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The Bridge

Part 2 Project 2015
Morna Currie
 University of East London London | UK
The Blackwater Estuary is a topography of marshes and salt flats strewn with woodland. It is a peculiar, liminal space between land and water. The catalogue of historic events and literary fictions that have played out here are immortalised in HG Wells’ novel 'The War Of The Worlds'. It is place of refuge, escape and hope.

The narrative weaving through the project explores the gap between human perception and the isolated reality of distinct and irreducible objects receding into their own infinite space. A space in which the events described in 19th Century science fiction writing have an equal validity to iron nails, native trees and industrial infrastructure.

Set in a speculative future we join our protagonists as they drift through a familiar landscape. They journey to a wooded clearing, picturesque yet etched with an eerie foreboding. Night closes in as they enter a strange hinterland of relics, collected and salvaged from a time Before. These revered objects remain just out of reach, receding into the darkness. For our travellers, being in the presence of these ever shifting fragments of a past allows time and space to condense, offering solace and promising a world that exists beyond human perception.


Tutor(s)
Jamie-Scott Baxter
Colin O’Sullivan
2015
“Footpaths from Before still remained, in spite of the wide destruction. Thick tangles of vegetation snatched and clawed at their clothing.”
"And so, we drifted on an air of collective anticipation, a heady, sweet smell of decay beneath our feet”
Low sunlight on the water illuminated the undergrowth, relieving the gloom of the wood as the travelers caught their first glimpse of the bridge.
Innumerable relics surrounded them but this place was never intended as a museum, never a place for people. This was becoming ever clearer.
So much knowledge from Before had been lost beyond all recall. Salvage and preservation had now become our priorities. The cabinets were filling, slowly.
Darkness bound them, gathered them around the campfire sharing rations. Their togetherness interrupted by individual thoughts of a veiled past.
On this night they would not sleep.
The objects fired our imaginations. They took on lives of their own. Dancing, dancing in the camp light.
In the darkness sounds were amplified and confused, their origins uncertain, filling us with the sense of another’s presence, somewhere in the shadows.
Our nighttime creations faded with the dawn, it was the present again.
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