Wonder

Froming

2011-08-09T21:44:00.003+01:00

Performance Research in the River Frome

Collaboration with Itta Howie

River Frome Experiment

2011-02-11T14:22:00.001Z

Oxygenating water

breathing life into the flow

blowing bubbles into the test tube

shaking it up - watching pinhead bubbles swirl and twist

toss into the river

catch the air

droplets tap tap

ripples circles flow.

Collaboration with Itta Howie

Local Abundance

2010-06-28T13:31:00.009+01:00

I'm in the process of compiling an audio book of local recipes.

If you live in Bristol and have any recipes you would like to share I would love to hear from you.

Click on the image below to enlarge.

eve_houston@yahoo.co.uk

The theme for the recipe book is food made from ingredients grown by you, a friend or foraged from the wild within a 10 mile radius of your home.

2010-06-11T14:02:00.000+01:00

Narroways, St Werburghs 11th June 2010

Walking with friend and artist Natasha Machin we stop to exchange breath with the other-than-human life around us.

Once upon a time the people resisted the proposal by a developer to build houses and roadways to a much loved and rare green space in the city.

Here today I breathe in the air infused with hedgerow trees, grasses, wild flowers, pee, cow parsley and memories that are not mine - of people who resisted schemes of road building.

The scent gives me a treat, one I could access everyday if I was disciplined or even create ways that I experience virile growth to be in my world. I see this action to breathe air that competes with the car culture of Bristol and the business flights, I see it has a privilege and I ask how can I pass this on? Simple not to those whose minds are occupied daily with the struggle to find a place to call home. And I am happy to acknowledge that I can access this because of the actions of the people from the past - a sure relationship between people and nature. I ask what is nature? Is it outside us or are we part of it?

Natasha Machin

Ants carry aphids their own size effortlessly up the red earth mound.

Translucent greenflies cling in a regular pattern on the underside of a sycamore leaf - the sun highlighting the print.

Grey brown old bramble stalks lay across one another in a scribble. A lizzard? A mouse? A shrew? A slow worm? Slithers through the gaps.

The hawthorn berries are hard green pellets, shiny in the light, the hope of pink around their edges.

Eve Houston

The Rhubarb I Fed

2010-05-13T21:49:00.007+01:00

On a south facing slope

My head pointing down hill into the Rhubarb

Blood draining into my skull and the flesh in my cheeks

Taking a deep breath in through your pink and green stems - through my chest and my heart -

blowing on your vibrant green leaves that flap in the air

Breathing in your qualities - strength - nourishment - flexibilty

I breathe out - warmth and moisture - I breath in memories of taste - tart - the sensation of sharp prods to the cells on my tongue and gums - saliva seeping quickly into the wells below my teeth with each shot of acid

I breathe in the colour green - infused with light - the colour of vitality, life and living.

2010-03-05T12:26:00.001Z

Quince and I

Our cool smooth skins touch

Our bark warming and softening in the sun

Our bodies breathe the stillness of the air

Our bodies call for nourishment

Feed me, feed me, feed me

We absorb the sun

Growing inside

Ideas will blossom

We will fruit

Creatively

Building our strength through stillness and contemplation

Storing our energy establishing ourselves in our sunny spot

before we flower and share in our abundance.

These words and photographs document a creative response to an invitational score given to me by Choreographer Itta Howie http://www.ittahowie.madasafish.com

Score:

Close your eyes

touch a plant stone tree soil

listen to what it says

about itself

about you

and what the two of you

have in common

Eastville Park Sloe Gin

2009-08-30T20:56:00.000+01:00

Wild Cherry Plum

2009-07-13T14:42:00.000+01:00

Colston Road Cave Text

2009-06-08T14:00:00.004+01:00

Big bluebottles skim my head,
speeding like noisy motorbikes
through hot residential streets

100 children scream, shout, laugh, chatter, fight, play, run, clap
500 yards away

red knees, blue shiny shorts and rubber pads jog along the shadow

a cabbage white changes direction
1, 2, 3 times

sticky leaves shimmer and wiggle

a pink scooter, no brakes and bunches

yellow mustard, bright, vivid, hot

Elderflowers nod and wink - a glimmer of gold

breeze blocks and barbed wire

a rucksack full of garden tools

silhouettes of trees move like water on the battleship grey tarmac
dry flattened grass lies motionless at the edge of the path - its shape mirroring the tidal pattern of eroded soil

Leaves and Wind continue to perform their well rehearsed collaboration, a lifetime long creative partnership -
an infinite improvisation - the soundscape composed for here
I realise my breath now matches the calm rhythm of this composition.

Purifying Cleavers Tonic

2009-04-16T22:01:00.001+01:00

To sit and do nothing is to know where you are

2009-03-25T14:30:00.000Z

An abundance of plants to identify, some remain without a name that I can give them.
Many man made objects, no longer in their intended use - lie around creating a collage of archeology.
The repetitive cheep of a small common bird imitating the exotic call of the cicada.
A crow yelps and pigeons flap their wings like a clap that punctuates the air.
A spring blackbird harmoniously sings, a wood pigeon cuts through with its distinctive mantra.

My thoughts drift to my domestic practicalities, completely transported to future conversations and mental to do lists.

Brought back here by the rattle shake of the magpie and I refocus on what's before me,
the bleached wood of old buddleia roots and stems stretch out across the hardcore - dug out, hacked down, and abandoned into this wasteland.
More than enough wood to fuel a week of rocket stove cooking.

