'The Annihilation of Time And Space: Embankments

 

All Images: Lincoln Eastern Bypass (Upper Reaches), July 2023

Summer steadily trickles away, and (as so many times before) I'm faced with the prospect of far too many creative projects simultaneously in play, and relatively little actual 'product' to show for any single one of them. Nevertheless, I'm also aware that yet more naval-gazing over such perceived problems is merely another distraction. Nobody imposes any of this on me - it's all cheerfully embraced, after all. And ultimately, having too many ideas, or feeling creatively over-stimulated, is hardly the worst problem.

It is a little baffling how quickly/easily a little clutch of photos - taken spontaneously in a particular location, one day, can blow-up into an ever-expanding, multi-layered potential project, requiring multiple return visits (and extended photo-editing sessions). However, this has to be preferable to feeling disengaged or uninspired in the final analysis. Without getting too existential about things, it must be better to check-out with a list of things still to do, than to merely wait for the end in a state of inertia. The days may continue to dwindle down, but a healthy to-do list might just be the healthiest form of distraction of all. In the Deleuzian sense, perhaps all that really matters is that we continue the process of 'becoming' until (perhaps even after?) the passage of time intervenes definitively.

Crikey! - that got philosophical pretty quickly. The intended function of this post is really just to highlight how the work goes on, and to look eastwards again, to the Lincoln Eastern Bypass, after having mostly been staring down the M5 to Bristol's Floating Harbour in recent weeks. The images here document one aspect of my most recent research trip to the bypass. Actually, I'm wondering if this might be the last such for a while, given that they serve to fill-in the missing upper reaches.

Over a period of around a year, I have now managed to collect images from the entirety of the Eastern section of the overall bypass, completed in December 2020 (this is the section still new enough to retain some kind of slightly 'alien' resonance within the landscape, and the one with the most personal/subjective significance for me). Certainly, there is now more than enough raw material to keep me tied-up for quite a while. In the interests of progressing things, it would seem only sensible to ease-off on the collecting phase, and move into the actually-doing-something-about-it phase. By coincidence, my Bristol-focused project(s) are approaching a similar point, I think. It feels like the Autumn/Winter months may see things start to coalesce a little more noticeably.

One obvious way in to that process is to start sorting the visual raw material into various categories (subject, motif, formal elements, thematic potential, etc.). That's clearly one way to avoid becoming overwhelmed, and to break things into chewable pieces. However, the cross-referencing of, and interplay between, such groupings is also often how the unexpected connections and significant correspondences may begin to emerge. The real key is to  avoid rigid pigeonholing, or trite logics, and to maintain fluid or porous boundaries. One clumsy analogy might be a process of ring-fencing in which all gates are deliberately left open (and vigilance is maintained regarding any productively wandering black sheep).

Consequently, in the interests of preliminary organisation, this little batch of images all fit into the category of  Embankments. Such artificially elevated earthworks are a major feature throughout this heavily engineered landscape, and they serve to delineate the new road's imposition upon the map. In some cases they represent a grand topographical statement, in others - a more modest barrier. Whatever the scale of any particular section, the embankments are muscular in their geometry overall - and also inject a range of dynamic perspectives into what is, at first glance, a supremely bland region. The more I become embedded within it, the more i realise I am often looking either up or down, and that this is as much a function of the embankments as the more general contours of the general  landscape. Passing vehicles are often raised above my eye line, or else I am looking down upon their roofs. It only serves to underline the separation between the time-perception of the motorist or delivery driver, and that of the runner, cyclist, dog walker, itinerant artist/photographer, or any individual  whose workplace might reside in the surrounding landscape itself.

The other features which particularly capture my attention amongst the embankments, are those endless serried ranks of desultory saplings, dutifully plugged into the earth within their plastic sheathes. I have no idea whether, in decades to come, these will be transformed into majestic stands of trees (the long-term goal is, I suppose - to provide some further degree of screening, or else some simulacra of organic woodland). However, in their current state , they simply seem to punctuate the sense of a profound disconnect between the agendas and demands of modern life, and any symbiotically meaningful relationship with the 'natural' world. One is even tempted to speculate whether they were simply programmed into the road scheme in fulfilment of some quota or other (is each one accounted for - I wonder?). Mostly, they just serve to remind me that, whilst green may be the dominant colour in these images, we are still inescapably in the Edgelands here. Indeed, the city is just out of shot in each case. The very disconnect mentioned above is, of course, the defining feature of such liminal zones.