Five Questions for... JLM Morton

We continue our series of occasional short interviews with contributors and friends of Elsewhere with five questions for JLM Morton, who we featured in our Trespass issue. 

What does home mean to you?

Home, in it’s very truest sense, is the place where I grew up – Cirencester, a market town in Gloucestershire where I wore a groove into the street I lived on, going back and forth to the parks at either end of the street: the now paywalled Bathurst Estate park and the municipal Abbey Grounds with its sweeping cedar tree, elderly mulberry, a lake full of pike that my brother used to catch and the old cold store that looks like an egg cupped by a mound of grass. I couldn’t live there now – there are aspects of the place that I can only stomach in small doses (like a toxic family member) – the showy Cotswold privilege and snobbery, the loafers and chinos, small town social dynamics, the town/gown antagonism with the Royal Agricultural University that led to many a fight in the marketplace on a Saturday night when I was younger. I suppose I found home in the out-of-the-way quiet places, in the ‘maze’ we built as kids in the thicket at the back of the school field, in the den we claimed on the dirt hill at the edge of the car park, in the copse where I snuck out at dawn with a friend to set a fire and fry an egg in the skillet I’d smuggled from our kitchen in a rucksack. Home was also the rivers and brooks that run through the town and in and out of both parks, where I paddled, as well as the open-air pool where I seemed to spend entire summers diving off the board and burning my tongue on too-hot chocolate in plastic cups from the tuck shop. Now, wherever I go in the world, water feels like home to me – I can sit and be with water for hours and never get restless.

Which place do you have a special connection to?

I feel a very special connection to West Africa, a region I spent a lot of time living and working in during the early 2000s and 2010s. I have a background in education, particularly supporting girls and children with disabilities to access school which took me to various places including Nigeria, Benin Republic, Ghana, Togo, Cameroon. I feel a very particular affinity with Sierra Leone – there is something about the people, the colleagues I’ve worked with over the years, that I love and admire. It’s something like resilience but not – everyone I’ve ever met there has always welcomed me with open arms, with a kind of high-spirited joy, a no-f*cks-left-to-give attitude that carries them along and which I find inspiring. I first went there in 2003 just after the civil war ended to work with the Forum of African Women Educationalists. Though excluded from public decision making, what women have done to create nonpartisan community dialogue to advance peace has been extraordinary. The majestic cotton tree that stands in the oldest part of Freetown is the most on-point manifestation of this attitude – associated with the founding of the capital by a group of formerly enslaved African Americans, known as the Black Nova Scotians, who gathered under its shade to pray and celebrate their freedom, the tree is a landmark, revered by the local community for its spirit and historical importance. Sierra Leone is an extraordinarily beautiful country – I especially love the area around Kenema, where the trees look like gods and the forest is all you can see for miles.

What is beyond your front door?

Immediately beyond my front door is a street full of families and elderly folk, rows of houses built on an orchard in the mid-1950s where the springs along the hill still seep up through the kerbsides. Some of the residents have lived here since these houses were built. Beyond our gardens is the A46 road down to Bath. To the back is a steep climb up to Rodborough Common. To the front, over the rooves, Selsley common and a view towards the Severn Vale where the land flattens and on a good day you can see the Forest of Dean beyond the river.

What place would you most like to visit?

I have always wanted to go to Rajasthan, lured in part by the textiles, beadwork and jewellery as well as the desert. I’m really fascinated by the ways women all over the world have used weaving and making as a kind of language that speaks beyond the confines of the written word. It’s a way of transcending boundaries and telling stories that express culture and history which I feel deeply connected to. I come from a long line of textile workers – something I only discovered recently and which explains why I have boxes full of textiles that I’ve collected from around the world that I really have no space for at all but can’t let go.  

What are you reading / watching / listening to / looking at right now?

I’ve been collaborating with the brilliant comic Emma Kernahan and composer Mara Simspon on Lost Mythos, a show that blends the unruly folklore of old, weird Albion and stories from modern rural life, simultaneously embodying and exploring ancient archetypes and questioning our yearning for them. Mara has written a beautiful album, Living Matter, in response to my poems and I’ve got that on repeat. She also did a brilliant playlist ‘Humans in the Room’ for 6Music’s Freakzone which I highly recommend banging on.

