Ive been considering, through walking, two areas of coastland in Northern Scotland. The first is adjacent to a line of off-shore oil-rigs, as they over-winter in the Cromerty Firth, and the other, further around the Aberdeenshire coastland, an off-shore windfarm.
Rimlands 1 :walk to run: work in progress
Rimlands 2 : Building a line: work in progress
There is a landscape line-of-sight between these two systems of power infrastructures, harvesting on the ocean but tethered to the coast. These mythologically scaled megastructures. The walking action started as a methodology to consider the structures, their relationship between the ocean on which they sit, the rimlands that they face and the heartlands that they service.
While researching I came across the landscape-based term Rimlands, from pre-war geopolitical theory and first proposed by UK politician Halford John Mackinder (1861-1947) in pre WWII strategising. In this context, Rimlands surround the Heartlands. They are, therefore, tradable, invadable, expendable to the Heartlands.
These terms collapse power, land and history to a simple hierarchy of position.
While undertaking this walking action Ive been thinking about these terms as anthropogenic descriptors. Rimlands are not simply low lying territories, they are wastable lands. Ive been looking for the future ghosts that will reside here. The landscapes Ive walked dry out and flood twice a day, under the influence of tide and moon, each flow of water an echo of the last, and a precursor to the next. An echo of the planet’s past and a precursor of its future.
All work here is in development, emerging for research in progress.
Convergence, 2019
Assembling the propositional landscape-based line of sight between the regressive and emergent power infrastructures.
