What in particular do you find interesting about the Neroche landscape at this point in the project?
I love the variation and contrasts in the Neroche landscape – it seems quite different to me each time I visit. I can’t think of anywhere with such a range of different landscape within such a small area. It feels very mysterious and dramatic and full of contradictions and secrets. I don’t feel I understand it at all yet which makes it continue to fascinate me.
In what way has this project affected your personal artistic practice so far?
This project has been a great opportunity for me to explore traditional music and song of my own culture – there is some fantastic music coming to light and I think its very exciting to be involved in bringing it out of the dusty library shelves and archives and back to life. I’m really looking forward to working with children and finding out their responses and contributions. It feels very pertinent to be working with people and roots- both in cultural and natural senses – in a time when a lot of people seem to feel rather lost and ‘Identityless’ – beginning to question the throw-away consumerist culture, and looking for something deeper. Its fantastic to have the chance to work with a storyteller in an ongoing project, and to be able to talk to people in the community and get a real sense of how things were, and what we can learn from the past. Its been only relatively recently that we’ve come to rely on the mass media for entertainment, I hope perhaps we can help in the revival of the times when songs and tunes were real possessions and music was only ever live! And of course, to be able to perform outside in the beautiful Neroche woods is a privilege.