I always have multiple reads on the go and my tbr pile is ridiculous. I’ve just finished Isabelle Baafi’s collection Chaotic Good which was thrilling to read – innovations in form and one of those books that make you feel like you’re being let in on a secret that only you will know. I’m now reading Michael Symmonds Roberts’ brilliant and moving memoir Quartet for the End of Time which is about grief and the premiere of Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps to a crowd of Jewish prisoners of war in a deathcamp and its legacy – it feels remarkably prescient. I have also got Jen Calleja’s demented and revelatory Goblinhood on the go, a series of encyclopaedic essays and poems on her theory of goblins in pop culture. I can’t describe it, you have to read it. I’m writing about pilgrimage at the moment, so I’m reading Esther de Waal’s The Celtic Way of Prayer too which is about inner and outer journeying, poetry and prayer / poetry as prayer.

I’ve just binged Narrow Road to the Deep North on BBC iPlayer. Lured in by the love story, I got sideswiped by the turn into the horrors of the Death Railway built by Asian labourers and Allied POWs to connect Thailand with Myanmar, but I thought this was an utterly brilliant drama, one of those ones I can't stop thinking about. I realise I’m being drawn to war stories right now, no doubt looking for answers to our current predicaments. Original novel by Richard Flanagan, the only writer to have won both the Booker and the Baillie Gifford. The way he / the director handle the subtleties of emotion really blew me away. Incredible storytelling.

I keep meaning to get up to that London to see the Ithell Colquhoun show at Tate Britain. Painter, occultist and poet, Colquhoun is getting a long-overdue reassessment. She reminds me a lot of Monica Sjöö, a radical anarcho ecofeminist who played a pivotal role in the peace and women’s movements of the 1970s and beyond. She got her own retrospective in 2023 at Modern Art Oxford and at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Both of these artist remind us that we are not simply one and the other, goddess and god, male and female. Our boundaries are permeable, all matter is vibrant and that nothing comes from nothing, our differences are joyously multiple at many levels and scales. Such is the fecundity and variousness of our planet – that recognising our relationality and radical inter-connectedness, not focusing on our oppositions, is a form of resistance. A callback from the past, a reminder we need now more than ever.

JLM Morton is a writer, celebrant and community arts producer from Gloucestershire in the west of England. Her poetry has featured on BBC6 Music and appeared in Poetry Review, Poetry London, Rialto, Magma, Mslexia, The London Magazine, Anthropocene, The Sunday Telegraph and elsewhere. Her prose writing has won the Laurie Lee Prize, been longlisted for the Nan Shepherd prize and extracts from Tenderfoot have been published in Caught by the River, Oxford Review of Books and Elsewhere: A Journal of Place. Juliette is the winner of the Geoffrey Dearmer and Poetry Archive Worldview Prizes and she is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her debut poetry collection Red Handed, was highly commended by the Forward Prizes and a Poetry Society Book of the Year (Broken Sleep Books, 2024). www.jlmmorton.com

You can read ‘Over, Across’ by JLM Morton here.

Five Questions for... Tom Branfoot

We return to our series of short interviews with contributors and friends of Elsewhere with Tom Branfoot, whose essay 'Every Landscape Is Also That Landscape: Fields, Housing and Land Ownership in Britain' appears in our Trespass issue of Elsewhere. 

What does home mean to you?

Home to me is West Yorkshire. It means greenness and wildness, moorland, dear friends and great pubs. 

Which place do you have a special connection to?

The M62 is an enduring symbol of home. I have always lived nearby to it and when I first moved away, to university in Manchester, it was the route there and back. Each time I travel through it, returning or departing, seeing Rishworth Moor open up and the white permanence of Stott Hall Farm fills me with an unmistakable sense of belonging.

What is beyond your front door?

Beyond my front too is a wobbly bird feeder lodged into a patch of shared grass mowed periodically by the landlord. It would be pointless to plant anything, yet the floor is currently flecked with clover and the occasional bird’s-foot trefoil. Beyond that is a car garage which emits a continuous hum, and down the road is a patch of wasteland behind the church filled with written-off vehicles. 

What place would you most like to visit?

I would love to visit Bosnia and Herzegovina, Shetland and Cornwall, and have a trip planned to Swaledale. 

What are you reading / watching / listening to / looking at right now?

I am currently reading The Sky is Falling by Lorenza Mazzetti translated by Livia Franchini and Silk Work by Imogen Cassels. Caleb Klaces’ forthcoming novel with the mightily stylish Prototype, Mr Outside, is a triumphant balancing act between comedy and tragedy.

