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r&d project initiated by Urbonas Studio in collaboration with Tracey Warr
August 28th, 2012

the Wet Symposium

Tuesday 28 August 2012. A pilot Wet Symposium organized by Tracey Warr with the Canal & River Trust, discussing future water issues in the water with researchers on climate change, migration and aquatic life takes place on the River Thames in Oxford.

The River Runs unpowered pleasure boat designed and produced by Urbonas Studio in collaboration with Giacomo Castagnola, architect and designer, was launched as part of the program inviting participants to invent and experience unusual types of swimming, floating and chilling in the water.

“…Participants would experience many audio, tactile, and rhythmical characteristics of water while keeping dry. Events such as swimming in pockets within the containers, sliding, jumping, [and] relaxing all would be accented by the reverberating motion of the container. As individuals move on one area this motion would reverberate throughout the entire container thereby all participants sharing the movement of others…” György Kepes,  “A report on the work in progress at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies” (1972). CAVS Archive, ACT, M.I.T.

Images and documentation by James Hudson, Havard Helle and Urbonas Studio.

 

 

 

 

 

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August 28th, 2012

day of the Wet Symposium

Tuesday 28 August 2012. Gods were on the side of water lovers. The weather on Tuesday was perfect. Getting ready for the journey.

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August 27th, 2012

day before the Wet Symposium

Monday, 27 August 2012. Gediminas arrives back to Oxford from Stockholm and the team prepares the unpowered pleasure boat for the second journey that will start tomorrow from Godstow lock.

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August 22nd, 2012

wrapping up

Wednesday, 22 August. Laura sends us photos of the floatable sculpture wrapped in blue and parked at Osney Mill Marina. That’s how it was waiting for the Wet Symposium coming on Tuesday, 28 August 2012.

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August 17th, 2012

River Runs unpowered pleasure boat

Friday, 17 August. River Runs unpowered pleasure boat launch: see post below.

‘Besides the sky, the river is the only aspect of our urban environment that has not yet been parceled out into real estate or butchered by human insensitivity and carelessness. It suggests far-away places and distant memories and thus gives to the urban citizens a most needed sense of freedom.’ Gyorgy Kepes, Artist, MIT, 1972

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August 17th, 2012

River Runs unpowered pleasure boat launch

Friday, 17 August. Big day! We are testing the River Runs unpowered pleasure boat : 5 Jellyfish Lilies and a port. Everybody is up from 7 am and meeting at Medley sailing Club deck.  A van packed with parts of the structure and driven by Laura and Emily comes straight from MAO. The great support team is awaiting by the river.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At this point the crew decides to drift a bit down the river to be photographed from the bridge.

Drifting is exciting and the whole team is debating to continue all the way down to the parking station at Osney Lock.

Passers by are excited to encounter and experience unusual swimming methods.

 

 

After meeting with several boats and fight with the strong current the crew shortly stops in Oxford just before the final destination at Osney Lock Marina.

 

 

 

August 16th, 2012

packing

Thursday night, 16 August. Production is ready to be tested on the river.

 

 

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August 16th, 2012

recording the river

Thursday evening. 16 August. Michael and the team discuss how to seal and safely attach recording devices to the structure.

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August 16th, 2012

Memories of swimming in Oxford

from Jenny Rogers

I was born in Oxford in 1952, and spent as much of my childhood as I could immersed in the Thames or the Cherwell.

Our Mum used to take us for picnics by the river Thames, and we swam from what seemed to us to be miniature beaches. I had learned to swim in a river in France, at about six, and so it always seemed entirely natural to me. As far as I was concerned, that was what rivers were there for! I have never liked indoor pools, though outdoor pools are reasonably ok. But river swimming, and sea swimming, are what it is really all about.

We lived in North Oxford and went to secondary school in Marston (Milham Ford), and we had permission to wheel our bikes through the University Parks, from where we whizzed down the Rainbow Bridge and sped along a rough foot-path, coming out into Edgeway Road, and then Marston Road.

