WHEN 

black ink
2017

produced as limited edition of 10 included in issue 5 of Paratext - a poetry publishing experiment, with each issue related to an online index

When features the script of The Old Recent, a film exploring the formation of the mountainous landscapes of Scotland and Norway. It takes its title from the name of the earlier stage of the most recent geological era of the Holocene. It imagines landscapes in motion, forming and collapsing, with a soundtrack drawn from the geological narratives of these places formed over thousands of years.

This language of geology collapses timescales into sentences, entire millennia condensed into a few words, one thing following another to reach the end of the timeline, where we stand. This way of explaining how place exists has the effect of severing us from it, giving the impression that these processes have somehow stopped with us in the present, and giving a limiting view of what history is and how and when it happens. The film seeks to play with these narratives, layering and stretching them, emptying them of authority as they become disjointed words, floating over an abstract landscape.

> the film