Tom Branfoot is a poet and critic from Bradford, and the writer-in-residence at Manchester Cathedral. He won a Northern Writers' Award in 2024 and the New Poets Prize 2022. He organises the poetry reading series More Song in Bradford. Tom is the author of This Is Not an Epiphany (Smith|Doorstop) and boar (Broken Sleep Books), both published in 2023. His poem ‘A Parliament of Jets’ is shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Volatile, his debut collection, is forthcoming with the87press. 

You can read Tom’s essay for Elsewhere here.

Printed Matters: Where the Leaves Fall

IMAGE COURTESY OF WHERE THE LEAVES FALL

By Sara Bellini

“Indigenous thinking breaks the extractive capitalist rationalism that looks at nature  the same way it looks at other people, aiming to dominate them. When looking at nature with a holistic sense, we understand that we are part of it and that we are connected to this planet.”

These words are taken from the editor’s note of Issue 12 of Where the Leaves Fall, entirely guest-edited by Indigenous activist Txai Suruí. The magazine regularly gives space to activists and Indigenous people from all over the world to share their experiences and their view of a sustainable future.

Where the Leaves Fall aims at exploring “humankind's connection with nature”, through articles, interviews, illustration and photography on the themes of art, agriculture, technology, science, philosophy, human rights and any field where our impact on the planet is visible. The commitment to rekindling our relationship with nature goes beyond articles on how climate change is linked with social justice. The entire production process of the physical journal is sustainable, from minimised paper waste to chemical free ink and a wormery to finish the staff food at the printing facility. 

The contributors to the journal are diverse, including marginalised voices from the global south, Indigenous people, women, people of colour and people from the LGBTQI+ community. Community, at a local as well as a global level, is fundamental to reach a more balanced relationship with the world we share. Where the Leaves Fall was born out of this shared value at OmVed Gardens, a space in north London - partnered with the UN World Food Program - promoting ecology and agricultural sustainability, where people can engage with and experience nature in creative ways. 

Below you’ll find our interview with editors Luciane Pisani and David Reeve.

Image courtesy of Where the leaves Fall

Why did you choose the print magazine as a format?

At the time we started there weren’t many magazines looking at climate breakdown through the lens of our connection with nature and print felt like a good way to take people away from digital spaces – including social media. We were very careful in how the magazine is printed – printing with one of the most environmentally friendly printers in the world - if you smell the magazine you won’t catch the whiff of any chemicals.

However with the pandemic and the various lockdowns and restrictions around that it became apparent we needed to go online as well. So we now encompass physical spaces for events, print, and online. One of our Australian collaborators recently told us our magazine is a message stick – you can look that up.

One of the focuses of WtLF is climate change. How do you turn feelings of anxiety, anger and hopelessness into a force for change?

It’s difficult to feel hope at a time of climate and societal breakdown. Systems that have held us up for so long are slowly collapsing and that’s creating a lot of discontent. Capitalism has failed us and the planet and we’re now in a system where politicians and industries are desperately trying to hold on to what they had and many people are being cast adrift. The growth of the far-right is a result of this. With the UK government’s indifference, the National Trust RSPB and WWF came together to create the People’s Plan for Nature to engage the public in caring and connecting with the natural world.

Similarly the UK government is largely ignoring the National Food Strategy that it commissioned so there’s a movement towards how people and business can take action and affect change. Rob Hopkins came up with the Transition Network (you can read an interview with Rob in the mag) which is all about communities coming together and reimagining the future. In Brazil you have movements such as the Cozinha Ocupação 9 de Julho and MST (Landless Workers’ Movement). Where governments and corporations fail us, people can come together and affect change - it’s about demonstrating that things can be done differently and work. 

What’s the importance of community and connection for you?

Our focus is on growing our local and global communities. Community is everything. It’s diversity. It’s understanding. It’s collaboration. It’s imagination. It’s strength. It’s power.

Could you share some details about your creative process, for example in regards to finding themes and selecting submissions?

The magazine is a project of OmVed Gardens – a space in north London that has undergone ecological transformation. We meet up there to discuss the things that people might want to focus on or talk about. From these meetings come the magazine’s themes. We then meet again to discuss initial ideas around those themes before casting the net out to our global audience. We have a period of submissions and then from the ideas developed at OmVed and the varying submissions, we select the features (text and photographic) and dialogues (shorter essays) for the mag.

