Nithraid was concieved as a public artwork to activate the riverside in Dumfries in the summer of 2013, and bring new focus and people down to celebrate the Nith. Now in it’s third year Dumfries is preparing to welcome sailors up river to the heart of the town when Nithraid 2015 will sail into town on Sunday, 2nd of August. Nithraid is free and open to all to attend, 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 years 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 and when a sailing race is also an artwork, please get in touch via the comments box below or to send your contribution please email [email protected]
When the earths 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 invite – 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 pasture land, 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 that you couldn’t hide a field of barley from ancient raiders. Always moving from winter to summer pastures and to market over Nith, Annan, 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.
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Nithraid was concieved as a public artwork to activate the riverside in Dumfries in the summer of 2013, and bring new focus and people down to celebrate the Nith. Now in it’s third year Dumfries is preparing to welcome sailors up river to the heart of the town when Nithraid 2015 will sail into town on Sunday, 2nd of August. Nithraid is free and open to all to attend, 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 years 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 and when a sailing race is also an artwork, please get in touch via the comments box below or 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 fluminem ut bibat ducent.
Aniculae quando vaccae salsae agros olim operibant recordorantur.
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.
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Nithraid was concieved as a public artwork to activate the riverside in Dumfries in the summer of 2013, and bring new focus and people down to celebrate the Nith. Now in it’s third year Dumfries is preparing to welcome sailors up river to the heart of the town when Nithraid 2015 will sail into town on Sunday, 2nd of August. Nithraid is free and open to all to attend, 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 years 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 and when a sailing race is also an artwork, please get in touch via the comments box below or to send your contribution please email [email protected]
Nithraid was concieved as a public artwork to activate the riverside in Dumfries in the summer of 2013, and bring new focus and people down to celebrate the Nith. Now in it’s third year Dumfries is preparing to welcome sailors up river to the heart of the town when Nithraid 2015 will sail into town on Sunday, 2nd of August. Nithraid is free and open to all to attend, 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 years 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 and when a sailing race is also an artwork, please get in touch via the comments box below or to send your contribution please email [email protected]
this is what i’m thinking… that we must not lose the deep meaning of nithraid… for 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 people.
the main point is of course 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 liberating of the object once known as ‘cow’.
first we cover it in salt because salt imbues and confirms the cow as once-an-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.
stan
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Nithraid was concieved as a public artwork to activate the riverside in Dumfries in the summer of 2013, and bring new focus and people down to celebrate the Nith. Now in it’s third year Dumfries is preparing to welcome sailors up river to the heart of the town when Nithraid 2015 will sail into town on Sunday, 2nd of August. Nithraid is free and open to all to attend, 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 years 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 and when a sailing race is also an artwork, please get in touch via the comments box below or to send your contribution please email [email protected]
Here’s the rainbow scum in the peaty puddle, the floating wabbling moss pressed to a trickle, to the stony sykes and the burns with the overhanging alder banks, the Marr, the Scaur, you know them all. Plunge pools between the rocks where something cold in the shape of a tiny fish slimes to the stones and you dare not touch it, innocuous though you are. The falls and the places of the saved, the plains flood, bunds and bridges now, drains and stinking outfalls, rich weed and confluences, abbey ruins, mills, houses, fishing beats those who should and those who shouldn’t, lord bless us and slow us every one.
Now here’s a river that flows both ways twice a day, here’s a river with a bore, here’s a river of great salmon and otters in the town centre, here’s river that worked, here’s a river that sent a thousand swanskin gloves in a single ship, here’s a river that’s been trained and straightened, blasted, dredged, bridged, forded, made electricity, turned the town mill. It’s the replying torrent that floods the town and carries off the eroded hills, it fills and empties with millions upon millions of tons of seawater twice a day and here’s a benign stream of clear tea stained water with islands and ducks and white flowering weed.
Here are the docks and wharves o’ergrown, the flattening merse, the ooze, the whetted wind that opens the distance to the sea. This is the sea. The Nith is a constant with darkness laying along its meandering silty bed. No day is the same yet…
The Rise of Denmark in full sail on the River Nith. From the collection of the Dumfries Museum
Mark Zygadlo is part of the Stove’s Nithraid team, developing the boat race itself and this year has also been working to create a large installation in the centre of the River Nith. This year’s Nithraid takes place on Saturday, 13th of September. A dangerous dinghy race from Carsethorn upriver, the boats will arrive in the centre of Dumfries with the high tide at approximately 3.45pm. There is a lot going down on the Whitesands all afternoon, full details on our Nithraid page here.
