Ghost Series The river Tamar runs as the dividing line, or border, between Devon and Cornwall, its source only 6 kilometres off the north Cornwall coast, any longer and it would effectively make Cornwall an island. Due to the decline in its use by humans in recent years, large areas of the river’s banks have been reclaimed by wilderness, adding to the already dramatic landscape. The Tamar Project is a long-term arts, education and sustainability initiative that aims to reconnect people with the once industrious Tamar river. The problems that the Tamar faces are mirrored on rivers the world over and this project addresses these issues, actingnas a blueprint for others. The Tamar Project’s international arts programme is inviting world-renowned artists to respond to the river in a socially engaging way. Adam’s Ghost Series is the first of these commissions. Ghost is a kayak. But it also functions as a sculpture, ‘coffin’, bed, ‘costume’ and camera rig. It is designed to ferry members of the public on a journey to the ‘Isle of the Dead’. When you travel in it you enter part of a story.
Fabricated from hundreds of strips of different woods with a
On the deck is a mount for a camera which records the journey of the kayak from across its bows, generating a record of its own journeys, and this footage will be archived as each passenger makes his or her own unique journey. The inspiration for Ghost Series, came partly from the making of Echo – a video by Chodzko, set in the past and imagined future of Governors’ Island, New York. 'It features a ritualistic decay or erosion of matter amongst the community on this island. It is also partly from a series of works that were to do with ideas of searching, viewing (especially art as an apparatus for viewing something else) and perceiving other states of being (including death), as well as archiving. Connecting all these ideas is also a context of how these might operate within the idea of community.’ How do people respond to the work? ‘It’s a very beautiful object and that alone seems to make people quite happy! The prospect of travelling in it also seems to attract a lot of people who would otherwise not be interested in travelling in a vessel on water. I noticed in previous projects with Ghost that people who said they were afraid of water or had never been in a boat before seemed to be very happy to travel in Ghost. Its status as an “art object” means that it occupies a surreal space which allows the people using it to forget that it is a kayak and feel that normal rules do not apply.’ In the context of the Tamar, the story is about the river. The ‘death’ is about the Tamar’s decline as the lifeblood of the communities that border its banks. But the journeys that Ghost will make are intended to discover life through the river’s history, and its possibility for the future.
beautiful, glossy, curving surface this object exists suspended, floating through space, in galleries and museums, as well as operating as a functional vessel on the water.
Ghost is designed by Chodzko to have a rower in the back and a member of the public in the front under a domed canopy. The passenger lies down low and flat. Like a body in a coffin with its head slightly raised. The passenger horizontally occupies the space between sky and sea in an attempt to imagine a sensation between living and dying, sleeping and waking. From June to December 2012, Ghost will be travelling from Gunnislake down to Plymouth on a series of voyages, paddled sometimes by the artist and sometimes by experienced kayakers. Ghost will invite individuals from specific communities to explore and record the River Tamar. Adam Chodzko, Ghost Series.
NB Adam Chodzko: adamchodzko.com Foreground: foregroundprojects.org.uk Adam Chodzko, Ghost Series.
N om de Strip - J uly Aug Sept 2012
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