Miranda Whall

In late December I invited 5 creative collaborators to join the project, 4 of whom either have or do live and work in Scotland

I was so thrilled and excited that all of them said YES!

So if we get the funding the 6 of us plus Rhys Thwaites Jones from Fforest Films and 2 project managers with H&S training will be camping out for 22 hours in September 2019. Each of the 6 collaborators will generate discipline specific material in situ. The creative collaborators will be asked to respond and relate to my crawling performance, the landscape and the Mountain hare.

The proposed location for the camp is just off the old drove road that runs from Braemar to Tomintoul on the Invercauld Estate. The OS grid reference is NJ1800006. The camp will be set on a grassy area of land under an old shieling called Allt Phouple, next to a burn and the modernist turf roofed alpine lunch hut designed by Moxon Architects and owned by Hauser & Wirth.

I met Dr Samantha Walton at the Into the Mountain symposium in Glasgow in November, she was delivering a paper for the event organised by Simone Kenyon. Samantha is a literature scholar currently at Bath Spa University , she specialises in modern and contemporary British literature, with particular interest in psychology and environmentalism; experimental poetics, fiction of the 1920s and 1930s; and the Scottish novelist and nature writer, Nan Shepherd. In 2018, she published a book on Nan Shepherd’s environmental philosophy, entitled The Living World: Nan Shepherd and Environmental Thought. She recently talked about Shepherd on BBC’s Winterwatch https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2046607755376262.

I first met and worked with Alec Finlay when I lived up in the North East, Alec is an artist & poet whose work crosses over a range of media and forms – poetry, visual poems, poem-objects, sculpture, collage, audio-visual, artist blogs, and new technology. Much of Finlay’s work considers how we as a culture, or cultures, relate to landscape and ecology, with a specific interest in place-awareness, hutopianism, rewilding, and wellbeing. He published a 300-page place-aware guide to the Cairngorms, gathering, in 2018, commissioned by Hauser & Wirth and accompanied by a series of artworks and interventions for the Fife Arms.

I have never met Pete Smith, the sound artist Chris Watson recommended him to me, Pete is an experienced sound designer and recordist with a wide range of technical abilities including location sound recording and mixing, sound effects editing, dialogue editing and foley art. Projects he has worked on in the past range from award winning feature length documentaries to animations and radio shows. He regularly works for the BBC and has worked for various other clients in the past including NHK Japan, Channel 4, STV, STV Creative, RBS, First Direct, Hopscotch films, and a whole host of other production companies and corporations. Pete has recently been doing a lot post production work on wildlife documentaries for NHK and Scotland the Big Picture and won the ‘silver fox’ award from the Wildlife Sound Recording Society (WSRS) for his wildlife sound recordings. Previous winners include the recordists Chris Watson, Simon Elliot and Peter Toll. He has also recently been collaborating with a number of artists and filmmakers including the award winning vocal artist and composer Hanna Tuulikki, the turner prize winning artist Duncan Campbell and the film makers Margaret Salmon and Johanna Billing.

I came across the composer Alexander Chapman Campbell and his work through BBC Radio 4’s Ramblings https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b6pdr0. Alexander  has forged a unique musical path, his music has become known for its striking beauty and originality. Described by Positive News as “not jazz, not classical, not improvised, but maybe a glimpse of something new”, and by ClassicFM as “refreshingly original”, it isn’t easily described or placed into a genre. Discovered by ClassicFM in 2013 and placed as Album of the Week, his album “Sketches” became instantly popular and have since been aired extensively across the station. The album was re-released by Decca Records in 2014 and has been featured widely across TV and Radio. In 2016 he released Portraits of Earth, his second collection for solo piano, on the week of release the album was the highest placed new entry on the UK Classical charts, and it coincided with a thirty venue concert tour around the UK. in 2018 he released his third album Journey To Nidaros composed spontaneously during a 650km solitary pilgrimage across Norway, written down and completed when he returned home. The album, which was featured on BBC Radio 4 Ramblings, went to No.1 in the UK Specialist Classical Charts, and No.5 in the ClassicFM chart.

Hannah Mann was the photographer on the Crossed Paths – Wales project. She is currently studying for an MA in Fine Art at Manchester School of Art, she graduated from Aberystwyth School of Art in 2016. Hannah is an exceptional photographer and has become an integral part of this trilogy project.