For the 12th issue we wanted to do something different. Everyone was largely disappointed by the results of COP26. We watched the opening ceremony with some really impressive speeches – but were the ears in the auditorium listening? One of the speakers was Txai Suruí – an Indigenous activist from the Amazon’s Paiter Suruí people. In the lead up to COP27 we were interested in what the magazine would be if we asked Txai to edit the magazine, bringing her perspective to our readers at this crucial moment in the climate emergency.

We wanted to step back and allow her complete ownership of the editorial direction, and it has led to a series of fascinating features from the perspective of Indigenous peoples – mostly from the Amazon but also other parts of South America. As Txai said: “For a long time, the stories written about the Indigenous peoples of Brazil and the world were told through the eyes of the coloniser, almost always stereotyped and from a perspective of domination and superiority,” she writes. “We are now protagonists of our own history and the narrators of it - a history that didn’t start with the invasion. We continue our resistance that has lasted more than 500 years and that does not end now.”

It’s a powerful issue. As the shaman Davi Kopenawa states in the issue – we, the westerners, are the earth eaters. Our relationship with the land is one of extraction and destruction. It’s not about us saving Indigenous peoples but recognising that we need to open up and that they are the ones who can actually save us. They are amazing storytellers, artists and experts in conservation. They have a deep connection with the land and have survived and developed alongside it for 1000s of years. 

What did you learn about humankind’s connection with nature since issue 1?

We are nature and a part of the ecosystems in which we live. The rivers and seas run through our bodies. Our family includes the flora and fauna around us and the living soil under our feet.

Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you’d like to share with our readers?

If you’d like to know more about the magazine or become a part of the conversation then you can sign up to our newsletters, follow us on Instagram and check out the mag.

Five Questions for... John Rooney

By Sara Bellini

One of our favourite Berlin bookshops has recently reopened its doors - with a new look, in a new location - and we couldn’t be more thrilled. After the non renewal of their rental contract back in August, Curious Fox. had been absent from the Berlin map until this February, when it moved to Lausitzer Platz in Kreuzberg. While walking down the stairs that lead you to the bookshop, you step under a beautiful black and white mural depicting the new neighbourhood, the nearby overground train, and of course a fox.

The hand behind the artwork is that of Derry-born illustrator John Rooney. “The owners Orla & Dave are good friends of mine and asked me to work on a larger mural on the exterior of the new shop. Unfortunately I had just decided to leave Berlin at the time and thought a smaller mural inside would be more feasible. Myself and Orla are keen bird enthusiasts so I included a kestrel and a jay (which live in the trees opposite the shop). I drew some buildings from the neighbourhood too. It was a very fun way to spend my last week in Berlin.” 

You might have seen some of his works in Standart magazine or on windows and walls across Berlin - and Ireland. Drawing inspiration from pop culture (cult movies, sci-fi and literature), nature (he has a dog collage series) and architecture (check out his cityscapes), each composition strikes us for its dynamicity and layers of details, perfectly balanced between accuracy and artistry. If you are curious about the aesthetic potential of the garden spider, the common pipistrelle bat or the Portuguese man o’ war, have a look at his wildlife map of Ireland. No snakes obviously. 

In his hand-drawn bird collages and wildlife maps, John Rooney presents a place through its fauna, giving equal importance to the tiny creatures and the majestic ones. The latest addition to its portfolio is the wildlife map of Canada, with over 480 species checked by experts at the Biodôme in Montréal. 

According to his bio, “John has not stopped drawing things ever since he was the age of three”, and we are glad to hear he has no plan to stop any time soon. We caught up with him just before he left Berlin, where he had been based for the past four years, to embark on adventures around the world.

What does home mean to you?

A place where you feel at peace and have people around you that you care about. Cliched, I know, but it's that simple for me.

Which place do you have a special connection to?

I'm not sure if you'll accept a place that doesn't exist anymore but I'd have to say a pub called the 'Bound for Boston' in Derry where I spent most of my late teens / early twenties. It was always full of sound people and had great bands playing every week. I have a lot of great memories there. I do love Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin too. 

What is beyond your front door?

Not much right now to be honest. I'm living in the suburbs of Derry and the nearest pub is 15 minutes away and it's dodgy as fuck. Although there's some football pitches behind my house that have a lot of nice trees with bullfinches and siskins flying around the place.

What place would you most like to visit?

I'd love to just stand at the foot of Mount Everest just to see it and take it in.

What are you reading / watching / listening to right now?

