7 short sails phase 7 - epilogue
The final contribution to the 7 short sails project. In addition to the talented artists who took part in this web based project, I am delighted and honored to have the next two individuals conclude the web based part of the project. Taking their observations, personal experiences and wealth of knowledge in 'things North' into account, they give a valuable and special overview of '7 short sails'.
Pat Law December 2009
Professor Peter Davidson is Professor in Renaissance Studies and Scholar-Keeper of the University's Collections at the University of Aberdeen. He published 'The Idea of North' in 2005, 'The Universal Baroque' in 2007 and a collection of poems *The Palace of Oblivion* in 2008."
Dr. Margaret Bennett credits her family upbringing amid Gaelic and Scots tradition bearers with her expertise in Scottish Folklore. Widely regarded as “Scotland’s foremost folklorist” she “wears her scholarship lightly,” while lecturing, singing and storytelling and on both sides of the Atlantic. As the late Hamish Henderson wrote, “Margaret embodies the spirit of Scotland.”
ARTISTS INVOLVED
Peter Davidson
Margaret Bennett
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Download both here:
Margaret Bennett's song:
Peter Davidson's essay:
Seven Short Sails.
It’s not down on any map or chart: true places never are.
The northern waters meet at the Brough of Birsay off the mainland of Orkney in one fixed ripple, a constant fold, a fault-line where the Atlantic becomes the North Sea. This scarcely-visible join is the axis of Seven Short Sails. Observations of voyages off the west coast of Scotland, beautiful and compelling in themselves, are the point of departure for seven strands of images, seven sets of Chinese whispers, variation-sets on seven voyages, all made by artists working in the north. Perhaps it because nearly all of them are working from places on the shores of northern waters that the finished work, for all its range and variety, has attained such a sense of a shared mood, a shared range of references. Scotland, Northern Europe, Iceland, Canada, the Northern Isles – and those who live further south are still working with dreams of northern voyages. Nearly all of the linked works in Seven Short Sails are preoccupied with place and every element in the whole contains some reflection, however subtle, of the north.
Perhaps the harmony is not surprising, but rather a heartening contemporary manifestation of an old, lived geography which transcends national boundaries. The sea unites us, never divides us. A paradox, but a truth: the waters of the northern seas may lie between the shores of the countries which have taken part in this collaboration, but those same waters were and are a well-travelled and ancient highway linking the lands which border its shores with centuries of shared culture, language, experience and knowledge... read more ›
