Rob St John
Rob St John is an artist and cultural geographer, based in rural Lancashire, UK. His practice is focused on the blurrings of nature and culture in contemporary landscapes. He works primarily across sound, moving image, installation and film photography. His work, usually based on slow, sustained periods of sited fieldwork, has been shown/heard at Tate Modern (London), Victoria and Albert Museum (London), The Barbican (London), The Lighthouse (Glasgow), Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, and many others. He has variously produced, edited and contributed to numerous publications, both artistic and academic
robstjohn.co.uk
Örö
2021
This installation film was shot over two Öres residency periods, in January 2016 and June 2017. It combines a series of paired ‘stilled films’ with field recordings made with binaural, contact and hydrophone microphones; and sonifications of 1500 year Baltic sediment core data, eutrophication and hypoxia patterns in the Archipelago Sea, and photosynthesis fluctuations in island trees; and is produced with convolution reverbs created in various island spaces. My intention in making this film is that whilst it provides a high-resolution document of an island ‘on the turn’, its knotted spatialities and temporalities also provide an imaginative space for thinking with the complex tangles of human and non-human lives in our contemporary worlds. By suggesting visual and sonic resonances and dissonances across scales, materials and lifeworlds, I hope the film might prompt new imaginaries of interconnection and interdependence, not only in this patterned ground landscape, cycling through ruin and regrowth, but also in its diverse links to the wider world. What future trajectories might this island assemblage take; how might we attentively and creatively document its potentials and transformations; and what are our roles in its ongoing care and stewardship?
