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Tag: Dumfries

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Musings News

Quest 3 at SUBMERGE

“Quest” is an ongoing environmental project by artist Jan Hogarth, exploring our relationship with the environment, land, and water. Jan’s working practice grows out of a deep love of the land (in the broadest sense of the word—by “land” I mean water, trees, animals, mountains, etc.), an empathy for it, and a deep desire to heal it. Jan has been working with Sheila Pollock, a practitioner in the healing arts for over 30 years, and invites others who love the land to become involved in the environmental art quests.

In Celtic tradition, healing wells, springs, and the sources of rivers were thought to possess sacred and healing properties.

“Quest” explores rituals and the truths behind them to create and invent new environmental art rituals aimed at healing the environment. The idea of searching for the source of the Nith originated from a local rumour that the Lynors of Dumfries Guid Nychburris took spring water from the source of the Nith and carried it with them when they rode the boundaries of the town. My friend Sheila, who has been working in the healing arts, and I went in search of the source of the Nith, which is located at Dalmellington in Ayrshire. Instead, we found an environmental catastrophe in the form of open-cast mines and landfill sites, with no access to the source due to the activities of the open-cast mine operators. It was shocking—how could this river be healed when its source serves as an example of how we take from the land without empathy for our energy consumption? This seemed to act as a metaphor for the wider issue of climate change. The problem lies with us—our lack of love for non-human life and our lack of reverence for nature, water, and the land.

Sheila has worked with Jan on the Quests project, focusing on the energy of water and its places, and exploring how to lift that energy and raise its vibration. Through dowsing, there is evidence that the vibration of the water she worked on during Quest 1 was raised, and that improvement has been sustained. The Nith presents a significant challenge due to its source in an open-cast mine. Sheila and Jan will be discussing this on Thursday evening at the Stove as part of their work.

Jan’s install in preparation for SUBMERGE

Quest is part of SUBMERGE, an exhibition featured in ArtCOP Dumfries, running daily from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm until Saturday, 12th December.

Jan and Sheila will be discussing Quest as part of A Question of Scale

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News

Norway House

At the beginning of the month, The Stove transformed into Norway House as part of a project with the research and design collective Lateral North. Over the course of three days, The Stove became a temporary hub, exploring Dumfries’ Norwegian connection.

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Norway House at The Stove became a place for exchange and conversation, storytelling, and remembering.

Many visitors came in, sharing memories of the excitement they felt as children, aged seven or eight, when the Norwegians arrived. They recalled how the Norwegians would sometimes offer lifts to children on their way back to their accommodation, which was in various places around Dumfries. Most stayed at the Troqueer Mills, although there was also a farm on the outskirts of Dumfries, near Lincluden, where the horses were kept.

One lady spoke about her husband, who had lived at 7 Nellieville Terrace as a boy. Their front room was used as the Norwegian Bank, and he remembered the King visiting his home. He often talked about the Norwegians’ visit. The family had hoped to record or share his memories before he passed away but sadly never managed to. I will now pass her details on to Beverly Thom, who is writing a book of these stories so that his memories can hopefully be documented.

The manager of the Greyston Rovers also visited. He explained that they have been playing Norway regularly since 1951, when they became the first team to play in Europe after the end of the war, maintaining the connection.

Norway House is part of an ongoing project, Cultural Wayfinding, which explores alternative ways of understanding and celebrating Dumfries’ culture and history. The project also aims to build new connections with Norway in the future.

If you would like to stay updated on the project as it develops, or if you would like to contribute your story to our growing Norway House project, please contact Katharine at [email protected].

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News Project Updates

Lateral North and the Norway Connection

You are invited to share your ideas and contribute to our Cultural Wayfinding event, taking place from 5th to 7th November with Lateral North and The Stove Network.

Town centres are a hot topic throughout Scotland at the moment, with a focus on how they might once again become vibrant and populated spaces. Initiatives have been established by the Scottish government and partner organisations such as Scotland Can Do Towns and the Scottish Towns Partnership, who are leading the way by working with communities across the country. Discussions, conferences, innovative ideas, and project proposals are increasing as we strive to reconnect communities with their local shops and town centres.

Dumfries is one such place taking an exceptionally innovative approach, where art and design take centre stage to provide creative solutions for the town centre. The arts resource, The Stove Network, has been leading various projects aimed at regenerating the town centre. They have transformed a building previously out of use into a hub of creative thinking and forward-thinking design.

The Stove Network has teamed up with Lateral North, an architecture, research, and design collective based in Glasgow with strong ties to Dumfries, to collaborate on an exciting and dynamic project. This initiative reflects on the culture, heritage, and built environment of Dumfries town centre, focusing on elements that have been overlooked or not adequately highlighted.

