The rhythm of the residency has changed.

After saying goodbye to the Medievalists, the day became one of ‘Disperse and Distill’ for the group, allowing time for ideas to form and information to settle. Artists set out both individually and in small groups, to swim, walk, and cycle across the island. Some sat with Skye artist Caroline Dear to learn how to make ropes from the reeds near the beach. Jessica Ramm went in search of a local resident who still cut peat, meeting Jennifer, who showed her a Viking burial mound and discussed the Celtic spirit along the way to the peat bank. Hardeep Pandhal found two containers of Camp Coffee in Raasay House’s library, and thought one of us had placed them there on purpose. He is currently making work back in Glasgow about this coffee originating from the same city, bearing its picture label of a Sikh servant serving a British soldier with a cup.

Augustus Veinoglou summed up the type of endeavour many have at this point, by saying “I want to extract wisdom from this space”. What is this space formed from? We have the book, our conversations with each other and the Medievalists, our past work, this location, experiments, serendipity and the unknown we are yet to encounter.

A number of artists have previously explored aspects of extraction, dispersal or distillation in their work. Edwin Pickstone, one of our illuminators, runs the Letterpress at The Glasgow School of Art. He gave us a summary of the Letterpress at the artists’ presentations, focusing on what this form of production had historically meant, speeding up the hand printing process by ‘the equivalent of 300 years’. Edwin said that learning about the placement of type, helps computer-literate students to understand the weight of space between words. He showed us an image of a close-up of the edge of an 8pt letter ‘e’, the black ink seeping into the white pulp of the paper. This view pushed the physical matter of language into an unknown territory. In his work ‘The Components of the Complete Compact English Dictionary’, Edwin distilled the dictionary ( a book already condensed from twenty-six books into one, through the use of 1pt font) into the sum of its parts – namely 1123 sheets of bible paper and a concentrated poured blob of 128.8 grams of black ink equalling the exact weight of its words. For Convocation, Edwin plans to distill ideas, activity and information of the residency onto the surface of a Raasay map.

In ‘Life of St Columba’, Book Two, there is a story of a knife, which following St Columba’s blessing, has the sacred property that it cannot harm man nor beast. ‘Having discovered this fact…. the monks melted down the iron of that knife and then coated the liquid metal on to all the other iron tools in the monastery. From then on, these tools were unable to harm any flesh…’.

Michail Mersinis has been mixing liquid silver to coat photograph plates, for his series of Raasay landscapes he is making, taking each image at the same times of day and night when the monks prayed.

Whoever wishes to explore the Way,

Let him set out, what more is there to say?”
In Sue Brind’s presentation today, she referenced our question of Peregrinatio, through Farid ud’din Attar’s C13th poem, ‘The Conference of the Birds’, where, as she outlined, “The Hoopoe tries to lead all the birds of the world on a journey to find the Simorgh- the Persian name for a benevolent flying creature-who appears in Attar’s poem as the illusive King of the whole World. It will be an arduous journey, over deserts, mountains and through valleys, gaining knowledge along the way. Only 30 birds have the courage to complete. They finally arrive at the land of Simorgh and what they discover is a mountain lake in whose surface is revealed a reflection of their true selves”. 1
In our journey of ideas and expedition for new knowledge, as we explore the histories behind ‘Colm Cille’s Spiral’ then hear about the group’s own work as individuals, what is our objective? Do we wish the group to find St Columba, and what he means for our times, by peering at history through the mountain lake’s calm surface, or instead to have the ‘sea churning and lashing itself, in maniacal states’? 2
‘The Spiral’ is a common form in manuscripts and monuments, which amongst various meanings represents the dialectic; a method of debate for resolving disagreement. The discursive nature of this project is intended to mirror this dialectic. Where do you enter and exit the Spiral, if it has no beginning or end? The ongoing discussions at different times of the day, both formally in the allotted time at different points of the island, and informally over meals, travel and sharing each others’ space, have allowed us to enter into the debate at diverse points. Through strange alignments of place, repetition, language, mirroring, dislocation, thought and reflection, we are beginning to circle Colm Cille’s Spiral. At times we move away, only to return to the anchor of the book ‘The Life of St Columba’. Where one person finishes speaking, another loops in with the next point or observation.
If you unravel a spiral you will always find a circle. I can recognise Convocation’s structure as made up of three interlocking circles. At the beginning of the project, the working group debated and discussed ideas for the structure. This has been developed until it could be a feasible form to be opened up and made public to the group of artists and scholars participating in the residency on Raasay. The final circle occurs in October, when in the exhibition and event opens up and presents the first two circles for public engagement with a new audience.

History has proved to be a spiral for the group, at times running parallel only to slip out of reach. Yesterday we saw, at a distance, disturbances on the water of the Sound, and birds hovering, then two whales coming out of the water. Professor Clare Lees from King’s College London had, before to this event, spoken of, “The past surfacing like a whale in the present”.

The Spiral is turning each day of the residency. Yesterday, the medievalists successfully illuminated the historical background to the questions. The day was intense with information, with so much of a rich oral resource created it would be impossible to capture it as a whole. Today, the next turn on the Spiral occurred, with the morning’s focus on presentations by each of the group on their practice. Like links in the knot, hearing about each other’s processes and ideas allowed connections to be made between each other and also to begin to see connections to this project.

In the morning Francis McKee observed that the default of yesterday’s discussions had been on the rational, looking at the geo-political aspects of the text, whereas in essence this book is equally about the spiritual, with much emphasis on miracles and prayer. This afternoon’s discussion, on the beach of stones near Raasay House, allowed us to begin with reference to mystery and spirit. As the group unconsciously sat in a spiral formation, in this open landscape and often in a light rain, we saw the other side of the Spiral, and the that the rational and the spiritual exist at the same time. Francis talked of the tradition of immersive prayer, taking place in water. We had originally gone to the beach, as members of the group had wanted to swim there. At the end of the discussion, it seemed fitting that the work of the mind gave way to the embodied experience of the water.

Footnotes
1 Susan Brind and Jim Harold, presented at CCA, Glasgow, for ‘What we make with words’, Artists’ Readings, 10.12.11

2 This quote comes from Johnny Rodger’s presentation, where he quoted from ‘The Long Ship of Clan Ranald’, by Gaelic poet Alasdair MacMhaighstir Alasdair.