idea of a sacred site with a geographic, geometric historic and semiotic perspective, just what is originally intended and what has evolved here is not obvious to the limnal surveyor. The nineteen stone uprights encircle the leaning shardlike stone in the mid ground directing its angled charge in a North Easterly ascent. Theres an interesting elliptical emphasis on the circles position to the leaning central long stone, the perspective is remodeled for the diameter of the ellipses as if they were arranged around a natural compositional shadow from a strong light source in the South West. The photograph is taken from the one stone in the circle which appears to be entirely quartz. From the perspective of gradual and increasing propinquity,the site itself, bordered by pockets of intensive agriculture and vicious old furze hedges rests in an arena of bouncing turf and erratic rabbits. Circumnavigating the spectacle to a satisfactory degree is not possible but the best visual effects are seen from the auditoria of the walking eye when standing to the north west of the enclosure which is partially masked by blackthorn and old furse bushes, the trick of solitude requires patience and timing. The site attracts a lot of votive amulets and tokens, a cause of certain concerns about my own praxis which attracts nothing but criticism. The chronological line from Greek Theatre to Roman Arena onwards to playhouse provides no accomodation for such a structure. 

Roger Davisons Tremadhevas.

GOTHVOS Jonathan Polkest

Orientation of the true West

From the East to the West.

below: From the West to the East.

It is from the Tudor period that Peter Berresford Ellis finds satisfactory evidence as to the state of the Cornish Language. The Cornish Language And Its Literature; routledge ISBN 0-7100-9070-6

In the broad field of Human Communication, Gothvos concerns itself with a wider phenomenological, Socialogical and Anthropological area of exploration and experimentation. Each unique assertive positing attempts to identify and express challenges to tradition and unorthodox modes of critical response.  Focussing attention upon the potent object and the receptive landscape and the nature of art itself and its relationship to our whole way of life.  I am referring to those activities which our society generally avoids, which are excluded from us in the mainstream of cultural and literature connections, the primal materials and objectives in our societies were until recently the premiss of crafts people, those who employed certain physicalities to their persuits I am also referring to the broader issues of expression via language, environment via semiotic analysis, signification and empirical impact. These actions are dedicated, for the most part but not entirely ; to the production of meaning, through a "glassless lens",  however, here I'm thinking about the problems with criticism as ethnocentric evidence, in our deliberations to a specific landscape and in culture we strive for universal meaning and tolerance of course. Through a special lens but also questioning the desire for homogeny and perfection. Why different languages express the same things differently. In this respect I am asking if there are certain questions, certain answers and certain names which are specifically expressed through a particular language?
If this specific language ceases to operate or exist does that specific meaning also cease to exist. Is that specific meaning transformed into something new ?
Can that "new specific something" be accurately translated and understood ?



A Long seam of Quartz running due south from the Skilly.


The Gothvos Stone is a very specific object made from a very specific material from a very specific location. The object carries a word written in a very specific way. The word Gothvos broadly translates into english as Knowledge or wisdom, the idea is an obvious device which encourages a question and tempts a response. The answer when discovered refers to the word on the stone, the material that the stone is comprised of and the concept of literature being influenced by the landscape wherein it is couched.

