The Valley Unfurls its Song
Single screen video with sound, 10 mins 28 seconds
This artwork featured in All Alone (2021). A Meadow Arts commission.
Artist, Adam Chodzko’s latest video work shows three women immersed in the trees, plants and earth in different locations within Croft Castle’s Fishpool Valley. Each wears a different runner’s number (696, 936 and 993). Although they appear connected through participation in some form of event that took place (or is currently taking place) in the Valley, their relation to each other is mysterious. Do they know each other? Are they present in the same time frame? Are they even perhaps the same person?
Sometimes they call to each other across the sides of the valley. Are they lost, or intentionally disappearing into the landscape? They seem to be feeling different levels of ease about existing in such a place. Their calls to each other echo across the ‘bowl’ of the valley and are themselves lost to the silence.
At intervals a strange floating movement speeds between the trees, through the foliage and low to the ground. Part human, part animal and part spirit, it offers a perception of the valley that seems to connect the three women. Are they creating this movement?
Dotted all along the edges of the wooded Fishpool Valley, a number of low-lying stone slabs bear the carved words “To the View”, with a delicate arrow pointing the visitor in this, or that direction. Some are covered in vegetation and others are barely readable, but the intention is there: get to the view! Only, what might happen once you get there?
Adam Chodzko’s The Valley Unfurls its Song proposes views that exist beyond the constraints of time and even place, although the setting is most definitely the Picturesque valley. His video was created by wondering about the pleasures and discomforts that we discover in ourselves from spending time alone in nature with our thoughts, dreams, and worries. It also explores the idea that repeatedly returning to a place in the landscape allows our previous walks to haunt our present experience, melding with each other across time as the landscape evolves over the years and changes with the seasons.
Chodzko’s video suggests that our view of place is not just from a bench at a prescribed vantage point along a trail; it is influenced by multiple layers of our conscious and unconscious senses; our mood, memories, smells, touch, etc. We can’t necessarily see the birds, but we hear their song around us. We can’t see the valley’s complex root systems networking everything from beneath the earth, but we can begin to imagine it.
The Valley Unfurls its Song suggests this layering through its strange relationships between sound and image. Eg; Sounds recorded of the Croft Castle cows munching grass in the field next to the valley become the sound associated with the spirit flight through the forest. The subtle sounds of breath whilst walking are here made as audible as the birdsong.
Maybe we only fully see ‘the view’ when we dream its landscape when asleep? Ultimately, Chodzko’s new video suggests that ‘the view’ is something we can all create in ourselves.
The Valley Unfurls its Song (2021), commissioned by Meadow Arts in partnership with NT Croft Castle, exhibited as part of All Alone.
About the artist
Adam Chodzko
Adam Chodzko exhibited in All Alone, Croft Castle, 2021.