Remote Performances: Day 4 – And then…

Remote Performances is a collaboration between artists London Fieldworks, Resonance104.4fm, (the world’s first art radio station), and LADA. From the 4 to 9 August 2014, 20 specially commissioned artist performances and programmes created with local residents are being broadcast live from Outlandia, a unique artists' field-station in Glen Nevis, Lochaber, Scotland. 

Remote Performances will be broadcast daily from 12-4pm (listen live) 

Below is the fourth in a series of blogposts written by Tracey Warr responding to Remote Perfomances, the blogposts will be published daily on LADA's blog throughout the project. 

Remote Performances: Day 4 –  And Then … – Thurs 7 Aug, Loch Ailort and Glen Nevis

The kitchen is littered with booms, mics, amps, cabling, laptops, and guitars. A pod of dolphins in the bay witnessed from the kitchen window. Emerald vegetation clothes craggy mountains and loch banks, looking like a snug snooker cloth draped over them from the sky.

Clair Chinnery, dressed in feathers and whistles, making birdcalls, is a cross between a camouflaged hunter and a shaman. Ed Baxter is whistling up sheepdogs and Tam Dean Burn is yodelling Shakespeare across the Glen. 

Broadcasting today in the Outlandia hut: Alex Gillespie and Willie Anderson tell yarns of their experiences as veterans of the Nevis Mountain Rescue Team; Tony White and Peter Lanceley perform Stormbringer, a story set on Sanda Island; Lorna Finlayson and I present Taking Four Sentences for a Walk, an account of the writers’ workshop; and Ruth Barker’s electric performance is a retelling of ancient myths.

‘Nature! my arse!’ declares Nuno Sacramento in the writers’ workshop, responding to roads, fences, trails, and other signs of control and exploitation in the managed landscape. There is a hubris in the presumption of ownership of this place or any other natural environment. Inhabitants are only slightly less temporary, less frivolous, than tourists in the scale of things.

Late at night on the road a stag confronts us in the headlights – like a dream. 

Other blogposts:

Remote Performances: Day One – What Is Remoteness?

Remote Performances: Day Two – Soundings

Remote Performances: Day Three – Off the Grid Radio

Remote Performances: Day Four – And then…

Remote Performances: Day Five – Climbing a mountain in blue suede shoes*

Remote Performances: Day Six – Wild Radio