26th July – crawl one – who’s bright idea was this?

             

Well what a first day!

Destina Bartley the filmmaker and Hannah Mann the photographer and myself sat in the hired 4 x 4 waiting for the rain to pass, it didn’t really or at least the cloud didn’t lift until 3.00, until the last shoot, rush and then what a view!

But the conditions were utterly characteristic of the Welsh uplands in July so we got ourselves in the frame of mind of what ever would happen was just right, there was no wrong, it was what it was, just right.

I started my crawl at 12.00 and made it up to a broken gate, I could only see a few yards ahead of me, I have never been so happy to hear the bleeping Go – Pro’s telling me the batteries had run out after 43 minutes, doesn’t sound long, but when crawling through thick heather and Sphagnum moss with loads of annoying, continually dislodging cameras on your body – its quite long enough! I huffed, puffed and sighed a lot and found myself talking aloud which was a new dimension to the sound tack that I hadn’t anticipated.

I felt so lucid when crawling, I had such a strong sense and understanding of what I was doing and what the work was about, empirically understanding the process of emergent, enactive, embodied filmmaking with all its shortcomings, hitches and gifts.

Being down there in the heather and grasses with the beetles, water, slugs and sheep poo, albeit clumsily, awkwardly, felt like a privilege and an honour of sorts.

I haven’t looked at the Go – Pro footage yet, but whatever they captured will be another texture and dimension to the whole, I’ve got a few alterations to make to the strapping but overall they did the job, I think.

Thank you to Destina and Hannah for their patience and creativity, it was a fantastic, totally unique and memorable experience.

I can’t imagine that I’ve got to do this for 5 1/2 miles, but there we are – I have said I will so onward and upward…

Beautiful photos that encapsulate the day by Hannah Mann…