On our way home in the summer we often swam in the river, throwing our bikes down on the ground, and changing into our swimming things under the arches of the Rainbow bridge. These swimming things were usually wet from having been used during the day in the school pool, and I can still remember the smell of the chlorine on them, and the feeling of putting on a wet and clingy costume! Still, nothing would have stopped us from swimming whenever we could.

As the water was shallow and muddy at the edges, and you couldn’t see beneath the surface, we used to dive straight in, doing a very flat dive so that we did not go too deep too soon, and throwing ourselves as far out into the middle of the river as we could, where the water was deeper. There were blackened and gnarled tree roots under the water near the bank, so we wanted to avoid hitting our legs on these as we dived in. One of our friends hit her leg in this way, and had a massively impressive swollen bruise on her shin for the rest of the summer, as a reminder to us all.

Getting out was interesting, you had to put your feet down into the mud and tree-roots, and get near the bank, and somehow haul yourself out by clutching handfuls of grass. Needless to say you could end up pretty muddy, and have to work out ways of getting the mud out from between your toes, so you could get your socks and shoes back on.

On days when there was no school, we regularly walked through the University Parks and across to Dames’ Delight. This was a river bathing place surrounded by corrugated-iron fences that even projected under the water – so you dared not try to get under them by swimming. I think we all grew up on stories of children who had been dragged under water by sinister water weed which had wrapped itself round their legs and never let go. The thought of their pale bloated bodies being found downstream days later made us a bit wary of taking risks where there was the possibility of underwater entanglements.

You had to pay to go into Dames’ Delight, and once inside the corrugated-iron enclosure, there were raised wooden walkways, changing huts, ladders, and even diving-boards. It was the river, with all the river’s smells and hidden mysteries, but easier to get in and out of.  Dames’ Delight was for families, but of course you had to wear swimming costumes – or as my friend’s mother, to my friend’s great embarassment, insisted on calling hers, her “bathing-dress”.

Just round the bend in the river, Parsons’ Pleasure, the all-male bathing place, was another matter. There, so we heard, nakedness was compulsory. We wondered, as only teenage girls can, what shocking sights were concealed behind the corrugated-iron fences of Parsons’ Pleasure! Sometimes we would take a punt out from Tim’s Boathouse – leaving one of our beloved old scratched watches as a deposit as we never had much money on us – and if we went near Parsons’ Pleasure, we saw the sign that said that ‘ladies’ were supposed to get out of the punt and walk up over the grass, and rejoin the punt later, so that the fence would always be between them and anything inappropriate. Meanwhile the ‘gentlemen’ took the punt past the naked bathers. I seem to remember the conflict about how you would manage when you were in a punt full of girls, with no gentleman to help out. How we dealt with this eventuality is now – thankfully – lost in the mists of time!

We also swam at times from punts, or from any part of the river where we could get access. I had a friend whose aunt owned a river-garden – where there was a huge and glorious changing-hut as big as some people’s living-room, filled with mysterious smells of mildewed sun-beds and damp towels – and then a green lawn sweeping down to the edge of the Cherwell. There was a punt there too, that we sometimes took out. It felt extraordinary to me to be able to occupy this magical garden with its very own stretch of river-bank, and only share it with friends.

The swim I will never forget – perhaps one of my last Oxford river swims – was after dark, naked, off the banks of the river, in 1968 or 1969, at the edge of a buttercup meadow where Wolfson College was shortly to be built. I was about to go off to university – from where I did not return to Oxford to live until last year.

Last year, after we moved here, I visited the bathing place that was behind the St. Clements Church, where you can still see the concrete edges, and even the steps. The centre was quite overgrown with water-lilies, and there were swans gliding about slowly on it.

The two river swims I have had were in the old Tumbling Bay bathing place, behind the Botley Road Allotments. Interestingly I never swam here as a child, but I knew the name, and it conjured up such an exciting picture. The river still flows in at one end and out at the other, and there are fronds of various weeds to be seen stretching out in the current. A large fish hung in the water by the steps as I got in, and looked at my white leg with interest. I had decided not to dive in, as there are possibly – almost certainly – submerged objects there. Shopping trolleys seem to be the curse of rivers and canals now.