I'm currently reading a comedy book called Mickey Doc by a Derry author called Fintan Harvey. I'm watching the Kanye documentary and also Lovecraft Country. I'm listening to some Junior Brother and a lot of Kylie, who I rediscovered after watching an episode of 'Reeling in the Years' on RTE.

John Rooney's Website
John Rooney on Instagram

Capturing the forest – the photography of Eymelt Sehmer

By Paul Scraton:

It was a cold winter day when Eymelt invited us to her studio in Berlin-Weißensee. She had been looking for models, people she could photograph using a technique that dates back to the earliest days of photography. It would take a while, she said, to capture each image. We would – in this era of mobile phones and Instagram, when more photographs are taken in a single year than in the previous century – have to be patient.

The collodion wet plate process requires that a black tin plate be coated, sensitized, exposed and developed in the space of about fifteen minutes. We spent a few happy hours in her studio room, laughing and joking and mainly talking to Eymelt’s legs, because she was usually under a thick blanket of some short, either behind the camera or in her self-made dark room where she prepared the collodion emulsion, coating the plates and then developing them by hand.

‘Did you ever try this outside?’ someone asked, and in those six words, an idea was born.

In early 2017, Eymelt had made a short film based on my book Ghosts on Shore about the Baltic coast, and we had been keen to work together on a project again. The idea of finding a way to take the collodion wet plate technique out of the studio and into the landscape was the starting point for what would become our new book. 

In the Pines is a combination of words and images. It is my novella, a whole-life story told through fragments about a narrator’s relationship to the forest, sharing the pages with Eymelt’s photographs from between the trees. Some of the stories contained within the book gave Eymelt inspiration when she took her mobile darkroom into the forest. Some of the images she returned to inspired new stories in turn. Eymelt’s art both illustrates the text and inspires it, and I know I would have created something different, something lesser, without our collaboration.

To celebrate the launch of the book this autumn I wanted to celebrate Eymelt’s talent and her art. What follows is my short interview with Eymelt, about the photography in our book and what she’s planning next. 

What is it about this technique that is so appealing to you as a photographer?

First, I love analogue photography in general. And then, what I find most intriguing about the collodion wet plate process, are the imperfections of the images. The photos are blurred; the images look liquid, creating blind spots. These are voids to be filled by the viewer’s imagination. And each photograph is truly unique.

When you first showed me the technique in the studio, it seemed almost impossible you could take it outside. What specific challenges did you face when taking your camera out into the forest?

The most challenging thing involves the developing, in that I have to do it immediately. The coated photoplate needs to still be wet for the developing process, which means I have about ten to fifteen minutes from coating the plate until developing it. I have to therefore coat each plate by hand before each photograph. I cannot prepare a batch in advance.

Once the photograph is taken, the plates can only be handled in darkness. So I need a mobile darkroom, and I built one out of a former steamer trunk. Transporting this monster out into the woods, to basically build a lab out there among the trees, was quite a challenge and was time-consuming as well. 

Added to all this, and related to how much time everything takes, is that I am somewhat exposed. To the weather, and especially the temperature, which can have a major impact. During the winter, for example, the chemicals on the plates froze, creating some beautiful crystalline structures on the photographs. It was as if the environment had engrained itself on the image. But that is also what I love about the technique – you have to embrace the uncontrollable and see what happens.

In my introduction, I’ve written about how the photographs both related to the text and sometimes also inspired it. How was it for you, working on a collaborative project like this?

Generally, the inspiration for my works comes from fairy tales and myths, so the starting point is almost always a story. In the Pines was my first ever collaboration of words and photography, and as your language is very evocative, I could picture some of the images in my head right away. What also helped were the walks and talks we had, especially through the landscape. It helped me get a feeling for it.

Text is interesting because it can go into detail, and you take the reader with you. With an image it is slightly different. I am choosing the frame of course, the perspective and the light situation. But there is more there for the viewer to decide for themselves. Not least when it comes to how close or carefully they decide to look.

My favourite aspect of the collaboration was that it basically forced me to take the technique outside and into the woods. Without this project, I’m not sure I would have given it a try. And spending all that time out there with my camera and my mobile darkroom meant I had lots of beautiful encounters with mushroom foragers, kindergarten kids, horses and hikers.

So will you be taking more landscape or outside photographs using this technique in the future?

I’m certainly going to take some more. I would also like to experiment more, try some things with filters etc. 