Stone Axe Heads.The act of taking a stone from an area is vested with geological, metalurgical and physiological considerations. The mineral content of the stone seems very important although we do not know absolutely why this has formerly been the case. Historically the stone material was relatively easy to achieve a high gloss using basic polishing techniques and this transformation could be an intrinsic element in the initial "value" of the polished stone axe heads around which there existed a cult.
 Now as I walk along the beach to Newlyn the shingle banks near or above the foreshore are for the most part white and more rounded at Marazion, they seem to flatten increasingly as we walk west through Penzance Dock where large Greenstone deposits are exposed and wettened by the tide, they look like vast blobs of black jelly but they dry quickly in the wind and sun, they then become green, blueish grey sometimes more Umber, Raw Umber or slightly lilac.
 At Larrigan and Wherrytown they are really for the most part more frequently egg shaped stones or bullies as they were known and flat like an axe head, near the beach in Newlyn theres a place called Greenrocks and there is Penlee.
The geographical feature of this part of the promonatory is actually a non feature. It is a great hole in the side of an otherwise arcing skyline whose trajectory rises gradually from the sea shore to form a line not unlike that of the outline of a seabirds brow. The Quarry at Penlee has been mineralogically exploited for a long time, the galleries and cliffs have been landscaped towards gaining planning permission to build a marina style housing complex.
Penlee, means the head land of flat stones (Leh), and it is possibly a coincidence that all the best dark axe shaped stones are found closer to Penleh, these are pebbles and stones worn down by wave and current action which influence my opinion about the whereabouts of the submerged Gear Rock, the mythical Lyoness within Lyoness, or Atlantis within Atlantis. Part of my mission is to find the Gear Rock as the story proports it to be the essential source of Greenstone for ceremonial axe making. Initially I chose to use the whiter stones from Marazion because I needed the placing to be clearly seen through the pitch black screen of a prepared pinhole camera, once the exposed film is processed the successful image is sharp and saturate but during composition very little light gets into the viewer and the image is upside down. That was when a concern about my side of this ritual act was important to me. I thought that it was very important that once the correct position had been found for the stone, that the camera exposure should be as long as required ( up to half a minute)  that the camera should be "earthed" to the location, preferably not in tripod. The alchemy was getting the lens at the right distance because the pinhole made everything close and far in focus......up to a point. That is why I occasionally refer to the composing as the Tabular Rasa, because I want to differentiate between Composition as a fundamental geometric equation and composition as a relational format.

The importance of scale as an orientational factor in my documentation is challenged but not always an obvious success, pinhole technology and techniques are characterized by the presence of a "zone of confusion", a sort of visual vortex that can bend and fragment light as it intersects through an aperture in the exact focal plane, or to be more correct it creates several little bouncy focal points. On film emulsions as opposed to digital cameras, the results can be quite aesthetically sensational but they fail to convey the importance of the composition as a philosophical foundation. The composition is fraught with possibilities, difficulties and delights.  Any action begins with a question and the composition represents the question. Where do I place the object? Yes, it is being placed in the landscape, itself a part of and referencing a landscape. Parts of this landscape remain obscured owing to my position in it. By moving the stone around the composition I reveal a distant hill, a blade of grass, by drawing nearer to the object with the camera I can increase the proportions and the scale, I can obscure certain features and make them invisible - even so, they remain and they can reflect a presence that can be subtle. Composition in techniques such as this are very influenced by the saturation of colours through some of the slower exposures. Of course there are reduced opportunities to control a wider range of variables, most cameras use a combination of shutter speeds and aperture openings. A fixed aperture technique is mostly approximation, trial and error.


Articulation of the Urge.

It does not take the curious mind long to find that the survival and reinstatement of the brythonic Cornish language known as Kerneweck depended almost entirely on Theatre and Theatrical literature. This image of the Minack Theatre is interesting in its juxtaposition of mythic, historic and geographic, the dense historical data referencing unique cultural features are not so much sidestepped as embellished towards that of a mediterranean idyll that is itself conjured. The granite carn becomes a faux greco carved amphitheatre in stark contrast with the totally horizontal typeset Cornish Miracle Plan-An-Gwarry or playing place. The spectators in the Minack will bravely cling to a vertical vision of Epidauros, sometimes in the rain. Often the natural landscape is extraordinarily dramatic and beautiful but in a Plan-An-Gwarry three days of active performing ensue from openings, pits and stationed constructions among the spectators, without the orthodoxy of site lines, raised platforms or constructed forshortened retorts. The repertory is a variety of text based plays, musical theatre and opera. One evening we took our place on the stacked rocky outlet opposite the theatre, across the water in the above photograph.  As the sun went down and the theatre lights became more prominent the sound carried well in the darkness, the event was a curious spectacle from that side of the giant natural auditoria, clapping, chatting, waves splash as boat goes chug chugging by and seagull activity looming through the darkness. I have seen a couple of shows in the auditorium, something phenomenal usually occours, a passing boat, a curious seal but to my mind those things happen along the coast anyway, its an odd prospect, going to a theatrical production because of the Theatre, the plays not the thing. One of the plays I saw was a musical adaptation of the Marriage of Figaro [sic], I got quite cold but there's that resolve connected to ticket value, will there be a good bit ?  Are we there yet ? Closer analogy may define this as tourist art, the experience.  Gothvos certainly plays on the idea of the tourist who purchases an object "A Gift From Cornwall", or a painted landscape with wild thorn trees or blue glittering seas with the exception that Gothvos is the landscape that is put into the landscape and interacts with all elements of that landscape even, and especially, to the detriment of its continuing existence, like a slow meteorite falling the moment is the thing - just like the play in the theatre, the theatre can be anywhere. That is why there is still such a high degree of ritual in a Gothvos photograph. In my role as curator I no longer take all the photographs Nor position all the stones, it was always my hope that "finders" would keep, move or reposition the Gothvos stone as they saw fit. Many stay put until the sunlight erases their message, the story proceeds namelessly.


