Continuum was envisaged as a time-travelling walk with artists Miles & Dacombe to discover frozen moments in time. The artists wanted to enable participants to see the woods in a new way through artworks installed in Thoroughsale Woods in a magical and sensory exploration in this part of the ancient woodland of Rockingham Forest. A walking experience that played with concepts of time and seasonal change within a woodland setting where walkers were invited to further create the auras of different times of the year with the use of a range of materials.
PORTAL
The first intervention which invited walkers to step out of the everyday and into the changing seasons to be found in the woods.
Jo Dacombe performed her specially created invocation
Continuum: an invocation
Welcome to Continuum.
Welcome to the woods,
A place of mystery and constant change
Long have woodlands been the source of
Folk tales and enchantment.
Trees contain spirit and energy
The perfect analogies of the cycle of life, death and rebirth
With their seasonal change
And deep time endurance.
Their canopies stretching to light and life;
Their roots reaching into the underworld
Of death and darkness.
Trees have mysterious properties
A Tree-lore
That our ancients understood.
Divination, protection and healing;
A deeper, long time wisdom.
The Alder, the Goddess Tree, with its nurturing and protective powers,
Giving nutrients to the earth;
The Ash, the World Tree, holding the earth and sky together;
The Beech tree, its wood used for inscribing runes by the Nordic peoples,
Carrying wisdom in the form of letters
The Beech gives us the word for Book.
The Beech, the Celts associated with ancient knowledge and time.
We cast the mast
From the Beech tree
Where time slips
Exploring the four seasons in one day
And the knowledge of sight and sounds,
Taste and touch;
The magic of the trees.
We invite you to step over the mast
And enter our woodland time
Continuum.
Jo Dacombe
The photographs from this part of the walk can be found here
During this part of the invocation Carole Miles created a portal by casting beech masts for the participants to walk over.
Continuum was commissioned by Deep Roots Tall Trees as part of the Our Woods Festival
deeprootstalltrees.org/
Miles and Dacombe have been collaborating since 2010. Their work aims to creatively engage people with environments, often enhancing the senses and leading walks into undiscovered places, connecting people with their surroundings in surprising ways. They work nationally, running walking projects and creating interventions in landscapes. They have worked on trains, in fields, climbed trees and explored crossings between the urban and the rural, even in the rain.
