The centred text of a poem, making the outline of a cow's teat on the page, threw me back to my childhood when we milked by hand in that famous winter. All frosted, the universe, but my cheek was warm on her flank when I stripped—that's what we called it, stripping—two quarters into the pail.
Black-and-white backs smell so pink in the byre. The weight of a full udder, its high shape between her hocks, and her sighing, her blowing, as I get the feel of it and she lets down her milk. Blessed animal, still giving her warmth when there's nothing outside but ice.
Neatsfoot oil, I thought today, a last gift rendered from her hooves and cannon bones. And "Near," an archaic name for cattle, or "Kine", "Dà" in Welsh, the same as the word for "good".
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 or are interested in the changing face of public art and 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].
When the Earth’s crust thickened and cooled deeply, it cracked, and four avenues dropped neatly in lines: four invitations for four rivers—Annan, Nith, Dee, and Cree. Water, washing soil over the rock, posted another invitation—for a beast to graze the land, to break it with footprints for germinating seeds, and to re-fertilise it with their dung.
We know the coos, slabbed together on a cold, damp morning, their breath hanging together like the breath of the Earth; or contented and dispersed across a summer field, chewing in deep rhythm. We know them as part of the oneness of our place.
Our land is pastureland, home to a kinship between humankind and cookind that has spawned a million inventions with milk, meat, and leather.
Our coos have been our wealth—their mobility precious in times when you couldn’t hide a field of barley from ancient raiders. Always moving from winter to summer pastures, and to market over Annan, Nith, Dee, and Cree.
Humans moved too. In tough times, we spread far across the seas, and as migrants found their feet, they called for their coos to follow. Great Uncle Jimmy raised Shorthorn cattle in Wigtownshire to send on boats to the Argentine. The canny exiles sent us meat home in cans. Corned beef is still the favourite food of one of Jimmy’s daughters, and the other drank unpasteurised milk straight from the farm all her days.
We are Nithraid, and this land is where we bide; so we race the tide up our river to release the salty spirit of Coo.
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].
THE OLD MEN TAKE THE SALT COW DOWN TO THE RIVER TO DRINK.
THE OLD WOMEN REMEMBER WHEN THE FIELDS WERE FULL OF SALT COWS.
THE YOUNG GIRLS WATCH AS THE BOYS LEAP OVER THE BACK OF THE SALT COW.
THE YOUNG MEN SADDLE THEIR SALT COWS IN PREPARATION FOR WAR.
THESE THINGS BEING SO, CAESAR SET OUT FOR THE LAND OF THE SALT COW.
Senes vaccam salsam ad flumen ut bibat ducent.
Aniculae quando vaccae salsae agros olim operiebant recordantur.
Puellae pueros qui super salsam vaccam salient vident.
Iuvenes parati bellum suscipere vaccas salsas sternent.
Caesar his rebus factis ad terram ubi vacca salsa habitat discessit.
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].
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].
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].
In 2013, The Stove Network joined forces with Wide-Open and Spring Fling to co-produce the first Environmental Art Festival Scotland (EAFS) in Dumfries and Galloway. Now, we are delighted to announce that we are part of bringing you the second outing of the festival—EAFS 2015, Off-Grid, has been announced this week.
The ruins of Morton Castle, along with its fabulous surrounding countryside, will provide the spectacular backdrop for the Environmental Art Festival Scotland 2015 over the weekend of 29th–30th August.
The festival, held in Dumfries and Galloway, will be an intriguing and playful opportunity for artists to help change ideas and influence thinking about how we need to adapt and evolve in an era of climate change.
There will be a strong emphasis on youth, with five interns playing a central role in organising and delivering the project, helping to build a wider, younger audience to engage with environmental issues.
At the heart of the event will be a variety of specially commissioned artworks, as well as walks, fireside conversations, food art, and other activities to inspire the imagination.
Ruaridh Thin-Smith, one of the interns, said: “The festival will be really enjoyable and fun while addressing some of the most pressing issues of our age.
“EAFS is about getting young people to understand a simple truth—that, whatever it might seem, we are in control of our own spaces, our places, our environment.
“If we can understand that we have the power to affect positive changes and make our planet a better place to live, then we can accomplish anything.”
The other interns, all from Dumfries and Galloway, which is home to EAFS, are Meredith Langley Vine, Katie Anderson, Daniel Leigh, and Kerry Annison. The EAFS youth project, which involves a wider group of young people as well as the interns, is funded by the Holywood Trust.
Over the last year, the EAFS team has been developing the ethos for a thoughtful and playful festival for 2015. This is reflected in the central themes of “inventiveness, foolishness, and generosity as a way of understanding the world.”
The festival aims to attract visitors from all over Scotland and beyond, bringing together people who work with the land, scientists, artists, environmentalists, cultural thinkers, poets, and performers to participate in the event.
Jan Hogarth, a co-curator of EAFS, said: “The castle and its amazing landscape are a brilliant place for an environmental art event that is all about our changing relationship with the environment.
“We are expecting lots of interest from all over the region and the country as a whole in the event, and we are delighted to be working with our team of five interns. They are bringing a huge vitality and a fresh perspective to EAFS.
“We are very grateful for the support of the Holywood Trust and their recognition of the need to engage young people in the arts and landscape.”
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