From Porthcurno to India two million words a day.

Trāṭaka (Sanskrit n. त्राटक trāṭaka; tratak, trataka: to look, or to gaze) is the practice of staring at some external object. This fixed gazing is a method of meditation concentrating on a single point such as a small object, black dot or candle flame. It is used in yoga as a way of developing concentration, strengthening the eyes, and stimulating the ājňā chakra.

The practitioner fixes his attention on a symbol or yantra, a black dot, or the image of some deity, and stares at it, paying attention to each thought and feeling as it arises, and letting them go, so that the mind is completely absorbed in the symbol. The practice continues until the eyes begin to tire, at which point they are closed, and relaxed.

The second stage is staring at a candle flame. The practice is the same up until the eyes begin to tire, after which the eyes are closed, and the yogi tries to concentrate on the after image, and hold it for as long as possible. At first, it will be a real after-image, but later, it will exist only in the mind's eye, and the exercise in concentration comes from trying to maintain it there for a long period of time.

*

Porthcurno was, until recently known for its international submarine communications cable station. In the late nineteenth century, the remote beach at Porthcurno became internationally famous as the British termination of early submarine telegraph cables, the first of which was landed in 1870, part of an early international link stretching all the way from the UK to India, which was then a British colony. Porthcurno was chosen in preference to Falmouth because of the reduced risk of damage to the cables caused by ships’ anchors.

 In 1872, the Eastern Telegraph Company (ETC) Limited was formed which took over the operation of the cables and built a cable office in Porthcurno valley. The concrete cable hut, where the cable shore ends were connected to their respective landlines, is a listed building and still stands at the top of the beach. ETC and its cable operations expanded through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in 1928 to merge with Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company Limited to form Imperial and International Communications Limited which was renamed Cable and Wireless Limited.

In the Inter-War years, the Porthcurno cable office operated as many as 14 cables simultaneously, for a time becoming the largest submarine cable station in the world, with the capacity to receive and transmit up to two million words a day. Porthcurno is still known colloquially by the acronym 'PK' being represented in Morse code as 'di-dah-dah-dit' followed by 'dah-di-dah'. In the early days of expensive telegraphy, this could be sent unambiguously with just two letters instead of ten. 

The cable office at Porthcurno was a critical communications centre and considered at serious risk of attack during the Second World War being only about 100 miles (160 km) from the port of Brest in occupied France.

 To improve security a network of two parallel tunnels, connected by two smaller cross-tunnels, was bored into the granite valley east side by local mining engineers, starting in June 1940, to accommodate the essential telegraph equipment.  Each of the two main entrances was protected by offset and double bomb-proof, gas-proof doors. To provide evacuation for staff in case the defences failed, a covert emergency escape route was provided by granite steps cut into a steeply rising fifth tunnel leading from the rear cross tunnel to a concealed exit in the fields above.  Each of the main tunnel interiors was that of a windowless open-plan office constructed as a building shell within the granite void, complete with a pitched roof to collect water seepage from the rocks, a false ceiling, plastered and decorated walls and all the necessary services. In total about 15,000 tons of rock were removed to construct the tunnels. The construction work progressed relentlessly day and night, taking nearly a year and the completed tunnels were opened in May 1941 by Lady Wilshaw who was the wife of Sir Edward Wilshaw, Chairman of Cable and Wireless at the time.  The concrete defences around the tunnel entrances and the nearby buildings were camouflaged with the help of a local artist, the design, when viewed from the air with some imagination, resembling a belt of trees, complete with rabbits and birds. The Tunnel environment being secure, dry, and at a virtually constant temperature proved to be ideal for the sensitive telegraph equipment and it continued to house the subsequently upgraded equipment after the War until the cable office closure in 1970. It was then used for training facilities for the Engineering College until the college itself also closed in 1993. Today the tunnel is both an exhibit itself and houses exhibits of the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, operated by PK Trust, a charity formed by Cable and Wireless Limited.