In the Pines is all about the narrator’s lifelong connection to the forest. What does the forest mean to you?
For me the forest has always been, since early childhood, a kind of retreat – a place of sanctuary. I could lose myself in fairy tales, and in difficult emotional times it was a place where I took refuge. To this day, the forest is still a place of solace for me.

It was also an adventurous playground for myself and my brothers. A place where you could pick berries and hunt mushrooms, where you could climb trees and build secret hiding places far from the parents’ eyes. It was our own microcosmic realm and it captivated our imagination.

Finally, what’s next for Eymelt Sehmer? You have a gallery in Berlin – are there any projects or news from the gallery you’d like to share with us?

Oh, I have lots of ideas! In early 2020 I took the Trans-Siberian Express through Russia to Mongolia where, thanks to the pandemic, I got stuck. Initially I’d intended travelling there to take photographs of the Dukha people, a nomadic reindeer tribe, and then, having got stuck in Ulaanbaatar with my guide and his family, I met his wife Mugi’s motorcycle club – the first and only female motorcycle club in the country: the Mongolian Lady Riders. Modern nomads.

I made a short film about the motorcyclists and have photographs from the entire trip, but it takes thought and care as to how they might be used. My experience with the Dukha, for example. It was a nice experience, but parts still felt awkward, and we as artists or tourists always need to be careful as to how we present, and indeed to an extent, ‘exploit’ such encounters and topics for our own artistic ends. 

I’m also working on a portfolio of analogue photographs of female characters in mythology, and in the gallery we are slowly getting back to exhibitions, readings and film screenings. Thanks to the pandemic, and the ever-changing situation, it is hard to plan things in advance. But in 2022 we hope to host some photography workshops and collaborations with different people from our neighbourhood in Berlin.

Galerie Arnarson & Sehmer, Berlin
In the Pines by Paul Scraton and Eymelt Sehmer, published by Influx Press

Five Questions for… Igor Tereshkov

From the series Berlin - Bydgoszcz Soup

By Sara Bellini 

Igor Tereshkov refers to one of his works as “a visual anthropological exploration”, and no label would fit more suitably. Non-places, surveillance, post-soviet urbanism, the interrelation of natural and built environment are among the themes he delves into in a variety of medium spanning from documentary photography to visual art to performance.. 

His latest project consists of extra large cyanotypes examining our relationship with nature and waste. The idea came to him a few years ago when he was collecting plastic litter near water zones with Greenpeace. “It’s in some way a homage to Anna Atkins’s work about diversity of algae and in another way a documentation and didactic enumeration cataloguing the types and ways of using plastic in our everyday life.” 

The next step in the process consists in exposing the images of the discarded plastic on the leaves from the very bushes and trees where he had found them. “All this in order to convey an idea that plastic is made, not grown [...] This is kind of a remake to the slogan of the famous ketchup, which claims that it is grown, not made, which can’t be said about the plastic bottle in which it’s often packed - as well as many other products”. 

From the series Berlin - Bydgoszcz Soup

Experimental photographic techniques and the anthropocene are recurring elements in Igor’s creative practice. In 2018/2019 he went to Western Siberia to document the environmental destruction caused by petrol extraction from oil companies in the region inhabited by the Kanthy people. 

The result is a collection of beautiful yet eerie black and white shots covered in dark stains, obtained by developing the film in water containing traces of oil he had previously bottled on the spot. The oil randomly corrodes the film gelatin, in the same way it damages the land, endangering the Indigenous People that had been living there for centuries. By mixing water with oil in the development stage, Igor literally allows the subject to become part of the creative process.

To accompany this interview, Elsewhere is publishing previously unseen pictures Igor took on a trip from Poland to Germany two years ago. “I had two rolls of film and a bottle of wine, later I soaked the exposed film in leftovers of wine and called this series Berlin - Bydgoszcz Soup... Later I lost the film in the lab and all I have is just these forgotten scans.”

From the series Berlin - Bydgoszcz Soup

What does home mean to you?

Home for me is usually a place to regenerate and to find balance so, more often than not, for me it’s more likely not a place but a process. And of course, speaking of home, I always want to mean safety, clarity and love. I have a firm feeling that I haven’t found yet my home at 100%,  rather a place for a respite.

Which place do you have a special connection to?

I think it’s Ai-Petri, the peak of Mount St. Peter in Crimea. It’s not so big or world famous but I’ve spent many summers there during my childhood. With the whole family we would ride on a car across the peninsula and the Ai-Petri was always a special place. Every time I watch an old VHS family record it always makes me feel a special connection to that place and my childhood.

