Contributed Ideas

BELINDA ACKERMANN

Gothvos stone placed in Hvar : Gothvos (wisdom, knowledge, information- translated as old face)

Belinda Ackermanns Left Foot

Belinda Ackermann is an artist and designer whose Theatre Set and Costume designs have brought her a reputation for excellence in a very human scaled realm, her work with the body and performance is rightly acknowledged as she takes a moment to compose her story in the presence of one of Europes oldest theatrical stages located on the island of Hvar. 

the thought melts in my mouth, tantalizing my taste buds

old faces carry with them the wisdom of ages

the residue of all that has been seen and felt

what they say, touches the deepest  knowing

i see here the quiet, patient, care that surrounds this small holding

and it reminds me of my grandfather

born before the advent of cars or tvs and christened Norman

his name and life so particular to men of his generation

bears witness to an enduring resilience and stoicism

it survived 2 world wars and depression of unprecedented proportion

‘ship shape and bristol fashion’ this plot of land is ordered and ready

like my bench before i dive into a drawing

with its rows of sharpened pencils, all lined up ready for action

my granddad weeded, hoed and prepared his allotment 

fostering a sense of calm to offset the chaos created by growth

he ‘worked the land’ molded, honed, and encouraged

inviting nature to conjure from the flat, waterlogged fens of cambridgeshire,

asters chrysanthemums and statices, beautiful blooms to sell at market

poles apart from this olive grove in the sun baked croatian island of hvar

what they share is beyond time or place

a poignant humility, an ever changing dialogue that listens

then responds to the great limitless power of the universe

far from the deaf, dumb and blind dictates of profit and loss

that hold us hostage and diminishe our spirit

Belinda's Gothvos

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Hvar  is a Croatian island in the Adriatic Sea, located off the Dalmatian coast, lying between the islands of Brač, Vis and Korčula. Approximately 68 km (42.25 mi) long, with a high east-west ridge of Mesozoic limestone and dolomite, the island of Hvar is unusual in the area for having a large fertile coastal plain, and fresh water springs. Its hillsides are covered in pine forests, with vineyards, olive groves, fruit orchards and lavender fields in the agricultural areas. The climate is characterized by mild winters, and warm summers with many hours of sunshine. The island has 11,103 residents, making it the 4th most populated of the Croatian islands.

Hvar’s location at the center of the Adriatic sailing routes makes this island an important base for trading throughout the Adriatic, to Italy and the Mediterranean. Inhabited since pre-historic times, originally by a Neolithic people whose distinctive pottery gave rise to the term Hvar Culture, and later by the Illyrians. The ancient Greeks founded the colony of Pharos in 384 BC on the site of today’s Stari Grad, making it one of the oldest towns in Europe. They were also responsible for setting out the agricultural field divisions of the Stari Grad Plain. In medieval times, Hvar (city) rose to importance within the Venetian Empire as a major naval base. Prosperity brought culture and the arts, with one of the first public theatres in Europe, nobles’ palaces and many fine communal buildings.

belinda.ackermann@gmail.com

Bosigran Hill Fort and Sea Cliff.

. Edward M. Bruner: Experience and its Expression 

The relationship between experience and its expressions is always problematic. 

It is impossible to know completely someone else’s experiences. Everybody tells a story 

differently and stresses other aspects of the experience. That is why Dilthey suggested to 

instead study and interpret and study the expressions of the experiences, like the 

representations, performances and texts. We understand others on the basis of our own 

experience. That inner experience can in its turn be influenced by culture. So next to reality, 

there is experience and expression. Experience is how reality presents itself to our 

consciousness, expression is how this individual experience is framed and articulated. In 

expressing you will have to decide on a beginning and an end of your ‘story’, you’ll have to 

cut a unit out of the continual flow of life. According to Dilthey we can never experience this 

flow that life is directly. By studying culture through its expressions the basic units of analysis 

are established by the people that are being studied rather than by the alien observer. We 

are then interpreting the people as they are interpreting themselves, through art and cultural 

expressions. 

To the East of Nansmornow

Two images (above): The first is of the Zawns at Bosigran Castle, A sea cliff and one cleverly incorporated into a Hill Fort where climbers pitch their wits against those of our former invaders, sadly there are at times casualties.  The second photograph is from the coastpath about a half a mile east of Nansmornow (Lamorna). both images taken on a Nikon SLR with a modified Vivitar lens incorporating a pinhole aperture plate. The image is produced on film prior to scanning. The beautiful and important nearby church of St.Buryan was constructed of stone from the Nansmornow Quarries, the tip of the abandoned spill can be discerned on the central skyline and makes an imposing sight to walk by and around.

Lesingey Round Looking toward Madron

Lesingey Round Hill Fort

Iron Age Hill Fort, Penzance Map

Another Hill Fort, this one at Lesingey Round on the eastern fringes of Penzance not too distant from Bosigran. Looking over a field of Broccoli. Dating from the Iron Age, this hill fort has a diameter of just under 80 metres and is defended by a single rampart 3.7 metres high. The site is surrounded by a low circular stone hedge.