Their Cultural Wayfinding project aims to create a range of opportunities that will not only boost tourism but also serve as an economic catalyst for new jobs and initiatives for local people. These efforts are centred around art and design, demonstrating how they can illuminate the rich culture of this historic town.

The first of these initiatives focuses on Dumfries’ connection with Norway, particularly the buildings hidden within the town centre that once hosted the Norwegian army in exile during World War II. These buildings provided the army with spaces for meetings and accommodation throughout the war.

Lateral North and The Stove Network will host a three-day workshop from 5th to 7th November, inviting the public to contribute ideas for a public art installation. This project will highlight Norway House at 8 Church Street, the building used as Headquarters and Cultural Centre by Norwegians in exile during 1940. Currently empty, the building remains unused due to extortionate retail rates, which are likely to persist for the foreseeable future. However, this initiative aims to emphasise the creative possibilities for such spaces, encouraging communities to attract tourists, revitalise town centres, and generate economic activity through existing built environments.

Graham Hogg of Lateral North, who grew up in Dumfries, said: “I’ve watched Dumfries town centre slowly lose more and more of its local shops, with vacant shops becoming increasingly common. This has had a detrimental effect on the town as a whole, and I believe it is fantastic that The Stove is leading this exciting project. To be part of it is a real honour, and hopefully, through the Norway House project, we can create an exciting and innovative model that can be applied to Dumfries town centre in the future and adopted throughout the rest of Scotland.”

NB: There are paid opportunities for Stove Network members to assist with the project on 5th, 6th, and 7th November.

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Musings Project Updates

New Distractions

We asked ourselves a question: “Can a sign above a High Street building ever do anything other than promote and brand? Can it ask questions, be part of a conversation with other signs… Can our High Street ever become a space that prioritises people as well as sales?”

Whose downturn is this?

As a species, we show ourselves to be resilient and endlessly adaptable, but what true opportunities exist between the moss and the ‘for sale’ signs? How do we reimagine the spaces between the High Streets we remember and what remains when our High Street no longer meets the bottom line of the multinationals?

Our town centres have grown out of a need to gather, connect, meet, barter, and exchange. Dumfries owes its place to the river, the cattle marts, and the passage of people. Yet, from our largely rural context, Dumfries has also served as a gathering point—a melting pot where communities meet and exchange not just economically but socially, forming our connection to the wider world.

‘A marketplace (rather than a “market”) is a sociable space where buying and selling take place surrounded by other activities—a place to see friends, hear stories, and argue about ideas. Crucially, unlike a Starbucks or a department store, it is a space where your welcome is not determined purely by your ability to spend money.’*

What is valuable on our High Streets?

Dumfries stands at a crossroads, questioning its identity and place within the world. While Primark may not have arrived, there is an air of anticipation and change quietly murmuring amongst a growing number of the town’s communities. Now is the time to search for the new role we can play in shaping the future of Dumfries—to reach out for a possible, renewed Dumfries.

Dumfries is not dead, merely sleeping. Hidden Dumfries lies in plain sight, behind the sagging bus stances and solitary street furniture.

Now is the time to act.


How do we judge what a downturn is anyways?

This action does not require grand master planners or large-scale redevelopment, but rather a little collective energy and small, positive acts. Testing and experimentation, problem-solving, and lightweight interventions can pave the way towards a more active High Street, and a more vibrant town centre. Small actions can highlight, question, explore, and initiate discussion, growing from an inquisitive response to our everyday surroundings.

This is a call for new distractions.

Can we create a new visual language for our High Streets?

*Dougald Hine, Space Makers, quoted in How to Save Our Town Centres, by Julian Dobson.

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Musings News

Vacca

From Mark Zygadlo

Nithraid’s Procession 


Vacca! The strange case of the lost locative. The Cow, subject and object as symbol. After Bonum, and Beckett (ablative, or is it genitive?)

Vacca, (the)Cow nominative, 
Vacca, Oh, Cow, vocative, 
Vaccam, you cow, accusative, 
Vaccae, of (the)cow, genitive, 
Vaccae, to or for (the)cow, dative, 
Vacca, by, with, from, or in (the) cow, ablative

Remember that? Of course, it would have been Mensa, table, when we of a certain generation of the modern era were learning the first declensions; female gender singular. The Latin primer, being an expression of the late classical form, omitted the locative case of colloquial or early Latin. Ah, that hushed and subtle tongue.

Oh, the locative, (vocative case, denoted by Oh… as in: Oh, Caesar… or an exclamation mark, as in: Christ! Look at the time…) the locative! It must not be forgotten for it describes the rightness of place and the infinite distance of one location from another. It was reserved for speaking of small islands alone in the Mediterranean; no archipelagoes here, no chains of thought, no Peloponnese or Balearics, no reefs, no connections to the mainland by causeways impassable at high tide, or bridges or small ferry boats. No, and no barren rocks.