What is beyond your front door?

Four stair steps and a blue spruce, after ten footsteps there is a hammock and after twenty more footsteps a large and old spruce that would take three or four people to embrace completely. For the past three years I’ve been living in the Moscow exurb in my old family dacha.

What place would you most like to visit?

I hope one day I’ll have an opportunity to visit California.

What are you reading / watching / listening to right now?

Right now I’m reading Internal Colonization: Russia's Imperial Experience by Alexander Etkind , watching the new season of The Walking Dead and listening mostly to Tycho while running.

From the series Berlin - Bydgoszcz Soup

Igor Tereshkov's Website
Igor Tereshkov on Instagram

The rhythm and movement of place: an interview with Jack Cooper

By Dan Carney:

Anyone familiar with Modern Nature’s compelling blend of psych, folk, prog, and pop will know that the band’s main songwriter Jack Cooper draws plenty of inspiration from the rhythms and movements of the places around him. Debut collection ‘How to Live’ explored the transition between the urban and the rural, while last year’s ‘Annual’ beautifully evoked the seasonal cycle. Forthcoming album ‘Island Of Noise’, available via the Bella Union label from November 19th, tells the story of an imagined island; its evolving landscapes, mysteries, and customs, as experienced by an outsider.  

‘Tributaries’, Jack’s recent guitar/saxophone collaboration with band mate Jeff Tobias, consists of two unhurried, minimal pieces inspired by Wicken and Debden Waters, streams that meet the River Cam near his home in Newport, Essex. Spidery note clusters and playful, conversational phrases give way to smooth harmonics and hanging, resonant silences, alternately restless then still. Instruments and melodies unite, separate, and then rejoin, perfectly capturing the babble, flow, and meander of natural streams. The result is one of the most beguiling and vital British experimental/improv releases of recent times. I was lucky enough to ask Jack all about it…

How did ‘Tributaries’ come about?

Over the last few years, I've become more interested in figuring out a language for making music like this - things accelerated when I started to play the trumpet and involve myself more in theory and notating for other musicians. My working relationship and friendship with Jeff has really given me a lot of confidence. His enthusiasm and openness has been inspiring and key to me exploring these different routes.

What did you set out to capture on the record?

It's difficult to explain, but more than anything I've written before, I feel it has achieved something that I'm not really able to articulate with words. I've had some nice messages from people conveying back to me what I think I intended, which is interesting. The intention behind the systems and score is very different from the finished pieces, because the intention there was to capture a conversation between myself and Jeff.

What was it about Wicken Water and Debden Water that inspired the two pieces?

On a surface level, these two bodies of water are fundamentally the same; two streams that feed the River Cam. But they are completely different in every way from one day to the next - depth, speed, the various life contained within - the molecules will probably never pass here again. So these pieces of music are similar in that they're never the same twice, but on a surface level they're the same. I've been making a film, a visual accompaniment to the new Modern Nature record and that's based around shots that highlight order or symmetry within the chaos of the natural world. I think that's something I'm trying to find - order within the chaos.

Jeff has said that the record is “based on systems written by Jack melding composition and improvisation”…

The systems have more in common with geometric patterns, based around what I consider to be a more logical tuning of the guitar. I improvise around them and from that a score is composed over a period of time. The performers devise an interpretation of the score and that's what you're hearing here. For these recordings the systems and then the score are really secondary to our interpretation, in that the aim is exploring a sort of melodic collectivism. The main consideration when performing the score and contributing to the overall work is to consider your own personal interpretation of what 'collectivism' means. If the foundation of the piece and its purpose is the 'main melodic theme' or the 'score', then how does your own interpretation of collectivism fit in with that and what can you contribute towards the end goal? What aspects of the score can your performance highlight, support or compliment and how can your use of rhythm, timbre, harmony and intent serve it best?

It’s evident on this record that you’re influenced by 1960s/70s left-of-centre British jazz/improvised music. Which of these artists are worth checking out, for people who may love Tributaries but not be familiar with them?

The music that has got me the most over the last couple of years is Philip Thomas' collection of Morton Feldman's piano music which came out via Another Timbre. I think the pace of the music made me realise how context is everything. With enough space between them, any two sounds can make sense. They've also just released a collection of John Cage's Number Pieces by Apartment House, which has a similar clarity. 