I am 60 now, but still fascinated by the idea of river bathing. I mourn the passing of the River Bathing Places that gave us such simple pleasures for so many years, and helped us to grow up strong and fit. In these days of obsession with Health and Safety, and law-suits against councils, I fear these delights are gone forever. I am a bit unsure why, as we are told the rivers are cleaner now than they were then. I would give a lot to see them opened again, and children discovering the delights of outdoor swimming.

I hope – as all outdoor swimmers do – that there will be a glorious end to the summer, and a chance to swim again before the Autumn comes. And I have to hope that, even if the old bathing places will not be returned to us, for our use, that no-one will ever try to stop us from immersing ourselves in the beautiful rivers of Oxford, one way or another!

 

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August 16th, 2012

production site

Thursday, 16 August. The jellyfish lilies and the port station are almost done. Giacomo is concentrated on yulohing device.

 

 

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August 14th, 2012

Jellyfish Lily test no. 1

6 am Tuesday, 14 August. We are getting up early today to test a Jellyfish Lily prototype for our River Runs unpowered pleasure boat . Gediminas and Giacomo get parts of the structure attached to their bodies and all are heading to the River Thames at Medley Sailing Club by the Port Meadow.

 

 

 

 

On the way back from testing we met a woman with a little purple trailer who was very interested in our “water bringing” structures and she told us about coracles, lightweight boats of the sort traditionally used in Wales but also in parts of Western and South Western England, Ireland and Scotland.

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August 13th, 2012

dowsing at MAO

Monday afternoon, 13 August. Vicky Sweetlove, Fengshui and Dowsing consultant from London visited our Studio  to search for underground rivers and waters running under Modern Art Oxford, former City Brewery.

 

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August 13th, 2012

fabrication in process

Monday, 13 August. Start of the production. Scot comes in to help us with building the port and Steph arrives from London to kindly help us with sewing the neoprene fabric for Jellyfish Lilies. Dimensions are huge and River project is slowly taking up all the MAO building.

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August 13th, 2012

collecting matrials for the River structure

Monday, 13 August. Giacomo is inspecting Oxford and collecting materials for possible River structure.

 

 

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August 13th, 2012

River Runs platform

A sketch by Giacomo for River Runs floatable platform at Wet Symposium.

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August 12th, 2012

interview with Liz, art student and captain

Sunday 12 August. Liz Lake, an art student at Royal College of Art and a captain, visited our Open studio at MAO on Saturday, and invited us to join  the moving of her boat “Dreems” from Isis lock to Port Meadow.

 

 

 

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August 10th, 2012

river by Captain King

Friday, 10 August. We take a little break from the studio work and indulge into exploration of the river on “Captain King” in Abingdon.

 

 

 

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August 9th, 2012

interview with Shark

Thursday 9 August. We attended the 26th Birthday of Shark to interview Bill Heine, an owner of the Shark house, about the true story of the landmark and his relationship with water.

 

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August 9th, 2012

ADULTS’ AQUATIC BIOMIMICRY WORKSHOP

Thursday 9 August. The Adults’ Workshop investigated new solutions for living in a ‘water age’.

 

 

 

 

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August 9th, 2012

drawing by the river

Thursday 9 August. On the way back from our morning swim, in Jericho, we visited Miranda Creswell, artist who works together with archaeologists and through drawing  investigates time, memory, stratum of nature and culture. She invited us to her studio and showed the drawing of Port Meadow.

 

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August 8th, 2012

CHILDREN’S WORKSHOP: INVENTIONS FOR THE WATER AGE

Wednesday, 8 August. 17 children of different ages joined a workshop in the MAO Studio to creatively investigate what we could learn from aquatic flora and fauna for living in a possible future Water Age.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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August 8th, 2012

boating permit

Wednesday 8 August. Tracey receives a permit from Environment Agency for our future River Runs floatable platform at Wet Symposium.

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August 7th, 2012

interview with Chris Perrins, swan-keeper

Tuesday 7 August. We meet Chris Perrins, Queen’s swan-keeper for Oxfordshire at Port Meadow.

 

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August 7th, 2012

River Runs model

Tuesday,  June 7. Preparing for the CHILDREN’S WORKSHOP: INVENTIONS FOR THE WATER AGE.

