Mark Anderson

Some thoughts on the River Churn site visit and meeting.

Though the site visit was relatively short, and centered on the ‘City Bank’ area, despite the rain I found it potentially inspiring, though was aware that Jony preferred at this stage to keep the brief open, and for us to ‘just soak up the place’, and this was literally what some of us were doing not being dressed in the proper gear!
The meeting was interesting, informative and sparked off amongst us all some interesting thoughts and ideas relating to the neglected forgotten and literally buried river Churn. In hindsight I think the meeting could have been more focused, with perhaps a few points on an agenda for particular discussion, though maybe the meandering nature of the discussion quite rightly reflected the subject.

As I mentioned one of the things that seemed to excite us all was the possibility of exploring and using in some way the hidden river under Cirencester, making it visible or audible, and marking its path on the surface in some way.
One of my immediate thoughts was for example to run a pyrotechnic fuse through the tunnels of the river, then igniting it at a publicised time, perhaps marking the moment of ignition with a Valencian style volley of aerial sound fireworks above the town. The fuse would then bang and splutter its way under the town, this would be audible on the surface in certain parts and would be greeted on its arrival at the other end with small  pyrotechnic event, perhaps a series of blue smokes lit along the surface path of the river and into the distance.

I could also imagine a series of temporary works along the City Bank site which would be explored/viewed by the public over perhaps three consecutive evenings, starting at dusk and lasting a couple of hours. The works could be diverse, and encompass performance, installations, projections and live music/sound pieces. The overall would be to heighten awareness of that neglected area and the river, perhaps incorporating more specific ecological and local issues in some of the work.

One of my first thoughts for a piece was sparked by the remains of the old railway bridge. This would be a ghost train, using field recordings of various trains that would have passed on that line and then replaying them on the site at intervals during the evening using large focused speakers and an expanded stereo effect. The audience as they neared the bridge remains would hear the sound of a train in the distance gradually getting closer and closer, until it seemed to roar overhead and then gradually disappear again into the distance.

The most important criteria for creating a successful event along these lines is high quality work, a sensitivity to the location, involving local people, identifying the potential audience, and the event having high production values.

That said, if we are going to respond in depth and really engage with the site, local people and ecological issues then we would need a much longer time scale to come up with ideas. We discussed this with Jony and I think we all felt that this would be a minimum of a week, ideally a group of us spending five days together, meeting discussing and exploring the area with the aim of putting forward a proposal for a series of works either permanent more ephemeral, or perhaps a combination of the two.

Mark Anderson