On the 17th of May, our goal was to take a walk with the freshest of eyes. We met at The Boat House on the banks of the Wear in the middle of Durham. A group of young, intelligent types borrowed from busy lives to walk the river. We encouraged them (and they encouraged us) to stop and stand still: to discern the flow of ivy, the direction of the Old Gardens, the scavenge in the hedgerows; a greedy pleasure filling us as we shared knowledge removed from the plugged-in joggers and hung-over jumpers slouching towards the town's cafes.
We followed the river's meanders and capillaries, collected detritus and loose flora for in-situ installations in the Old Gardens. Some drew maps of their journey - strip maps- sketched outwards towards a destination they had not yet reached. In amongst their lines of movement, time was taken to record the sounds heard, the buildings drawn, the conversations thought but rarely said.
Away from the bowing water and over a hillock with a wheelbarrow, we ended in the gardens chatting in a circle - a witches' meet - estranged from the normal patterns of life. We shared our findings, emptied our bags onto the floor, played catch with cameras and climbed the gritty walls. We made ourselves different by building installations in the trees: delicate interventions for the observant passer-by; perhaps, a dog-walker thinking of bills suddenly unburdened by a hanging daffodil, surely no accident.
Then it rained.
We saw the mud on the floor and felt the wind in our flanks - we were never transcendental, flighting creativity with labour to live forever, but wet animals, who for a moment, had seen anew and thought they were.
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