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August 6th, 2012

interview with Sarah Markham, Lock Keeper

Monday August 6. At  Godstow Lock we meet with Sarah Markham, the only woman lock keeper in the vicinity. She invited her colleagues Mick Lyons and Tony Cross ‘Crockett’ to join the interview and tell us about the adventures and the mundane in their lives and about the particularities of the profession.

 

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August 6th, 2012

Prototype 1 – Jelly fish flotation device

model

  

 






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August 6th, 2012

interview with Zena Kamash, archaeologist

Monday August 6. At Iffley Lock we meet Zena Kamash, an archaeologist whose research interests are: Rituals on water, in water, about water; Material culture; Memory of place: whether river washes memory away? How in moving structure you could speak about evidence? What is ontological paradox of water? Emotions and Water. Latrines.

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August 4th, 2012

visit to Orinoco

Saturday August 4. G &G went to check Orinoco, the place of incredibly cheap scrap items for art, play and creative projects.

  

They took some containers that used to hold Panacea tea to test as flotation devices.

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August 3rd, 2012

open studio no.1

Friday August 3. We are having an Open Studio no.1 today. Young and old, visitors of all ages, are invited to learn what we’ve learned during the first week of research in Oxford, and to play with water and water dj Giaco.

 

 

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August 3rd, 2012

fashion in water

17th – 18th century diving suits

Modern suits

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August 2nd, 2012

studio visit

Thursday August 2. Mike Bedwell, a scientific sculler and passionate yuloher, came to visit our studio at Modern Art Oxford and share his knowledge of designing a paddle which uses a natural movement of the water instead of trying to control it with force.

August 2nd, 2012

diving suit

diving explorations found on internet

In 1834, the first U.S. patent for a practical underwater diving suit was issued to Leonard Norcross of Dixfield, Maine (No. X8255).* Calling it a “Diving Armor,” he designed an airtight leather outfit with a brass helmet connected via a rubber hose to an air bellows pump on a boat. http://todayinsci.com/6/6_14.htm   Image source: USPTO

Underwater diving designs from 17th-18th century. Diving bell of Dr. Edmond Halley (1680), diving bell of Charles Spalding (1787), Marten Triewald’s diving bell (1741). http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2012/07/underwater-cyborg-diving-suit.html

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August 1st, 2012

Yulohing on Thames

Evening Wednesday August 1. On the way back to Oxford from Wolvercote we spotted a very interesting vehicle of the river. Two men were standing on catamaran type of structure, holding sticks, swinging and slowly moving through the water. We followed them and met them at the shore when they came to park at Bossoms Boat yard.

Mike Bedwell and Duncan Grant call themselves theoretical engineers, scientific scullers and yulohers.

Giacomo and Gediminas decided to try out the Yuloh.

Next morning we were passing by the boat yard and met the builder putting a name on the catamaran. It will be called “Tandem Yuloh”.

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August 1st, 2012

fishing in water

Wednesday August 1. After conversation at “The Trout” we’ve been biking back to Oxford from Wolvercote through Godstow Lock and found the map of fish species in the Thames.

 

 

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August 1st, 2012

swimmers

Wednesday August 1. After a walk with Russell Robson, The Environment Agency Officer for the river Thames, Emily decided to test the water and met a swan.

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August 1st, 2012

interview with Russell Robson, The Environment Agency Officer

Wednesday August 1. We meet with Russell Robson, The Environment Agency Officer for the river Thames, at Wolvercote, end of Port Meadow for another journey along the Thames.

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August 1st, 2012

visiting Goldfish Bowl

Wednesday August 1. On the way from Abingdon we visited Goldfish Bowl – an amazing fish keepers shop at Magdalens road.

Cow fish with horns became a hero of the day.

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August 1st, 2012

shopping at Kingcraft Chandlery no 2.

Morning, Tuesday July 31. We are heading to Abingdon to the Kingcraft Chandlery to get cork ball key holders that everybody living on the river has.