The A30 Road Bridge at Fraddon.
This photograph, in keeping with many Gothvos stones, was taken where the stone was positioned and left, in this example on the concrete bridge over Stamps Hill Fraddon overlooking the westward landscapes toward Truro in the distance, Summercourt and Mitchell lying nearer this point. Although taken on a hill, the position is in the shadow of a reconstituted hill behind my back that has been gradually diluted with water jets to extract the beautifully white Cornish "china clay". The location is extremely evocative from several perspectives, shamefully I involuntarily hark back to the poetry of Jack Clemo because I have failed to extemporize the poetry's effect on my psyche. The other problem which will require a longer lifespan than anything like my own expectancy is that I have overwhelmingly personal experiences connected or in reference to both this area and nearby Goonamarris and with a select few of Clemo's confidants, namely Lionel Miskin who was a great artist in his own right but who was a formative support to Jack Clemo's initial struggle.
The Poet of the Clay

A Pinhole photograph of Clay Working at night.
I have had an unreasonably high level of interest in this industrially impacted Cornish Landscape, visiting initially to paint and to pay homage to the poets home now sadly demolished. I found some objects; a Bedford Truck badge in the garden at Goonamarris and various corroding implements which looked like deities or fetish objects. Later whilst taking pinhole (non gothvos) photographs on the Clay Tips I discovered the most extraordinary range of exhumed minerals and naturally occuring phenomena, my heart leapt at the sight of a lusterous four inch long tourquoise crystal emerging from an unstable precipitous batter, I nervously braced my body to reach the booty far above the industrially azure tinted pools laying far below only to snatch a shard of blue flexible plastic since which I have perversely treasured as a souvenir, not of a place but of an intense and not altogether welcome state of mind. Clemo's poetry is difficult for several reasons, his use of christian virtues to analise and challenge the heady mix of unearthly activity and natural wonders that abound there are very confusing to the contemporary urbanised outlook but spending time in that extraordinary place often defies reason. The landscape is or was actually a huge moorland tract bigger than Penwith but smaller than Bodmin and less craggy. Gradually that moorland has been melted away, whole Downs and Carns have literally been washed away in order to extract clay and other minerals but for the most part clay. Many sacred features, stones and antiquitaries have been removed, displaced and countless numbers destroyed. Along with these antiquitaries communities and sadly wildlife who's presence can still be sensed. The climate is peculiarly rain forest like, gently moist and sometimes quite oriental. The fallow ground concealing abandoned industrial equipment and vehicles feed a cycle of dilution  and interjecting phenomena, a sand lizard in a rusting lorry cab,an unidentified bird of prey hovering over the spoil tips, horses mingle with reels of cable and gloriously renovated classic cars stand beside humble fibre-board dwellings. The onset of the Eden Project and other tourist attractions have coincided with the ongoing demise of the clay extraction industry which adds up to the liklihood of Jack Clemo's amazing and unique perspective to be lost from the context of its natural birthplace in the Clay, ironic that Clemo, the communities and the Clay have moved on. In my visitations and musings on Clemo's prosaic conviction, albeit unique and yet devoutly experiential accounts of his place and psychosis, I  call upon therapist Reneau Z. Peurifoy, who refers to the geologist and Piezoelectric Jim Berkland both a professional Geologist and a recognised "sensitive" to earthquake prediction, the causes of human sensitivity to earthquakes are similar to the causes of earthquake sensitivity in animals. When pressure builds up prior to an earthquake, the quartz crystal embedded in the Earth's interior is deformed and creates an electrical charge. This phenomenon, known as the piezoelectric effect, sends electrical signals to animals. It is theorised that some earthquake sensitives may also be reacting to a change in the electromagnetism of an area caused by rising stresses on geological faults. There is also the possibility that radon is emitted prior to an earthquake, enough to be noticed by sensitive humans.

One earthquake sensitive mentioned in sensitive Cal Orey's The Man Who Predicts Earthquakes: Jim Berkland, maverick geologist suggested that the different crystal makeups of different regions account for distinct sounds from different areas. She thought that pressure also determined sound, and provided an example, saying how granite sounds were different from those of quartz. I certainly recognise the palpable changes in my own perception whilst being exposed to the exhumed mounds of deeply excavated minerals, the effect is quite revelatory since getting permission to ascend the clay tip is nigh on impossible, once at the summit (they are unimaginably high) the dizzing heights, the reflective and loose terrain conspire to create a Godly moment for the beholder only to be converted into panic at the sight of the security guards short wheel based landrover kicking up a cloud of dust as they sped along the spiralling track towards me. Time to make a hasty and unrecommendable departure.

 

Carn Boel, Pordaneck 

Whilst on the subject of precipitous scree, this Gothvos stone was positioned teasingly close to the ultimate foreground composition, it may be some while before the curiously reciprocal report their findings, I was doubly satisfied by the composition the implant rendered.

Belinda Ackermann's Left Foot.