“The shared space of Hackney Marshes”, is a four-screen installation retracing a process of relating between mover Claire Loussouarn, filmmaker Dominique Rivoal, and the environment of Hackney Marshes.
It invites the audience to slow down and attune their sensate body to the incredible spectacle of nature that one can easily miss on an everyday basis.
Over the past five years, the artists have been moving and filming in Leyton Marshes, a specific area that sits within the nature reserve and common land of Hackney Marshes in the multicultural city of London; returning once a month to enter in correspondence with this ancient marsh land, its non-human inhabitants and its human passers-by. The concept of correspondence was originally conceived by anthropologist Tim Ingold, as an alternative to intersubjectivity (Ingold, 2018). Ingold writes that to correspond is to move along together in time and space. As the environment transforms through seasonal change, Claire moves with plants and Dominique relates with her camera.
The installation presents two years of monthly recordings from March 2021 to February 2023 and is further enhanced by an enveloping three-dimensional audio design created by Cesar Salazar Portillo.
Filmed handheld in the emergence of the moment and at times including camera shake and blurriness, the images highlight moments of heightened connections between the seer and the seen in resonance with their situated context.
Furthermore, the commitment of this iterative and durational process of returning has enabled a deep listening of both internal and external landscapes in relation to each other and the ecology of the Marshes.
This installation juxtaposes two years of monthly recordings from March 2021 to March 2023 to offers the viewers a multi- temporal and multi-spatial perspective on how the seasons and other movement patterns such as the pandemic, climate change and human interventions impact our own movement and vice versa, in an environment always in flow.
Dominique Rivoal 