Climate & The Land: Awaken, Stone!

This project was supported by the Mead Fellowship Award and Arts Coucil Queen's Juilbee Fund. Eva’s spent one year researching the island's working and geological histories, and stories in living memory through the PSQT Living Land Archive (LLA). The extended period of research allowed her to engage deeply with the people, material, and landscape, exploring the LLA, casting fossils in waste stone dust, and collaborating with four local dancers: Martha Court, Christina McManus and Courtney Wood from Stromatic Dance group, and Sian Alcock a local practitioner. As well as Oliver Robertson of James Wilton Dance Company, to ultimately produce and perform two site-specific performances that combined landscape, sculpture, and dance.

Portland is shaped by quarrying, so the extractive industry is at the center of its society. The fossis tinto sculptures were revealed through quarrying by hand, each from different strata layers, and ough dance, were returned to the land. The dancers, all from Portland, activated the sculptures to esent a narrative of past landscapes and climates. In the performance, interactions were created tween fossils, audience, landscape, and human form.

Informed by the LLA geological record and working closely with its creator, Hannah Sofaer, the sculptures and performances were structured around 5 sections: Ancient Seas, Forgotten Rivers, Our Oldest Trees, Dry Land and Lagoons. Both sites are highpoints of the island, historically called Tout, meaning 'lookout' in old English. Site 1 was the Coastwatch at Portland Bill, on a bespoke stage with the sea and sky as a backdrop. The Coastwatch team taught us about the tides and recorded stories to be presented at the start of the performance thus showing me their perspective of the landscape.

The stone was formed in warm seas, so this performance layered past with present, created cohesion between communities that work closely with the site, and aimed to question, through creative practice, the detrimental effect humanity has on the land and foster more care through different perspectives.