Language acquisition

There are two theories as to how children acquire language, and continuing debate as to which theory is correct. The first theory states that all language must be learned by the child. The second theory that the abstract system of language cannot be learned, but that humans possess an innate language faculty, or an access to what has been called universal grammar.
 The idea that language must be learned was  prevalent before 1960 as represented by the mentalistic theories of Jean Piaget and the empiricist Rudolf Carnap. Likewise, the school of psychology known as behaviorism (see Verbal Behavior (1957) by B.F. Skinner) posits the  view that language is a behavior shaped by conditioned response, hence it is learned.

The innatist perspective began with Noam Chomsky's highly critical review of Skinner's book in 1959. This review helped to start "the cognitive revolution" in psychology. Chomsky posited humans possessing a special, innate ability for language and that complex syntactic features, such as recursion, are "hard-wired" in the brain.
These abilities are considered beyond the grasp of the most intelligent and social non-humans. According to Chomsky, children acquiring a language have a vast search space to explore among all possible human grammars, yet at the time there was no evidence that children receive sufficient input to learn all the rules of their language (see poverty of the stimulus). Hence, there must be some other innate mechanism that endows a language ability to humans.

Such a language faculty is, according to the innateness hypothesis, what defines human language and makes it different from even the most sophisticated forms of animal communication.

The field of linguistics and psycholinguistics since then has been defined by reactions to Chomsky, pro and con. The pro view still holds that the human ability to use language (specifically the ability to use recursion) is qualitatively different from any sort of animal ability.  This ability may have resulted from a favorable mutation or from an adaptation of skills evolved for other purposes. The view that language can be learned has had a recent resurgence inspired by emergentism. This view challenges the "innate" view as scientifically unfalsifiable; that is to say, it can't be tested. With the amount of computer power and memory increasing, researchers have been able to simulate language acquisition using neural network models.  These models provide evidence that there may, in fact, be sufficient information contained in the input to learn language, even syntax. If this is true, then an innate mechanism is no longer necessary to explain language acquisition.

 Neandertal societies ritual burial of the dead implies a belief system.  Although a primary religious concept, the ritual burial of cave bear trophy heads would also imply a belief system.  The transmission of such beliefs from generation to generation possibly deployed a spoken language.  Tool making skills and technical knowledge infer the existence and maintenance of communicable concepts . 

 Neandertal brains possessed speech centers that were as large as our own (Broca's and Wernicke's areas), were they were capable of language?

 The modern human variant of the FOXP2 gene was recently discovered in the bones of  Neandertals from Northern Spain.  The gene is associated with abilities to comprehend grammar and to control the mouth movements necessary to produce words.  The implication is that Neandertals could comprehend and produce something like modern speech.  The shape and position of the horseshoe-shaped hyoid bone in the neck of Neandertals was essentially the same as in modern humans.  This has important implications for speech because the hyoid bone supports muscles in the jaw, tongue, and larynx.  The high level location enables an extraordinarily spectrum of vocal sounds.  Neandertal mouths and nasal cavities were different from ours, there is the question as to whether they would have been able to produce all of the vowels and consonants that we use today.  With these findings, the  consensus among paleoanthropologists is that the Neandertals could have had something resembling a spoken language, albeit quite alien to our ears.

Research has proposed that surface features of Homo heidelbergensis brains also point to the ability to use and produce speech.  However, this is not as well supported by evidence as it is for Neandertals.

Diodorus Siculus's account

 Ictis

1.bc Diodorus Siculus described tin mining in Britain. "They that inhabit the British promontory of Belerion by reason of their converse with strangers are more civilised and courteous to strangers than the rest are. These are the people that prepare the tin, which with a great deal of care and labour, they dig out of the ground, and that being done the metal is mixed with some veins of earth out of which they melt the metal and refine it. Then they cast it into regular blocks and carry it to a certain island near at hand called Ictis for at low tide, all being dry between there and the island, tin in large quantities is brought over in carts." Pliny, whose text has survived in eroded condition, quotes Timaeus of Taormina the historian  in referring to "insulam Mictim", "the island of Mictim" [sic], where the m of insulam has been repeated. Several locations for "Ictin" or "Ictis", signifying "tin port" have been suggested, including St. Michael's Mount. A shipwreck site with ingots of tin was found at the mouth of the River Erme near Mount Batten Plymouth, which may represent trade along this coast during the Bronze Age, although dating the site is very difficult. Strabo reported that British tin was shipped from Marseille.