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Plotlands - a site specific performance work incorporating film

Barnard, Clio H. (2008) Plotlands - a site specific performance work incorporating film. , Friday 4 July 2008, Whitstable Biennale. Mixed. (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:40774)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://www.whitstablebiennale.com/project-archive/...

Abstract

Clio Barnard’s publication, Plotlands examines what implications a now defunct, makeshift and marginalised community of plotlanders have for our future, and the imaginative possibilities that are opened up by its unofficial status and invisibility. The artist's book contains interviews, excerpts from Colin Ward’s book Arcadia for All (in which he examines plotland communities), together with drawings and photographs. A short piece of fiction written by the artist is also included, which ends with the burning of a shack.

Item Type: Show / exhibition
Additional information: How can a public artwork represent the concerns and interests of marginal and disempowered groups who lack conventional forms of social power? The train that runs between London and East Kent travels through the Seasalter Levels. At one time there was a thriving plotland community on this stretch of marshland, but in recent years the shacks, livestock and caravans have gradually disappeared, leaving only a few abandoned and burnt out caravans, wooden huts and overgrown plants, marking out what were once gardens. Plotlands explores this geographical and social space through two outputs: an artist’s book, and a film, screened on the marshlands at dusk. The artist's book contains interviews with ‘plotlanders,’ excerpts from Colin Ward’s book Arcadia for All (in which Ward examines plotland communities), together with drawings and photographs of the plotlands, and a short fiction written by Barnard. As dusk fell on Friday 4 July 2008, three trains travelled as usual between London and East Kent. On each seat of the train lay a copy of Plotlands. As the train passed through the Seasalter marshes, passengers witnessed the ritualistic burning of a caravan, projected, in film, onto a vast screen, situated in the isolated and rural landscape. The burning of the caravan marked the death of the marshland community, an event explored from various angles in the book. Plotlands is a participatory, socially engaged public artwork. It relates to the work of artists such as Jeremy Deller, Anna Best and Katie Paterson. Best describes her practice as “expanding definitions of where art might take place, with and for whom and for how long, and the role of the artist within that.” Plotlands was commissioned and exhibited by the Whitstable Biennale whose remit is to commission and exhibit contemporary art that explores the overlap between film and performance.;
Subjects: N Visual Arts
N Visual Arts > N Visual arts (General). For photography, see TR
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of Arts
Depositing User: Stewart Brownrigg
Date Deposited: 07 Mar 2014 00:05 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:15 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/40774 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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