Nicholas Hedges

Art, Writing and Research

Edmund Blunden

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Edmund Blunden (1896-1974) saw action at both Ypres and the Somme and was awarded the Military Cross. A friend of Siegfried Sassoon, he became a fellow of Merton College, Oxford in 1931 where he remained until 1944, returning to the city in 1968 as Professor of Poetry.

I found the following poem in The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry.

1916 seen from 1921

Tired with dull grief, grown old before my day,
I sit in solitude and only hear
Long silent laughters, murmurings of dismay,
The lost intensities of hope and fear;
In those old marshes yet the rifles lie,
On the thin breastwork flutter the grey rags,
The very books I read are there – and I
Dead as the men I loved, wait while life drags

Its wounded length from those sad streets of war
Into green places here, that were my own;
But now what once was mine is mine no more,
I seek such neighbours here and I find none.
With such strong gentleness and tireless will
Those ruined houses seared themselves in me,
Passionate I look for their dumb story still,
And the charred stub outspeaks the living tree.

I rise up at the singing of a bird
And scarcely knowing slink along the lane,
I dare not give a soul a look or word
Where all have homes and none’s at home in vain:
Deep red the rose burned in the grim redoubt,
The self-sown wheat around was like a flood,
In the hot path the lizard lolled time out,
The saints in broken shrines were bright as blood.

Sweet Mary’s shrine between the sycamores!
There we would go, my friend of friends and I,
And snatch long moments from the grudging wars,
Whose dark made light intense to see them by.
Shrewd bit the morning fog, the whining shots
Spun from the wrangling wire: then in warm swoon
The sun hushed all but the cool orchard plots,
We crept in the tall grass and slept till noon.

This is a beautiful poem, three lines of which struck me in particular:

Those ruined houses seared themselves in me,
Passionate I look for their dumb story still,
And the charred stub outspeaks the living tree.

As part of my research for my OVADA residency I have been looking at the area of Oxford in which the OVADA gallery is situated (Gloucester Green) a place which following the Black Death was known as ‘Broken Hayes’. At this time (c.1348/49) many parts of the town – decimated by the plague – were empty, and Blunden’s lines seem to describe perfectly this sense of emptiness, reflection and loss.

Night and Day

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Reading through various documents regarding the period in Oxford after the Black Death, it’s clear there were many vacant buildings and plots around the city.

“In the later Middle Ages the town’s suburbs contracted, and within the walls there was structural decay and an abundance of vacant plots. Very little church building or restoration may be dated to the century following the Black Death. The gloomiest picture was that drawn by a jury in 1378 of a thirteen-acre site in the north-east corner of the town: the land, neither built-up nor enclosed, was a dump for filth and corpses, a resort of criminals and prostitutes…”

Although this does not refer to the area of Broken Hayes (but rather land now occupied by New College) it does paint a picture of what some parts of the town must have looked like.

By the 16th century the area (Broken Hayes) was surrounded by trees and for a few years from 1631 it served as a public bowling green. Throughout the 17th century it was used as a recreation area but one which Anthony Wood described in his journal as a ‘rude, broken and undigested place.” It might be an exaggeration to say so, but it would seem that the legacy of the Black Death lingered in this area centuries after the event.

It is the sense of emptiness in the years immediately proceeding the Black Death which interest me most at this point. Recently, I’ve been researching Memory, and have in this pursuit been reading Frances A. Yates’ book, ‘The Art of Memory,’ in which she discusses the use in Ancient Greece of Memory Places, buildings fixed in the mind which one could ‘walk through’ and by placement of certain objects in locations throughout that place recall whatever it was that was to be remembered – a speech for example. In a contemporary textbook ‘Ad Herennium‘ the anonymous author gives a description of what these Memory Places should be like:

“It is better to form one’s memory loci in a deserted and solitary place, for crowds of passing people tend to weaken the impression. Therefore the student intent on acquiring a sharp and well defined set of loci will choose one unfrequented building in which to memorise places…”

As with my linking impressions made on the soul’s block of wax (see Broken Hayes below) with the craters of Hill 62, here it’s easy to see the student’s mind as being the place itself. I can imagine the memory of a place (in this case Gloucester Green) as being sharper and more ‘accessible’ when that place is, as the Ad Herennium states, a ‘deserted and solitary’ one. One can imagine that deserted patch of ground, abandoned in the wake of the Black Death, as sharp with the memories of what had gone before. Today, this contrast between these two periods of [14th century] time might best be articulated in the contrast between night and day. In the day the area is full of people (particularly on market days) and at night, is empty, and some might say a place not so far removed from Anthony Wood’s ‘rude… and undigested place.’

