Gothvos; Theatre of the Body, Theatre of the Mind.

Dromology in Fes with Andrea Cusamano

Terres...Formes...Terres

This Gothvos placing was carefully undertaken in a stolen moment beneath shadey date palms by artist/performer  Andrea Cusumano whilst in Morocco performing Terres…Formes…Terres at the behest of the Ducci Foundation in the city of Fes or Fez (Arabic: فاس‎,) the third largest city of Morocco, with a population of approximately 1 million. The city has two old Medinas, the larger of them is Fes El Bali. It is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is widely believed to be one of the world's largest car free urban areas. Al-Qarawiyyin, founded in AD 859, is the oldest continuously functioning madrasa in the world. The city has been called the "Mecca of the West" and the "Athens of Africa". Andrea writes of this moment between the physical demands of his performance schedule: "Came here yesterday for my performance. Spent the day buying the materials in the souk. What a tiring day but rewarding experience. I am happy. The show felt really good and I am happy Fleur was so good with me on stage. A bit too dark...but if I don't take it now...there won't be time" (the Gothvos moment photograph)

Andrea Cusamano Terres...Formes...Terres.

- John London -

 'We saw a frog here outside the house in which we were staying in Sóller, Mallorca. It jumped into what looks like a secret irrigation channel. So the stone reminds us of its presence.

August 2013'

Autochthonous reaction in Sóller and the hidden Frog.

Sóller (Catalan pronunciation: [ˈsoʎə]) is a town and municipality near the north west coast of Mallorca, in the Balearic Islands of Spain. The town is some 3km inland, from the Port de Sóller, in a large, bowl-shaped valley that also includes the village of Fornalutx and the hamlets of Biniaraix and Binibassi. The combined population is around 14,000. A famous tramway, the Orange Express links Sóller to Port de Sóller.

Sóller is linked by the historic railway, the Ferrocarril de Sóller, and by a highway with a toll tunnel, to the Majorcan capital ofPalma. The Ferrocaril was built on the profits from the orange and lemon trade and completed in 1911. The Andratx-Pollençahighway also runs through the valley. The present-day economy is based mainly on tourism and the expenditure of foreign residents, complementary to the agricultural economy based around citrus and olive groves.

Chloe Kenwards Dead Sea Scroll Down

Chloe Kenwards journey to the Dead Sea.

 Mineral Beach, The Dead Sea, Israel

At one side of a quiet beach on the Dead Sea, a naked stone sits amongst clinging salt deposits, oddly clean in a salt-contaminated world. Salt stalactites are bonded unforgivingly to its surroundings. Sun evaporating the shore water to leave strong white crystals on every rock and stone.

Haze floats in the air, as if steaming from the sea, which merges the shimmering colours of Jordan across the water. Blues, greens, pinks, and reflections are confused amongst the haze.

It is the lowest place on earth, 400m below sea level. The air is thick with 10% extra oxygen; the sea, 30% thick with salt.

Floating in the Dead Sea is a disembodying experience. Legs become useless at propulsion, as they cannot be submerged in the water, and unbalance the body, the bather losing control of their centre of gravity. The water, loaded with minerals, stings the skin, and warns not to be swallowed or splashed into eyes.

Salt is a mineral that sustains life in the right quantities – too much, or too little, and we would not survive. Tiny, individual, delicate crystals become a strong force in numbers. Our diets, and the history of food, were irreversibly changed by salt.

I wonder what the stone will look like a year from now. Caked with salt on the shoreline, or washed onto the seabed, in a dead world, which sustains no life. Ingratiated into its new surroundings, no longer a souvenir from foreign lands.

Chloe Kenwards journey to the Dead Sea

Chloe Kenward - The Dead Sea scroll-down.

Chloe Kenward is a travel photographer and lighting designer

Whilst awaiting Harvey Grosmans placing...

Harvey%20Grossman%20Interview-1.pdf

 Gothvos placed by Jacqueline Awieh in the historic town of Falmouth Jamaica.

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Falmouth was one of the busiest ports in Jamaica. It was home to masons, carpenters, tavern-keepers, mariners, planters and others. It was a wealthy town in a wealthy parish with a rich racial mix. Within the parish, nearly one hundred plantations were actively manufacturing sugar and rum for export to Britain. Jamaica, during this period, had become the world's leading sugar producer.

As a result, starting in 1840, Falmouth's fortunes as a commercial centre declined after the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire. This decline and lack of support for development has left many of its early buildings standing. The streets are lined with many small houses known for their unique fretwork and windows, major merchant and planter complexes, and commercial buildings, all dating from 1790 to 1840.

While Falmouth saw little commercial advancement after the 1840s, houses continued to be built. The town's buildings, the old and the not-so-old, make up the historic townscape of Falmouth. These shared characteristics weave the varied building styles into a distinctive pattern of early Jamaican architecture, and a critical mass of each variety makes the town an unusually distinctive place.

Papillon was shot on location in Spain (doubling for the French locations in the film) and Jamaica; the prison set was constructed in Falmouth, Jamaica, and was the largest in the film, running an expanse of 800 feet. The Devil's Island and Indian village sequences were filmed in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, and the scene featuring the arrival of the prison ship was lensed in Kingston, Jamaica. Unfortunately, the tropical island proved to be a troublesome location due to unpredictable weather, the plentiful abundance of ganji (marijuana) which affected the productivity of several crew members, and numerous thefts, resulting in the loss of costumes, set props, machinery, and other items to the tune of $30,000.

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.