Estuary 2
2023

Estuary 2 follows on from Estuary 1 in exploring the shoreline of Bridgwater Bay, part of the Bristol Channel in the UK. Powerful tidal and geological forces are central to the piece and form a ‘zone of formative and transformative processes set in train through the interplay of wind, water and stone . . .’ (Tim Ingold).

Humans, inhabiting this area since Neolithic times, appear in the piece as fragile presences, dominated by geological and tidal forces. Some human appearances are temporally ambiguous: the solitary walker who appears at the beginning and end of the piece, or the human interactions with stones and pebbles. Others, such as the sounds of people playing on the beach, are clearly contemporary.

Playing with this idea of temporal heterogeneity, sounds which have disappeared from the present reappear in the piece, such as the foghorn which last sounded in 1980 and the traces of radio static and Morse code which refer to Marconi’s early radio transmissions from Bridgwater Bay across the Bristol Channel to Wales.