To enter you clicked on artist James Hankey‘s still image dust > | dust from his recordings at United Downs, Cornwall 2020. A truly inspirational image to introduce our section of podcasts and audio narrations with artists, engineers, miners, and community representatives. dust > | dust was presented at the OEFE exhibition in March 2020.
Enjoy!
Merryn Tregonning leapt through the humid Cornish summer night, toppled over the branches of a grasping hawthorn tree and somersaulted through sweet-smelling long grass. “Keep up Corin, we’re late!” Corin was the name of Merryn’s CL500 Mining Unit, half a ton of condensers, circuits, relays, and vacuum cells which could assemble, or disassemble, almost anything on command….
The eastern sky grew wonderful with dawn. As the day became brighter, a soft grey mist rose from the ground and made the moors look like a dream landscape. But young Merryn had been caught up in nightmares. She awoke inside her Mining Unit, which rocked gently on its colossal ring, humming a soothing melody. They had slept in the centre of a neolithic stone circle bearing nineteen proud granite faces, now softened by the morning mist. Off in the distance the piercing clang of heavy drilling could be heard as the young Earthborns sought their quota of lithium.
Merryn bid the stone circle a good day and set out for the granite-crowned hills which guarded the moors to the east. The sun was rising over the heads of the highest tors and from every direction they could hear all manner of drilling, pumping and roasting going on from her classmates and their Units. The scoreboard in the sky was exploding periodically, and now read, “Nessa: 1, Arluth: 3, Sally: 1, Zennor: 1, Sam: 1, Gwenno: 2, Alistair: 1, Merryn: 0.”
Over the next several hours they tested a few different sites, extracting samples and looking for an elusive geothermal spring. The samples came out in cylinders of earth, in which holes, cracks, rubble or clay indicated fluid movement. As they went they found more of these signs, which led Merryn to believe they were going the right way. And though the sun was riding high beyond the meridian, the disturbances they left behind were minimal.
As Merryn made her way to Gwennap Pit Speaking Place, the mild night soothed her worry. The moon had not yet risen above the tors, and there was a strong wind which stirred the long grass and foxgloves, and sang through the gorse bushes which grew near the meadows. A light rain washed her. The green plovers were up and about, and their pee-wits made the loneliness of the scene seem less lonely. The whoo-whoo-whoo of a short-eared owl echoed. Merryn was getting wet and tired; she crawled up into Corin’s inner capsule, which sheltered the girl and wheeled them through the night. In the insulated quiet of the capsule, she thought about her classmates and friends. “I can’t believe they would drill so recklessly, just for the sake of a competition.”