JED PROJECT UPDATE

This summer I'm a wee bit excited about the possibility of collaborating with an arts organisation to examine in some depth the agricultural practices patterns of land ownership in the Borders. How do you make art about such topics?

I don't know much about agriculture other than what I can read about, ask farmers about and piece together from lots of walking and poking around into fields, moors, woodlands and farmyards. My research is necessarily restricted. I've been wondering/wandering for a long time how to get inside the themes and topics relevant to agriculture and land ownership and have in previous projects produced some work from the perspectives of sound recording, photography, short film (my glacially-paced and ever-emerging series on The Landowner for example) and latterly text. There's no correct answer except that the best media are best within their own conditions and limitations. Even after many attempts I’m still not sure how you make art about agriculture though having doubts isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
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What I'd really like to do, and have already begun in some investigations, is to find out from farmers and landowners how they see their work and land in say fifty or a hundred years, especially within the context of the forthcoming energy transition. A Northumberland dairy farmer I know told me that a century or so ago nearly everything was powered by the sun. Now it’s oil. I’m asking myself if we’ll see electric tractors and the end of nitrogen fertilisers made out of petroleum coke. I'd like to find out more - I only know bits - about the details of land ownership, rights and responsibilities, agricultural economics, how government policies affect farmers. I'm personally interested in public access to land, in particular why some landowners (but happily only a few) insist on making things as difficult as possible for people to enjoy the land simply and harmlessly, that is by walking on it. I've become fascinated by gates, fences, latches, clasps and hasps. I try very hard to understand barbed wire and electric fences. Perhaps I’ll start a Sears Roebuck style catalogue listing all the impediments to easy walking.

The more I learn the more I enjoy my walks. The more I walk the more I learn.