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August 1st, 2012

Writing in Water – Tracey Warr

A text in progress charting and reflecting on the Urbonas Studio River Runs project at Modern Art Oxford August 2012. We are in residence at Modern Art Oxford 30 July-19 August and I am adding to and refining this text every day.

 

‘riverrun through Eve and Adams past bend of shore and curve of bay’ are the opening words of one of the most famous novels in the English language: James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Joyce was aiming at a novel that encompassed all of life and he saw water itself as the all-emcompassing substance. He described: ‘its universality … its vastness in the ocean … the restlessness of its waves … its hydrostatic quiescence in calm … its sterility in the circumpolar ice-cap … its preponderance in 3 : 1 over the dry land of the globe … its slow erosions of peninsulas … the simplicity of its composition … its metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail … its submarine fauna and flora, numerically , if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe … its ubiquity as constituting 90 per cent of the human body’. Water is the matrix of all life.

In this project we are examining our affinity with water. Why are many of us hydrophiliacs, unable to stay out of water for long? Although some of us of course are hydrophobics – perhaps because of a fearful childhood experience with water. Water has many benign characteristics but it is also something to be respected and has significant destructive capacities.

Are we going to be living with more water in the future? Are we entering a new Water Age? What are feasible future scenarios regarding climate change impacts on water levels, supplies, quality? What inspiring inventions and manifestations can artists contribute towards a future Water Age if we will be living with more water? How might we be inspired by aquatic life (fish, mammals, birds, insects, plants) and employ biomimicry to adapt to a future with more water? What role do waterways play in citizenship and belonging to place? Might we have a more amphibian lifestyle in the future and might this impact on the values that we live by?

These are some of the questions we begin with. This project is a study of water, and especially the freshwater in rivers. Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas live next to the river Charles in Cambridge and I live next to the river Thames, currently in Oxford, and previously in London where I was born. Rivers are significant in people’s lives for many reasons – we shape rivers and they shape us. For this project, Urbonas Studio consists of Nomeda and Gediminas, myself, and architect Giacomo Castagnola. We are being assisted too by many other people, who will crop up in the course of this narrative. We are interviewing people who live, work and play on and in the river. We are immersing ourselves in river cultures looking for answers to our questions.

Not only did James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake begin and end with the river, it also employed the technique of a ‘stream of consciousness’, a term invented by the psychologist and philosopher, William James. Consciousness, he wrote, is ‘continuous… without breach, crack, or division… Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as ‘chain’ or ‘train’ do not describe it fitly as it presents itself … It is nothing jointed; it flows. A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life’.

Water is a unique liquid structure. Felix Franks, a leading authority on the chemistry of water, writes that, ‘water renders the earth fit as a habitat for life and is involved in life processes at all levels… Water is the only inorganic liquid that occurs naturally on earth… It existed on this planet long before any form of life evolved and life developed in water.’

The hydrologic cycle is the continuous circulation of water by evaporation from the hydrosphere and its subsequent precipitation back from the atmosphere. A fixed amount of water turns over in this cycle 37 times every year. Dramatic redistributions of the planet’s water have occurred at various points in its long history. A human being synthesizes 300g of water a day. Water presents a thermodynamic paradox and there are still unresolved mysteries about the chemistry of water and many other of its aspects. Since life on this planet first developed in water, it is not surprising that it has remained the basis for all life processes. Water appears abundant, ubiquitous, but there is a finite amount and it is hyper-sensitive to what is dissolved and thrown into it. Swimming on my back in the open air, looking up at gathering clouds I experience myself in the hydrosphere.

For several weeks before the project starts I embark on a daily immersion – first in the river Viaur in southern France and then in Barton indoor and Hinksey outdoor pools in Oxford. Swimming in the open-air is vastly superior to swimming indoors but the river is easily the most wonderful of immersions. Swimming upriver you see its green-edged channel opening onwards before you, beckoning you on into the unknown. You experience the changing of the water, the weather, the sky and the banks. I’ve discovered one advantage to being somewhat overweight – bioprene – a layer of fat is good for buoyancy and insulation in the open water.

