annie-eliasson

| THE ENCROACHING SEA |

T h e E n c r o a c h i n g S e a
(2019)
Generator Gallery, Dundee, Scotland
[Installation]

audio and footage.

gallery.

My piece evolves around the history of Doggerland; a land bridge that existed between Britain and continental Europe from about 12,000 BC to 6500 BC. Once the ice from the latest glacial period started to melt Doggerland began to sink into the sea, due to the rising sea levels. It was eventually completely under water by around 6500 BC when a mega tsunami called The Storegga slide hit Britain.

With inspiration from archaeological findings from ice ages and Doggerland I’ve written a poem divided into 4 sections, where I make a narrative based on how human evolution, civilisations and migrations have been formed by water. I’ve researched the migrations of prehistoric people, the marks they have made in the landscape but also how climate changes triggered landscape to move and shape.

My writing brings together fragments of documented facts and meticulous investigations and combines them with scientific hypothesises and my own thoughts and fabrications. Each are woven into this narrative and work on the same level. My piece is presented as an abstract collage where maquettes made from images and paintings, illustrate the audio as you walk through the space and peer in on these micro worlds. It is an attempt to take these huge events and long spans of time and make them contained and fragile, small enough to fit inside the palm of your hand.

Part 1.

P R O L O G U E

[you enter the space, there is a black spot, beside it a magnyfying glass that enables you to read tiny text inside it, music is playing]

The primordial darkness was colored a very very very deep blue hue

there was only darkness,

just a slight flickering

casting a dim shadow of life

quietly, unseen
molecules were shifting.
chemicals altering
inside the rocks
life was
biding its time

”no vestige of a beginning , no prospect of an end”

[music is playing]

[the seismic orchestra begins to play. Following text is read]

It happened so that

water arrived to earth accompanied by a seismic orchestra
.
.
.

and we evolved out of it,
alongside it;
thrived in it, with it, from it

we were given a triangle to gently play along with it.
.
.

the aquatic ape,
a one not descending from trees,
but from waves
creatures evolving along the waterside
by lakes, rivers, deltas, coastlines,

.
Tying knot upon knot
Making nets
.
leaving drifts upon drifts
of seashells
.

water is forever circulating
recycling itself.
twisting, turning, braiding currents,
pushing masses of bodies of water,
upwards and downwards,
exchanging the warm surface for the cold deep
.
.so were we,
Forever circulating recycling ourselves.
Pushed by water,
upwards and downwards,
From mountains to lowlands,
From lowlands to mountains

.
.
.
.
.
.

Part 2.
ice ages

[sounds of carving, molding, scraping, tumbling rocks, crushing rocks]
[modeller av jättegrytor, rullstensåsar]

.
In a chalky mountain
Time was stacked

In a gravel of shell,
In the core of eskers,
traces of ancient marine life

we used to pin them on our harpoons
and carve the silouettes of them into the mountainsides
.
.
everywhere are the telltale signs

Of an immense icesheet
That grew and ever so slowly began to move
.

relentless
carving and and scraping

beneath the colosal glacial weight
mountains were weathering away
as if molded to a fine chalky powder,
.
giant’s kettle, erratic boulder,
winding ridges and deep furrows
.
.
nature drew lines
said this is your new landscape
we were simply left
to ponder upon these peculiar shapes
.
As if footless on earth
We became erratics
We wandered off, we went astray

We were torn from the places we were attached to
From mountainsides and coastlines

we erode,
To be carried away
And loaded off into the sea.

Once part of settlements
And then solidified in sediments.

like earth destroyed and restored
.
In a chalky mountain
desposed of again

part 3.
FLORA AND FAUNA
PALEO.RIVER
Tundra

[you look into a box, where you see the old flora and fauna,
the arun river runs in a rektangular glass box lit from below]
bowl shaped eroded bedrock hollows
now hold little lakes

[pause]

An old river
.
A remnant of now inactive rivers or streams
have been filled or buried with younger sediment

it
runs through a treeless landscape
perhaps a dwarf birch or even avens could grow on the side of its banks
these days the bottom of the North sea is mostly a cold frozen tundra,
a vast steppe
.
.
.
Birch, pine, hazel and willow would later weave their roots into this fertile ground
Once the meltwater streams
leaked out of the glacial sheet
the frost in the ground would thaw
and rivers would slowly dig into the earth
take slabs of mud and gravel and despose of it further down the stream

Wateraccumulates
It won.t move an inch for thousands of years
.
.
in the belly of the wetland
ancient pollen and plant microfossils are preserved
long gone insects, or familiar leaves and seeds
resting, preserved in rivers and peat.

Bodies too would later be laid down here
in their stomachs the remnants of their last meal
Some a dreary porridge of barley
some sweet raspberries
.
A hunter will lose her harpoon antler point
As she crosses the marsh

A fisherman will slowly detangle
And unravel
A bleak muddy treasure from his net

.
.
.
.
Part 4.
S T O R E G G A

[tell a tale of how doggerland was flooded, what has been found afterwards, the fisherman catching an unusual catch in his net]
[a big projected waterfall]

It most likely happened in autumn
wild cherry stones and green moss
found in coastline deposits
Gave it away
.
Hunter gatherers returned from summer mountain dwellings
Heading back to the coast in the fall
They couldn’t have known
Of the trillion tons of sediments
Balancing on the edge of the continental shelf
A threat most imminent
.

the storegga slide
produced
A gigantic wave
Rushing across the sea
It is known to have reached the eastern banks of greenland and there
Amongst the sediments you find
a chaotic mixture of deposits from the slide
And further south
Flooded archeological sites
.

steadily sinking, but yes steadily

We knew the fickle character of the sea
water gaining land silently or roaring from the deep
there was the wind; harsher, colder than in remembered days
the rain, if it came, a bleak shadow of its former self
but when did the tide rise to never retreat?

Could be
When your gaze locked on the horizon
As if you never could really be sure, if todays shoreline were further away than before?

The sea embracing or encroaching
our gently inclined coastlines and our rolling mesolithic plains
a wave
.
A sudden collapse,
And Earth-s crust slipped
Seafloor caved in
right down the deep Norwegian sea
.
.
A wave of unimaginable height
A stream of unimaginable depth
An earth of unimaginable strength
A People of fragile bodies
Breaks into nothing but skeletal remains
Left were clues
coastlines to be read
reconstructions to be made
sediments to be carbon dated and filtered,
black dots to be dotted
a peculiar serenade
.
.
.
.
.
EPILOGUE

water arrived to earth by the sound of a seismic orchestra
we dropped whatever we held

and ran as it stretched for our feet,
and nibbled our heels

not all drowned but displaced
headed upwards the mountain slopes
torn transported gone astray
looking down
as the deafening sound would ring out
upon a sinking lowlands away