I am a bit stuck for the annual “year in review” post. In …

November 2023

I am happy to say that I am in Camallera near Girona, Cataluña / Catalonia, where I am in residence at Nau Côclea (Centre de Creació Contemporània Nau Côclea). I plan to make a Sound Walk.

I plan to walk around the edge of the town, the boundary of the area, listening to and recording ambient sounds. The rhythm of my feet will undoubtedly raise ‘stories’ from the soil, of the past and present. I will be responding with my own and others’ voices in response to these, aiming to create a rich soundscape of song, musical instrument and found-sounds which will encapsulate the ambience of the place.

I have often travelled around the edge of somewhere for an artistic project (in Edinburgh, for example I have led walks around Granton and Leith) and I find that a ring of steps can mark-out a space in which magic can happen. Marking a boundary by human means (as opposed to in, or on a vehicle) and meeting people who live and move along it, is an interesting and enlightening experience. It is one which offers an opportunity to find out more about what and who lives on either side and the nature of separation and unity in this context. As I walk, I will be paying equal attention to the plants, insect and animal life which we share these edgeland sites with, especially observing the effects I have on them, and their presence at specific times of day and at this turn of the seasons.

Looking at the map, the walk will probably cover a mixed manufacturing, retail, municipal, residential, touristic, rural and agricultural setting, maybe also “Undecided fragment[s] of the Planetary Garden … Neglected areas and wastelands” of the Third Landscape. The psychogeographer in me is always ferreting into nooks and noticing crannies of this sort. (With thanks to Laia Noal for guiding me to this term.)

When I am in the research and preparation stage of making a Sound Walk, I follow the signs; I take notice of what happens around me, what books land in my lap, and conversations I happen to hear on the radio or when I’m walking. I have been reading about the suppression of freedom and the Catalan language during the Civil War of 1936-39, and all the human suffering caused by Francisco Franco up until 1975. I am fascinated by the Pact of Forgetting (given a legal basis in 1977), a political decision which was made, “in the name of ensuring a smooth transition to democracy” (smithsonianmag.com), and which “also committed the government to “la desmemoria” (disremembering), a policy that entailed avoiding anything that could awaken the memory of the past, such as the observation of the 50th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, in 1986…” (Encarnación, New York Times).

More recently, the Historical Memory Law (2007) has allowed for “a debate on the civil war “after so many years of silence”.” (The Guardian) and there has been interest in engaging with a recognition of the resulting grief. Some of the Civil War mass graves have been opened, and new rituals are being enacted around the acknowledgement of the loss on many levels. I come to this residency with many years of embodied study of death, grief and loss, personally, and through my Shiatsu work, death cafes, and writing. A recurring topic arising from participants at death cafes is our community tendency to ignore death or struggle to find ways to acknowledge it.

When I discovered that my visit corresponded with the annual walk across the Pyrénées from France in memory of Walter Benjamin, I knew I must join it. Benjamin was fleeing the Nazi regime in 1940, and was directed across the mountains by Lisa Fittko. He received bad news on arrival in Port Bou on the Spanish side and died by suicide that night, before being able to finally escape to the United States. The coincidence came as no surprise, and it is likely that the Sound Walk that I will be making during my residency will concern loss and its inevitable companion, renewal, as a result. I won’t know what exactly will happen until I begin.

I have already invited some local artists to sing and play to and in the place, people who belong here. If you are from the region or outside and are interested in this project and able to come between 20 November and 2 December (not 24th), I am inviting you to join me for one day or part of one day. Come and walk and listen, and share your feelings. Your contributions will join together in a co-created Sound Walk which will then live on in Camallera for anyone to join at a later date.

Dates: 20 November and 2 December. There is one bed for you to stay a night in the artist’s cottage if you need to.

Let me know if you are interested! tamsinlgrainger@gmail.com

Caption for photo gallery above, from left: Forest Bound, Festival of Terminalia, Festivities and Delegates

The Artist Residency is part of the Separation and Unity Project (Caledonia / Catalonia). You may also be interested in other parts: El Grand Tour, Girona mini-pilgrimage, and Festivities and Delegates.

References:

Smithsonian Magazine https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/battle-memory-spanish-civil-war-180969338/

New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/01/06/turning-away-from-painful-chapters/forgetting-in-order-to-move-on

The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/oct/11/spain.international

Manifesto of the Third Landscape https://teh.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/TEH-Publication-Manifesto-of-Third-Landscape-145x225mm-2022-WEB-Spreads.pdf