Levels 1 : Triptych : Air
Midges : Starlings : Cormorant

A triptych of three pieces filmed at RSPB Ham Wall on the Somerset Levels.

The wetlands and reed beds of the Somerset Levels, the Avalon Marshes, have emerged from disused peat works like the return of a fragile memory. The scars of industrial extraction have been transformed into a landscape of rich aural and visual phenomena. Walking through the marshes is to move through the sights and sounds of a past the land had forgotten. With each year the land remembers more as vegetation, animals and birds proliferate.

Levels 1 is the result of many hours spent walking, filming and recording on the Avalon Marshes. The piece explores activity taking place in the air above the Levels, evoking three types of flight moving from mass to the singular: the static dance of the midges’ lek, the overwhelming experience of starlings roosting and the flight of a solitary cormorant.