A concept created by Jony Easterby
Llanw a thrai
Low Tide High Tide.
Low tide at the mouth of the Dyfi estuary brings a no mans land of perfectly sculpted sand and water, full of latent energy transformation and life.
Great estuarine sands suck at your boots as you move out into the middle of the river, walking on water that will consume the land once again, as it did 13 hours ago and will again tomorrow and for ever as long as the moon circles the earth.
Canoeing across this great shifting river mouth looking for the illusive Flounder I become stranded and make way by foot. Clutching a homemade spear in hand with a friend by my side we walk around this newly uncovered land in a primal dream. A curious feeling of euphoria engulfs me, this is a new feeling, born I think from some long ago feeling of belonging, alongside the sense that this is a landscape we have lived and fed on in some previous life.
River Mouth drinks the sea
The rivers edge the seas shore
Landsea sealand
A Riverine, estuarine, saline meeting point.
Where fish change their spots.
Unmarkable unchartable riddle riparian zone
River Tide River Tide River Tide
Spring Neap
High Low
Spate Dry Flood and Surge
water never still always pulled
Down stream and up moon.
Fluvial Settlement Sediment Nutrient
Sea level changes.
Submerged Bells
Submerged Forests
Floating Islands,
Floating Stages
Jetties to nowhere.
Strand Lines and Flotsam.
Tide to flood and float
Months late this memory and emotion continues to touch and inspire me.
How can I share this experience, build on its vision and explore it further?
Dreams of sand and a long fascination with fluid dynamics, memories of Fraser Island, Irskin Childers, eating fish on sand islands in Thailand, river songs, paddle steamers and sand bars on the Irrawaddy start to emerge.
I then remember seeing Nash’s wooden boulder move down the vale of Ffestiniog where I worked before moving South, Alice Oswolds seminal river Dart poem and the Bow Gamelan playing ‘In C and Air’ on sunken Thames barges as the tide rises around their waists.
Last week I picked three types of shell fish from the sands of Borth, shrimps from the rock pools and feasted on Sea Trout from the river, such bounty and beauty.
So I have started the process of building an event, a show a happening an installation, a future event created out of a series of visualisations of what might occur to celebrate and intensify this experience for myself and others.
Perhaps if you could take a group of people out onto the sands during the low tide zone, what would they find? How would they navigate who would guide them? What would they hear? What could they eat?
Could structure be made, would it survive, architectural shelter, archaeological ruin, ritual space, functionless objects, enigmatic forms, jetties to nowhere, places to watch, places for birds, places for plants, aquaculture, agriculture, floating islands, floating fields, can we be on the water, under the water? Sunken trees, submerged forests, lost Kingdoms, sunken bells.
Then we watch as the sea reclaims, shifts, destroys, floats, moves things up and down stream.
We will start with an Estuary Lab a meeting of people, work upstream and downstream, film ,paint record, theorize, share, meeting folk from the river consulting the experts, the boat builders, scientists, sailors, rowers, bailiffs, potmen, harbour masters, farmers. Bring people in. People who know the land and sea, people who watch and observe and see what is going on.
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