Playing Safe Underground
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| 'What It Is Rite' in Llangattock Escarpment |
Recently I took a part of an installation I
had made, deep underground within a cave. A friend has been making a film in
the cave and I went to keep her company. We had been there once previously and
I had wandered off down various chambers exploring and trying to make sense of
place as she worked.
The cave is accessed through a small hole
in the side of an escarpment in the Brecon Beacons. On climbing through the hole
you enter a large cavity apparently once used as a
church. From this first chamber there are three chamber systems. The
chambers (one in particular) is covered in graffiti linking visitors from
across the centuries. I am particularly drawn to the polite copperplate writing
of visitors from the 18th and 19th centuries. Mainly
names and dates. It hints that I am not alone, that I am by surrounded by
centuries of fellow travellers. It does not feel like a lonely cold place
although in many ways it is.
In another chamber I lie down and squeeze
under a large overhang. I turn off the torches and listen. Water drops down the
rocks with a regular beat. I discern a further sound, regular and following a
slower beat. At points the one becomes the off beat of the other. They play a
rhythm together.
I expect that the darkness will be inky and
velvety, but it is not. It has its own quality that is tricky to describe. I
expect that after a few minutes I will feel panicked but I do not. I feel
relaxed. I wonder if this is what being inside a floatation tank feels like.
The sensation reminds me of a work I made in 2013 Polar Exploration. In that
work I sort to create a neutral space where the senses were blurred through ear
defenders, the space smelling of mint and the audience eating a mini Kendal
mint cake. Visually the audience were made ‘snow blind’ via the installation
being large wendy house structures made of film lighting gel in ‘heavy frost’.
Although a space of light, the inability to see or hear properly led the
visitors to go inside themselves. It is this quality, that I feel in the cave.
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