Adelade Place

2009-03-17T17:08:00.005Z

Absorbing the warm sun as I sit in this walled garden,

Peaceful and content to be still with millions of organisms' activity around me,

In a secluded corner of this plot I am free to be alone with what is here,

No one notices me, no one is overseeing, no one is watching my inactivity,

No one judges my desire to rest here in this deserted space,

I am free to be amongst the rubbish and the weeds, undisturbed,

I watch unused waste uselessly waiting to be used,

I breath with the weeds which continue to live and grow,

I sit in the presence of this moment.

Viaduct Walk

2009-03-06T15:08:00.000Z

This video is an experiment. This post was intended just as a sound recording but as there is only the option for video or pictures I decided to put some images with the recording to make a video. The pictures are not of me walking on the Royate Hill viaduct as on the sound but are pictures of me walking on the Bristol - Bath Railway path last summer. So this is just a starting point like everything on this blog - an idea for me to develop.

Wasteland

2009-02-27T17:53:00.003Z

Digging, crumbling, red rich earth.
Elastic leaves of vibrant green abundance.
Self-determined self-disciplined roots, white tubers - casting out bendy lasoos- laying claim to the soil, making home in this moist loam.
And in exchange for a place to stay - a gift of nitrogen is generously given.
My energy moves in - displacing these weeds - an action of effort, forcing diaspora of the ruderal.
They will return, I will return, we will make this play again. We will collaborate in a new action, and remembering our favourite motifs perform 'Weeding' again.

Soundmap

2009-02-25T13:53:00.003Z

This is a soundmap of where I was sitting on a bench on the Bristol to Bath Railway Path overlooking Royate Hill Allotments.

I wrote down the sounds I could hear and mapped their distance in relation to me.

It was impossible to note down all the sounds particularly all the birds singing - there were just so many overlapping one another. I haven't managed to record in words and letters an accurate description of the bird song. There wasn't enough space on my page to map all the bicycle sounds and spoken words I heard passing just beside me.

But what this map does show is the density of movement and sound from both human and non-human activity in the area I chose to sit.

A Walk/ A Collection/ An Exploration

2009-02-20T17:56:00.019Z

Enjoy....
http://www.killercoke.org/crimes.htm
http://www.indiaresource.org/campaigns/coke/2008/kaladeraunethical.html

Cleavers/Sticky Willy/GooseGrass/PurifyingTonic

Jack-By-The-Hedge/GarlicMustard

BristolOnions/Chives

Cellandine/AnAlternativeToPreparationH(apparently)

Ivy/WatercolourPaintsExperiment

HazelCatkin

Royate Hill Alder

2009-02-20T15:01:00.010Z

Dark smooth pathways - a layer of stone specks.
Deep cracks - sharp edges - rough gashes - a worn dent - rounded edges,
intersected by hairlines of bright green.
A fold like kneaded dough - pressed through by a limb - regular tiny drill holes.
A moist sticky cake mixture - set solid in an instant - as the cool breeze blew it cold.
Shapes of land masses, coastlines as they appear on an aerial view.
Strips of moulded clay manipulated and placed.
Raw wounds expose pink tissue - allowing the passing of time to scab over.
An irregular corrugated surface - interconnecting routes and dead ends.

Breath

2009-01-30T16:00:00.014Z

Bleached by the sun this grass stands golden
This curled blade responds to the rhythm of the air
A deep breath in as the wind flows across its body
Passive as it listens to the hundreds of birds sharing their invented sounds
Active as it draws its form in drifts and swails
And as a collective these grass leaves and stalks create a choreography of 'rest, encounter, respond' with the air and birds as collaborators.

Edge

2009-01-15T13:31:00.002Z

My body sits. My skin prickles across my spine. Like my hackles are up.
Alert and attentive to the wind.
Occasionally someone cycles past.

There are hundreds of varieties of Oak trees.
This one has copper leaves attached to its branches all the way through January it seems.
Noisy as they rush about on their axis like plastic wrappers in a whirlwind on the pavement.
A man in a flat cap inspects his allotment.

This place is on the edge, away form the houses and roads.
Edge means something different to me than to Someone.
To Someone, edge means somewhere to leave unwanted plastic, to scatter strips of rubber, away from their house, away from their road.
This edge, to me, is somewhere away from houses and roads - to walk in quiet thoughts.
This edge, to me, is quiet.
Even though it is school break time. A playground filled with shrieks and screams and laughter from small voices.
It is quiet.
Even though on the roads that border this edge, heavy vehicles roar and vibrate metallic tones.
Here, it is me and the wind.
Here, my body sits still.

Here, a man in a flat cap shows me how his dog likes to run.
The same man who said: "cheer up it might never happen".
The same man I smiled at with a smile that said: "I'm not sad, I'm thinking quietly - it might never happen if we hope, if we love, if we wonder, if we smile"
The dog lies down and waits as the man in the flat cap walks a hundred yards, he calls his dog. The dog runs for a couple of yards, straight to a wonderful smell. The man tells me the dog is not very good today.

Like the bird caught in a cage to sing for her captor, an Elder has hooked a white plastic bag to dance in circles. Pirouette after pirouette.

A grey pigeon watches seated on a weighted branch.

The wind blows. It is quiet here. On the edge.