Broken Hayes – Further Evidence

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In 1658, the Oxford Antiquary, Anthony Wood wrote the following in his diary:

“May 4, T., a maid was hanged at Greenditch neare Oxon, for murdering her infantbastard. After shee was cut downe and taken away to be anatomiz’d, Coniers a physitian of S. John’s Coll. and other yong physitians, did in short time bring life into her. But the bayllives of the towne hearing of it, they went between 12 and one of the clock at night to the house where she laid, and putting her into a coffin carried her into Broken hayes, and by a halter about her neck drew her out of it, and hung her on a tree there. She then was so sensible of what they were about to do, that she said ‘Lord have mercy upon me,’ &c. The women were exceedingly enraged at it, cut downe the tree whereon shee was hang’d, and gave very ill language to Henry Mallory one of the baillives when they saw him passing the streets, because he was the chief man that hang’d her. And because that he afterwards broke, or gave up his trade thro povertie (being a cutler), they did not stick to say that God’s judgments followed him for the cruelty he shew’d to the poore maid.”

Broken Hayes was also used as a place of execution for two Levellers, Private Biggs and Private Piggen who were shot on 18th September 1649 for their part in the second mutiny of the Oxford Garrison.

The Moon

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“The light of the moon covers the earth, yet it can be contained in a single bowl of water.”
Dogen Zenji (1200 – 1253)

“Headlights illuminated a large area with a deep oval-shaped pit in the middle. At its bottom a pool of water had formed in which the moon was mirrored.”
Filip Muller – Eyewitness Auschwitz

“The Moon shines with so blue a light
Over the City,
Where a decaying generation
Lives cold and evil –
A dark future prepared
For the pale grandchild.”
Georg Trakl

Minkowski

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A few days ago (Wednesday, 14th March) I looked at how people sometimes question the relevance of events such as the Holocaust and how some do not wish to participate in or view works (whether art, photography, documentary or film) which deal with such a difficult subject. I quoted Henri Begson and after reading Gaston Bachelard’s ‘The Poetics of Space’, I came upon this quote regarding Eugene Minkowski:

“Minkowski followed Bergson in accepting the notion on ‘elan vital’ as the dynamic origin of human life. Referring to Tymienwicka’s book ‘Phenomenology and Science’ we can say that for Minkowski, the essence of life is not ‘a feeling of being, of existence’ but a feeling of participation in flowing onward, necessarily expressed in terms of time and secondarily expressed in terms of space.”

In this quote, I read that we are all somehow partipants of the same past, the same space; that events 60 years ago in Poland are just as relevant as they are now. Bergson’s quote equating the past’s existence with that of objects warns us that just because we do not look does not mean that the past stops – in effect, one might say that the horrors of the past continue to this day; they are happening all the time.

Arie A. Galles

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I found this artist’s work whilst looking on the web for maps of Belzec. He’s created fourteen extraordinary charcoal drawings of different Holocaust sites and in a statement says the following:

“Under no condition can art express the Holocaust. To withdraw art from confronting this horror, however, is to assign victory to its perpetrators.”

Following on from some of the feedback I received yesterday, I found this particularly pertinent.

Bergson

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Following on from the collaborative work Austin and I presented yesterday, I was thinking about those comments from people who did not wish to engage with the work and the idea of people turning their backs (not out of spite) on difficult subjects. In respect of the Holocaust, people often say ‘it’s in the past, what relevance does it have for today?’ The following quote is from Henri Bergson:

“There will no longer be any more reason to say that the past effaces itself as soon as it’s perceived, than there is to suppose that individual objects cease to exist when we cease to perceive them.”

I find this quote particularly pertinent in that it suggests a correlation between how we perceive the past and how we perceive objects; in effect there is no difference at all. With much of my work focusing on objects and memory, its resonance is particularly striking.

A Young Man. A Middle-Aged Man.