Julie Turley is planning a Children’s Workshop with us, and has been researching the characteristics of non-human aquatic life: lilypads are waxy and repel water; otters have a long tail to balance when swimming, closable nostrils and ears, and dense fur to create a waterproof surface; ducks have a gland producing oil to preen their feathers and keep them waterproof, under the waterproof layer is a downy layer for warmth, their webbed feet help them paddle; frogs breathe and absorb water through their skin, their bulging eyes see in all directions and their sticky tongues flick out to catch insects, their skin is slimy; salmon leap out of the water over weirs and falls (see Victor Schauberger’s Trout Turbine – to follow).

We cycle down the Thames towpath to visit Will McCallum, an artist and environmental activist, living on a narrow boat and researching autonomous, sustainable, low impact living. Every day Will swims in the river. A large heron fishes from a tree stump opposite the boat. Will works part-time in London. His boat, the Tormarton, does not use electricity. Everything is self-powered. Food and other supplies have to be cycled down the towpath in a towed cart. Sewage must be pumped out at a lock and water tanks filled there. Will tells us about Dusty who plies up and down the river supplying the boat dwellers with wood and coal. Will’s fridge is a pool of cold water under a step in the boat. Use of space onboard is significant – everything has its place and is stowed away ship shape – tables fold out, every nook and cranny is used for storage. Will and his partner are growing herbs and vegetables on the boat’s roof with varying success. The boat has to fit under low bridges. They’ve learnt to fix minor problems with the engine and other practicalities of the boat. They have a stove but winters are hard, with ice rising up to the tops of the windows. One night they came home from work and the boat had disappeared – it had come lose from its mooring and drifted downriver. They recovered it with the aid of police helicopters. Will moves mooring every two weeks.

With Oxford artist, Laura Degenhardt, who is helping on the project, we visit Kingcraft Chandlery in Abingdon, excited by the materials and gadgets of river life: a magnet to retrieve things from the water, a waterproof box to keep your mobile phone in, plastic and rope fenders, ship’s bells, a lifejacket for a dog.

We meet local historian, Mark Davies, who has written several books on the Oxford Canal and the Thames including A Towpath Walk in Oxford, who also lives on a boat near the centre of town and the Isis Lock. His boat, Bill the Lizard, stays moored in the one place and he has been living here for over twenty years. ‘How did you come to live on a boat?’ I ask and he replies that he fell in love with someone who was living on a boat. Gradually he found out more and more about the river and now he is a well-known river author and tour guide. Whilst Will’s focus in terms of boat-living is to do with the practicalities of how to live in a low-impact way, the main challenges for Mark are political. The authorities’ treatment of boat-dwellers, the controversial closure of the Castle Mill Boatyard and the stalled attempts to turn it into river-front flats, the insecurity of tenure. He tells us how this lock, which is at the junction of the Oxford Canal and the Thames, was also known as Louse Lock, perhaps because of the convicts from Oxford prison who built it and many other structures on the waterways. He tells us about the Commoners of Wolvercote and the Freemen of Port Meadow who have the hereditary right to graze their cattle there since the times of King Alfred the Great, and whose honorary members include Nelson Mandela. By coincidence we meet one of the Freeman as we cross the bridge. It’s a very hot day and a group of young boys are having a ‘river rave’ with pounding dance music and throwing themselves into the river with delighted yelps.

We go down the river from Folly Bridge to Iffley Lock and back again on the Salter’s tourist river steamer, the Wargrave, talking to Salter’s staff Neil Kinch, Liam Challis and Sem Manji. Liam turns the large boat skilfully in the confined space at the lock. It is a sweltering day and we are basking in the sunlight reflected from the water. The diesel engines churn. Sem tells us how he has always had a connection with the river and enjoys it as well as working on it. Later as we cycle down the towpath we watch Sem first punt some tourists downriver and then drive another group down in Salter’s elegant small boat, the Constantia. Up and down, up and down the same stretch of river. Another of Salter’s employees call out to us as he captains the longer voyage to Abingdon, that he doesn’t know why people only want to do the short journey. If you really want to experience the river, he says, you need to go on one of the longer voyages.

