Since June last year I have been making video footage of the canopy of trees that overhangs Byway 745 at the point where I have been observing a variety of phenomena. The plan is to assemble a loop that takes the viewer through the year’s changes. Excitingly, spring has sprung and the trees are leafing up again after what seems like an endless winter.
My method is to make weekly recordings in the same spot with my phone camera on a small tripod facing straight upwards into the trees. The camera isn’t placed strictly in the same position each time but certain branches and trunks are recognisable throughout. I take 3 shots each time – a wide-shot, a mid-shot and a close-up.
I will edit this footage together so that it gives the feeling of a slight shifting of focus during its cycle, as if the viewer were lying on the ground beneath the trees, rather than having a regular time-lapse aesthetic. There will be the changes in shot type as well as the shifts in positioning to help with this, along with varying shot durations.
The business of looking up is linked to that of looking down. It is about taking in the whole space. The body of work I have been making in this place is about the critical zone of the lower atmosphere down to the bedrock of chalk. The life of that canopy hovers and glides over me as I aim the camera at it and at the same time as working on this piece I am completing a large scale drawing of the roots of these same trees.
My initial stimulus for making this piece was seeing Jennifer Steinkamp’s Blind Eye 1 (2018), below, at the Hayward Gallery exhibition Among the Trees in 2020.
Her piece is a 3 minute computer generated video projection of the seasonal phases of a fictional a birch grove. The viewpoint is looking straight into the trunks, not taking in the tops or the roots of the trees. There is no sense of what is beyond and any movement comes from a gentle swaying of the trunks and a suggested breeze that ruffles the leaves.
My challenge is, partly, how do I condense a year into a short enough time slot so as not to bore an audience. Steinkamp’s piece is mesmerising but silent, and loops continuously. The vast scale invites you to walk along its length. I’d like my audience to be required to look up, as if into the canopy. Maybe they’ll need to lie down and view the piece slowly. If it’s an effort to get installed for viewing, perhaps they won’t jump up too quickly. I also aim to use the audio I have been collecting, which tells the story of the seasons almost as much as the visual element does. Now I have verging on a year’s worth of footage I can really make a start at the editing of this work.
All photographs by Liz Clifford.
Liz Clifford 