Are there plans to do more?

Absolutely, this is just the beginning really. First steps perhaps, but I'm currently working on a piece that's more involved in its composition so I'm getting to grips with how best to realise that and where to take it. I'm also working on new Modern Nature music as well and I think the lines between these two strands will probably blur a lot more over time.

How would you compare where you live now to where you were before, around the Wanstead Flats part of Epping Forest? 

It's easier to ignore the city here.

***

‘Tributaries’ album on Bandcamp: https://astributaries.bandcamp.com/album/tributaries 

Pre-order the forthcoming Modern Nature album ‘Island Of Noise’:
https://bellaunion.ochre.store/release/250629-modern-nature-island-of-noise 

***

Dan Carney is a writer, musician, and lecturer from northeast London. He has released two albums as Astronauts via the Lo Recordings label, and also works as a composer/producer of music for TV and film. His work has been heard on a range of television networks, including BBC, ITV, Channel 4, HBO, Sky, and Discovery. He has also worked in academic psychology research, and has authored articles on subjects such as cognitive processing in genetic syndromes and special skills in autism. His other interests include walking, hanging around in cafes, and spending too much time thinking about Tottenham Hotspur.

Five Questions for... Tiina Törmänen

Photo: Tiina Törmänen

By Sara Bellini

During the polar night, the sun sets and doesn’t reappear on the horizon for days at end. At the poles this means complete darkness, but in subarctic regions closer to the polar circles it looks more like twilight. In northern Lapland the polar night lasts for almost two months, while in southern Lapland winter days can be as short as 3 hours. In these very short days the light changes fast and it’s quite magical to see the sky reflected in the snow in shades of pink, peach, powder blue, cotton candy, lilac, turquoise, apricot, amaranth, mauve, gold, lavender, cerulean, salmon, seashell... It’s these dreamy landscapes and snowy forests that drew attention to Tiina Törmänen’s photography.

Photo: Tiina Törmänen

Tiina first picked up a camera over twenty years ago, when she was working as a chef in Helsinki, instinctively attracted to documentary and street photography. She eventually went back to her native Lapland, in the north of Finland, and dedicated her artistic practice to the landscapes she had grown up with. Tiina’s creativity brought her to brave the weather conditions in order to capture the natural beauty that exists because them. In the past couple of years her attention has moved towards a different Nordic environment through underwater photography, exploring the abundance of lakes and ponds Finland is famous for and even diving into the Norwegian Sea.

We caught up with Tiina in between two group exhibitions, getting ready for the underwater season: “I got my camera gear updated from Canon 5D Mark IV to the new Canon R5 with Nauticam underwater housing [...] Of course it is always about the eye, not the gear, but at a certain point your skill level gets limited with limited gear. I had Olympus TG-5 and Sony A6500 with me on my underwater exploration so far, so it feels inspiring to have a pro camera with pro housing for my upcoming adventures!” 

Photo: Tiina Törmänen

What does home mean to you? 

It is where your heart is. For me, well... I feel at home almost everywhere if I have a safe and nice place to stay. I travel a lot, so I am used to just being in the moment. But of course, true home is a totally safe place to relax and reload batteries. I would say I have two homes. Our flat with my husband is like an everyday, normal home. Then my true home is our family place with all the land we own. That is a place where I can always return, a place in the middle of nowhere but surrounded with pure nature in the heart of Lapland.  

Which place do you have a special connection to?

I have a special connection to the north, where our home is. I love the nature, woods and waters. My main focus now is exploring northern waters: We have thousands of lakes, ponds and a lot of springs. There are so many underwater gems and I love being able to explore this unseen world. Most of us have seen coral reefs and the beauty of the oceans, but not many have seen the beauty of harsh arctic fresh waters.  

What is beyond your front door?

Forest. 

What place would you most like to visit?

I’d really like to dive into the Arctic Ocean in Greenland. 

What are you reading / watching / listening to right now? 

Things have escalated and I started investing into crypto currencies. I’m spending all my spare time reading and watching trading videos to learn how to become a good trader. I’ve also been learning about the NFT* space and minting my first NFT items.

Tiina Törmänen's Website
Tiina Törmänen's Instagram
Tiina Törmänen's Cryptoart

*Non-fungible tokens are unique digital assets that can be bought, sold and traded like other crypto currencies, but unlike those, they cannot be exchanged like-for-like. NFTs can be anything digital, including drawings, music and other art forms.