I am reading about the extraordinary motility of water and Theodore Schwenk’s ‘drop picture’ experiments and method, visually manifesting how the health of water is in its movement and is immediately affected by the smallest drop of detergent for instance – the water movement flattens out, becomes ‘dead’. ‘The world of water is one of motion of becoming and of dissolution, of process. It is impossible to describe the variety of manifestations of water with static concepts.’ Water moves in eddies and vortices.

Nomeda and Gediminas are swimming most mornings at Port Meadow near The Perch in Binsey. A couple approach them when they are in the water to warn them that they will be paralysed if they catch Lymes Disease from rats’ urine. Gediminas is non-plussed, since Lymes Disease is spread by tics, not rats. There is a lot of mythology around the quality of river water. In the past rivers were used as the sewers of cities – everything from dead dogs to human and industrial waste were thrown into them. But now, English rivers are significantly cleaner.

We go on a Venetian sandola, the Serena, with Richard Bailey, the Standing Captain at City Barge Rowing Club. He rows standing up, Venetian style, and also has a gondola. Richard jive dances as well as rowing three or four times a week, and is visible proof of the healthy impacts of living with the river – both physical and psychological. He cheerfully negotiates between tourists struggling to control their punts, taking us to his favourite spot on the Cherwell – ‘this is where I usually stop for some Prosecco’ – next to the Botanical Gardens. City Barge Rowing Club’s members are as interested in rowing to lunch and socializing, as they are in racing. They are interested in the Venetian water life. Richard tells us there are 425 [check] gondolier licenses in Venice that are passed down through families and fiercely fought for. Compared to the rigour of getting a rowing eight in and out of the boathouse and then rowing it, the sandolo seems remarkably easy to handle. It slips into the water easily. Richard makes the rowing technique look simple, although he has mastered it over many years of practice.

Oxford River Cruises’ website describes ‘the otherworldliness of river life’ and the ‘beauty, peace and tranquility of the river’. On the Cherwell with Richard Bailey in his Venetian sandolo boat, we can glimpse the traffic of the High Street and Magdalen Bridge through the trees, but its stressful and inexorable noise is damped down and almost inaudible. The maximum speed of 5 miles per hour on the river means that everything slows down – you included. The green of the water matches the green of the banks and the trees and you are enclosed in a green world.

Curator and rower Rob La Frenais joins us on the river and drops his reading glasses in the water from his top shirt pocket, as he leans over. In the dark green water with a slight current, they are impossible to retrieve. Gediminas is obsessed with getting a floating cork ball key-ring which we see all the river people carrying.

We are interested in building a sculpture, a pontoon-boat, a hybrid laboratory/playground imaging the future of rivers, in the Modern Art Oxford Project Space. Yesterday I sent off a registration form to the Environment Agency to get a license for this boat that doesn’t yet exist but is emerging in our imaginations.

Emily Korchmaros, our curator at Modern Art Oxford, visits us in the Project Space with information on an Oxford archaeologist who focuses on the Thames. Many of the objects in the Ashmolean Museum have been retrieved from the Thames.

Today we are going to walk along the northern part of Port Meadow with Environment Agency Officer, Russell Robson.

At the end of the month I am organizing a pilot Wet Symposium with the Canal & River Trust, discussing future water issues IN the water with researchers on climate change, migration and aquatic life. From Archimedes to Roger Deakin’s Waterlog, immersion in water has a demonstrable track record of impacting on our creative ideas. Writing flows like water. Several years ago I did a performance at Penzance Harbour writing on a long roll of paper into the sea as the tide went out, washing the ink words away as they appeared, writing about sea voyages. If I get stuck writing, I get in the bath, my consciousness gets realigned by swishing about in water, and then words flow again. Perhaps our stream of our consciousness is beneficially realigned by immersion in water?

NOTES TO MYSELF – TO BE WORKED IN

the ‘water magicians’ of the early 20th century  – Victor Schauberger and Theodore Schwenk who studied water.

Gaston Bachelard Water and Dreams

Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Hybrids – mermaids, mermen, Vikings, portage

Light and water

Acoustics and water. Hearing through our skulls in water. The speed of sound in water.

Cloud seeding

Dowsing, geology, aquifers

Add references.

by tracey | Posted in writing in water | No Comments » |













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