The locative speaks of being separate, of being appropriately self-contained, and it can refer to being in the earth, to death and burial, that is, to humiliation. Or, to being at home, at the hearth, focum, foc, and being in the field or fields, when that had some meaning. Specific, you see, to a state of being in place, self-sufficient, separate, discrete. If they had thought of it then, on line, on the net, would be a perfect locative; in a state of separateness described by the place—the net.

Being in a State of Grace? The Cow’s case: (genitive surely; the case of the Salted Cow, but…) Our cow’s argument is locative.

Oh, Locative, (vocative) You obsolete case; you last fragile threads of pre-classical illumination, Be exhumed in this ritual

And roar your bovine craving at us for the case we are losing from the locative field. But, pitiless grammar will not bring the bull. You shall die fallow, unfertilized In the shallows.

Cleave then, oh beast, With your split hoof and state your case, Standing up to your classical canons in it. After all, This is the sharp season of your atomized shit. Homunculus eyes focus on a darker green field. Yes, pump it out, boys. More shit, more grass, more beef, more milk, more shit, more grass, More gas, yes. More, more, more. That is our locus, our focum vivendi, our domicile, And we are such classical agrarians. It is the locative case of Shit.

Cow! (Vocative) You are sacrificial, you see? To the modus, (modo, to or for the way, dative case) to the modus, While the grammar of thought, the rules of understanding Are wiping this island from the charts. But some pre-classical urge, some visceral memory knows An identical ritual killing takes me too. Letting go so much for the sake of so it is a sacrifice alright, And we, in our improved datives, are sensible of thy gift, oh Cow, And preserve thee, black and leathery, from a hook somewhere We can no longer quite describe.

Salt beef, my life. Oh, holy shit.

Salt beef at Blum’s on the Whitechapel Road, And the long walk home through the pre-classical period When we were emergent, Or what passed for young, and understood where we were. But Blum’s, oh my dears, is gone. It was, not is And in its place, I leave my dybbuk. For we too are ephemera, Singing our hearts out In the locative case.

Nithraid was conceived as a public artwork to activate the riverside in Dumfries during the summer of 2013, bringing new focus and drawing people down to celebrate the River Nith. Now in its third year, Dumfries is preparing to welcome sailors upriver to the heart of the town as Nithraid 2015 sails into town on Sunday, 2nd August. Nithraid is free and open to all, and last year saw crowds of 4,000 lining the banks to watch the winning boats cross the finish line. Find out more about this year’s Nithraid here.

The discussion is open, and we invite contributions to our artistic conversations. Whether you have been involved in Nithraid in previous years, are interested in the changing face of public art, or are curious about how a sailing race can also be an artwork, please get in touch via the comments box below. Alternatively, to send your contribution, please email [email protected].

Categories
Musings

Poem Thing.

From Stan Bonnar


Image: Oriel Marshall – Nithraid 2013.
Poem Thing.

Here it is—informal, but from the heart of me.

This is what I’m thinking: we must not lose the deep meaning of Nithraid. After all, we sweated blood to get this far. We must affirm Nithraid in the flow of world art with every action. That is our responsibility to art and to people.

The main point, of course, is to show Dumfries to the wide world as a place where things are happening. But if we are to show the art world that socially engaged public art is the way to go, then we must show them that we have resolved the problem of the redundant art object.

Here it is: the cow, the cow delivery system, the Nith, the we the people, the thing of things!

What are we saying?

We are saying that this cow thing is alive and well and living in Dumfries!

It was once a linguistic object, but here and now, it is a liberated thing.

The reason it’s liberated is because we gave the art object the voice of a thing, and that thing is everything!

The Dumfries Nithraid cow is the thing of our imagining.

It is what we are and always were.

We are the Nithraid thing.

Nithraid is the liberation of the object once known as ‘cow’.

First, we cover it in salt because salt imbues and confirms the cow as a once-object standing in reserve of our existence (for our use as required).

But then, as the cow sinks into the River Nith, we, the people, sing a mooing song... moo... moo... moo...

The salt is washed away to reveal the new, precious thing in the context of things. And this act deconstructs and disrupts the limitations of our own object-centric thinking.

Nithraid was conceived as a public artwork to activate the riverside in Dumfries during the summer of 2013, bringing new focus and drawing people down to celebrate the River Nith. Now in its third year, Dumfries is preparing to welcome sailors upriver to the heart of the town as Nithraid 2015 sails into town on Sunday, 2nd August. Nithraid is free and open to all, and last year saw crowds of 4,000 lining the banks to watch the winning boats cross the finish line. Find out more about this year’s Nithraid here.

The discussion is open, and we invite contributions to our artistic conversations—whether you have been involved in Nithraid in previous years, are interested in the changing face of public art, or are curious about how a sailing race can also be an artwork, please get in touch via the comments box below. Alternatively, to send your contribution, please email [email protected].

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