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Today, I, along with fellow student, Austin, presented some work in progress which we’ve been developing over the last few weeks. The origins of the project was a piece which I’d planned concerning my difficulty in ‘finding individuals’ amongst the countless victims of the Holocaust – particularly when faced with a mountain of shoes and suitcases, as was the case in Auschwitz. I’d intended to ask people to bring in a piece of luggage containing a selection of personal items, and having seen Austin’s work with text and sound, thought it would be good to put the two together. His sound work consisted of a group of people reading the same prepared piece of text and resulted in a sound that was at first a mass of tangled voices, ending with just one. This illustrated perfectly the idea of looking for a single object, for an individual amongst a mass of objects; amongst countless numbers of dead.

The process of the piece was as follows. People brought in bags of objects as requested, whereupon, on my own, I emptied the luggage, and documented the contents. I then piled them in the middle of the room and asked people to come inside. Having had time to study the pile, Austin initiated the first sound work of the performance, dividing viewers into two (men and women) and then again, as if arranging a choir. They were then asked to read a prepared text – lists of people Austin had seen during specific intervals on a specific date: a young man, a middle-aged man etc. – which they did, the result of which was as hoped, a mass of voices ending with just one.

For the second part I sorted the possessions into six piles (one for shoes, one for clothes etc.) and then Austin asked everyone to read (this time positioned individually around the objects) from a second list which was itself a sorted version of the first text. Again the results were the same, albeit with a different sound; many voices becoming just one.

The last part of the piece was getting people to take their bags and reclaim their possessions from amongst the piles, in effect reclaiming their individuality.

Reactions to the piece were mixed. Some saw the sound work as being a separate thing altogether, others saw them both as a whole. Some felt the piece to be difficult and challenging (as expected) and one felt it ‘offensive’ (although not as far as I could tell in respect of the victims of the Holocaust). Dealing with a subject as emotional and as difficult as this presents the artist with many challenges, but ones which he or she must not shy away from. Equally, potential audiences should be encouraged not to ‘turn away’ from such works – some today clearly didn’t want to engage with the work at all – as this only serves to illustrate how easy it is for us now, just as it was then, to pretend that nothing bad is happening in the world.

This was a work primarily about the Holocaust, but atrocities occur every day; not on the scale of the Holocaust perhaps, but nevertheless, a murder is still the death of an individual, wherever, whenever or however it occurs.

Panorama

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Just back from a New Year visit to Poland where I visited my girlfriend and saw more of the attractions the country has to offer. This time we took a trip to Wroclaw (a five hour train ride from Warsaw) and there saw amongst other things, the Panorama of Raclawicka. I had no idea what to expect of it, only that it was a large painting of a battle and that we were going to look at it for half an hour. At 3.30pm (our appointed slot) Monika and I made our way along with a number of others, up a slope inside what the Rough Guide describes as a ‘gargantuan wicker basket rendered in concrete’. I could see a part of the painting as we approached from below – the sky and some of the ‘set’ displayed in front of the painting, in this case what looked like a wheel from a cannon. On seeing this my heart sank a little, as the combination of a painting with ‘added scenery’ called to mind a set for some dodgy play, but on reaching the painting proper, and seeing the whole thing in its entirety, I was more than very pleasantly surprised.

The painting itself is 120m long and 15m high and is beautifully painted, and far from being a bit twee, the ‘set’ between the painting and the viewer works really well. And it got me to thinking about my own work and the paintings I made last semester. I want to create something like a panorama, in the style of the paintings I have already created, onto which I can project the shadows of those viewing. I’m not sure how, but it’s an idea nonetheless.

Translocation

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Having showed work concerning my experience of Auschwitz-Birkenau, I began to think back to the work I started earlier in the semester which concerned another place; Oxford’s University Parks.

Although these places are – for obvious reasons – both very different, they are nevertheless open spaces in which people are remembered. In the case of Auschwitz-Birkenau it is the 1.1 million victims of Nazi Genocide who are remembered; in the case of the Parks, it’s a comparative scattering of people who knew and loved the place.

What I find interesting in these two places is the way in which the dead are remembered. In Auschwitz-Birkenau, it’s as if “the dead are still drilled“, still confined to Barracks, whereas in the Parks they sit on their benches and enjoy the place they loved while they were living.

