writing into

& out of place together

A collaborative writing experiment
In response to the Group Residency AIR, SEA AND SOIL: WRITING INTO PLACE that was devised and hosted by The Museum of Loss and Renewal, Birsay, Orkney, Scotland in 2023

April & May 2024
Rosie Cunningham, Jean Fleming, Giovanna MacKenna, Tracy Mackenna, Emily Orley, Polly Poupore, Anna Tallach Kenned

What is special about place is not some romance of a pre-given collective identity or the eternity of the hills. Rather, what is special about place is precisely that throwntogetherness, the unavoidable challenge of negotiating a here-and-now (itself drawing on a history and geography of then and theres); and a negotiation which must take place within and between both human and nonhuman.

Doreen Massey[1]

Thinking is about finding new images. Thinking is about change and transformation.

Rosi Braidotti[2]

[1] For Space, 2005, p. 140
[2] ‘Toward a new nomadism: feminist Deleuzian tracks; or, metaphysics and metabolism,’ in C.V. Boundas and D.Olkowski (eds.), Gilles Deleuze and the theatre of philosophy, 1994, p.165

Emily Orley, 4 May 2024

Our time in Orkney, in the Bay of Birsay, between 23 and 30 September 2023 was unique. All group residencies are unique, of course, made up of the particular ingredients of the people gathered there, how they interact with each other and the place that holds them, but also the particularities of the time, that time, in that location and in the world more generally. Each place, as a throwntogetherness, is affected by how the stars and weather patterns align in that moment, the moving of tides, tectonic plates and all those living in between.

It was a week of warmth and laughter above all else, although we also, between us, experienced illness and injury. It was a week of holding and thinking and reading and writing, walking and looking and breathing and swimming and watching swimmers and seals, and recording and listening and sharing and being quiet and still and also raucous. To reflect back on it now and produce something tangible, we engaged in a collaborative writing experiment, a kind of exquisite corpse exercise running in two directions from a singular prompt. In the spirit of generosity that underscored the week, people responded with openness and care. Here are the results.

Emily Orley, 4 May 2024

It’s So Wonderful

This bubble we are creating together stretches and expands until it can no longer contain the pressure.

With joyous bursts it releases the cacophony of our collective joy.

It’s so wonderful!

These vibrations around our table, voices, silverware tapping and half full glasses sing in and out of harmony.

Clink!

Nervous, raucous, silly, mysterious…

An invisible conductor waves his baton and our laughter rises to a crescendo

Making musicalprformance art together.

These ARE serious points.

These are serious poems a voice says, not quite protest,

a hint of bewilderment, the vocal squirm as laughter tickles

the earnest work of creation off its worthy path. We laugh

together, mostly. Under the high notes, the bass gurgles,

the trills and skips and invitations, the land beneath us

is never still. The water offers / withholds / repeats.

We laugh at the cursory beat of our lives, at the flicker

of years we have here and how we choose to live them.

[ 1 ]

[ 2 ]

[ 3 ]

The Passing Place

Sense made from marks made on

the endlessly unfurling spool of time,

cut into segments way back when the then

and the now.

We want to make our mark on this slipstream

of time – Kilroy was here. A small bird

etched into stone. Was he liberated,

the stone waiting to feel wings beat into flight

or was he imposed, chipped into time

a moment subjugated into immortality?

Awash

Awash in the twinkling light of laughter

And newly found friendship

Surrounded by a sea of possibilities.

We dive deep and surface, converging on swells of

emotion never quite synchronized.

But, intrigued.

And joyful.

[ 4 ]

Standing Stones

Why do we stand stones to mark time?

To showcase the shining of the sun

at a certain time of day, on a certain day in time?

To enumerate the days between when a life

begins

and when it ends? Why stones, why standing,

why names and numbers

etched and then fading in wind and rain,

consumed by lichen, becoming other.

[ 5 ]

[ 6 ]