Inland Europe
Inland Scotland
In the frame of the European project Frontiers in Retreat and in collaboration with Scottish Sculpture Workshop , INLAND focuses on the specific territory of the Cabrach, a high moorland near Huntly, 38 miles far from Aberdeen. The land has been progressively abandoned, and most of its surface is enclosed by a private Estate.
During the first stage we established contact with the rural development researchers from James Hutton Institute, and looked at the process, limits and promises of the vision that field work technicians can trigger in a certain place with the community that inhabits it.
Subsequently, we carried conversations with Cabrach inhabitants and farmers, and looked at the content of the recently formulated Land Reform Act of Scotland, with its legal and political implications, in relation to possible applications within the rural community there.
The project has a first moment of recognition of the layers of history and micro-stories laid over the geological strata of these ancient hills, represented in a guided walk with a farmer and a geologist, and the State’s Head Gamekeeper and part of a series of landscape drawing exercises plein air, bringing together international visitors and locals. The route traverses lost paths, resulting in an interrupted walk, depicting a damaged landscape. A press note about the action is sent to the local media.
At a later stage, an exchange trip between tenant farmers of the Cabrach and farm cooperative members of Andalusia, Southern Spain, will be organised. The cooperative was created by landless farm workers union ( S.O.C) in the 80´s as part of a campaign to highlight inequalities in access to land in a region of huge historical private Estates, that involved land occupation for collective cultivation and other innovative social and economical forms. This methodology is based on Paulo Freire «From Peasant to Peasant » method of exchange in non-hierarchical situations.
The final outcome of the project will be the documentation of the discussions and debates amongst farmers (such as how to build collectivity or the concept of peasant – campesino, a term that is offensive in English and a political reclaimed position in French and Spanish ). Finnaly INLAND will produce a series of alternative didactic charts ( hand painted versions of a Power Point) for field researchers from a semi-fictional John Hatton Institute speculating with a potential situation in the Cabrach and the Land Reform Act implementation.
In the frame of the European project Frontiers in Retreat and in collaboration with Scottish Sculpture Workshop , INLAND focuses on the specific territory of the Cabrach, a high moorland near Huntly, 38 miles far from Aberdeen. The land has been progressively abandoned, and most of its surface is enclosed by a private Estate.
During the first stage we established contact with the rural development researchers from James Hutton Institute, and looked at the process, limits and promises of the vision that field work technicians can trigger in a certain place with the community that inhabits it.
Subsequently, we carried conversations with Cabrach inhabitants and farmers, and looked at the content of the recently formulated Land Reform Act of Scotland, with its legal and political implications, in relation to possible applications within the rural community there.
The project has a first moment of recognition of the layers of history and micro-stories laid over the geological strata of these ancient hills, represented in a guided walk with a farmer and a geologist, and the State’s Head Gamekeeper and part of a series of landscape drawing exercises plein air, bringing together international visitors and locals. The route traverses lost paths, resulting in an interrupted walk, depicting a damaged landscape. A press note about the action is sent to the local media.
At a later stage, an exchange trip between tenant farmers of the Cabrach and farm cooperative members of Andalusia, Southern Spain, will be organised. The cooperative was created by landless farm workers union ( S.O.C) in the 80´s as part of a campaign to highlight inequalities in access to land in a region of huge historical private Estates, that involved land occupation for collective cultivation and other innovative social and economical forms. This methodology is based on Paulo Freire «From Peasant to Peasant » method of exchange in non-hierarchical situations.
The final outcome of the project will be the documentation of the discussions and debates amongst farmers (such as how to build collectivity or the concept of peasant – campesino, a term that is offensive in English and a political reclaimed position in French and Spanish ). Finnaly INLAND will produce a series of alternative didactic charts ( hand painted versions of a Power Point) for field researchers from a semi-fictional John Hatton Institute speculating with a potential situation in the Cabrach and the Land Reform Act implementation.