I’ve also begun to wonder whether it is possible to describe one place in terms of another? Many in this city, will never get the chance to (or may not wish to) visit Auschwitz-Birkenau. So can I somehow describe its qualities – its scale, space, atmosphere – it terms of The Parks?

Bruno Schulz

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From ‘The Street of Crocodiles’

“But where the ground extended into a low-lying isthmus and dropped into the shadow of the back wall of a deserted soda factory, it became grimmer, overgrown and wild with neglect, untidy, fierce with thistles, bristling with nettles, covered with a rash of weeds, until, at the very end of the walls, in an open rectangular bay, it lost all moderation and became insane… It was there that I saw him first and for the only time in my life, at a noon hour crazy with heat. It was at a moment when time, demented and wild breaks away from the treadmill of events and like an escaping vagabond, runs shouting across the fields. Then the summer grows out of control, spreads at all points over space with a wild impetus, doubling and trebling itself into an unknown, lunatic dimension.”

Recent Book Purchases

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Species of Spaces and Other Pieces – Georges Perec
Memory, History, Forgetting – Paul Ricoeur
Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Cultural Memory in the Present) – Andreas Huyssen
Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination – Annette Kuhn
The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World – David Abram
White Magic and Other Poems – Krzysztof Baczynski
The Art of Memory – Frances A. Yates
The Poetics of Space – Gaston Bachelard
Shadows and Enlightenment – Michael Baxandall
A Short History of the Shadow – Victor I. Stoichita
In Praise of Shadows – Jun’ichiro Tanizaki

Charles Nodier

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“The different names for the soul, among nearly all peoples, are just so many breath variations and onomatopoeic expressions of breathing.”

Charles Nodier, Dictionnaire Raisonné des Onomatopées Françaises, 1828

A New Website

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After thinking about it for quite some time I have finally made some changes to my website. Since starting my MA in Composition and Sonic Art at Brookes University here in Oxford, I have come to the realisation that for too long I have been restricting my artistic practice by compartmentalising everything I do. So, whereas before on my website I had categories for art, music and writing, I have chosen instead to see these disciplines as more a means to an end rather than an end in themselves. So, from now on, everything I do will come under the singular term ‘art’, even though ‘art’ is not in itself a category on this website; I am an artist rather than an artist, writer and musician.

On the MA, we have been encouraged to explore different strategies for creating artworks, and for exploring ideas. I have been guilty in the past – like so many others – of having an idea and instantly thinking of the end result; designating a medium and visualising a form before I’ve even explored the idea or theme. Working this way has always blocked me, for, rather than thinking about the meaning behind the work, I have instead always thought about the work – or what I have perceived the work will be. For example, I think of an idea, and say to myself, “I will do a 10 minute video piece…” and at once the idea is constrained, strait-jacketed, and, as a result it withers and dies; crushed, more often than not, by concerns over technical constraints (and possibilities).

So, this website marks a departure from that way of working. Now with my ideas, I try and look for a way in using strategies such as free-writing, drawing (as a means of understanding a given thing) and mapping. However, in designing the website, I still required categories of sorts and decided upon three; not Art, Writing and Music as I had before, but rather Places, People and Objects.

Much of my work is centred around the concept of place and deals in particular with memories of that place. These works might – eventually – be video-based, sonic, aural, text-based, paintings, drawings… whatever, but I have refrained fromusing any of these as categories in themselves. Instead, under each heading I have listed the various projects I am working on and within each of these have created six headings, those being; Introduction, Context, Evidence, Approach, Journal and Progression. More may follow, but as things stand these will suffice.
Introduction is just that, an introduction to the themes and ideas which I am exploring. Context is an explanation of my reasons for wishing to pursue the idea; how the Place, Person or Object relates to me and vice-versa. Evidence is an exploration of the thing’s background; it’s history, it’s place in the past, the present and – in conjecture – the future, as well as being a collection of relevant readings and/or images. Approach is a summary of the methods I have used – or am using – to explore the idea or theme, for example, free-writing, drawing or mapping. Journal comprises extracts of my journals and sketchbooks and Progression is a look at work carried out thus far, with thoughts on possible final pieces.

As said, this way of working – and indeed thinking – marks a departure for me, but already I have reaped the rewards. Hopefully, you, whoever you are, might reap some reward too.

© Nicholas Hedges 2024