Recording Loss: film as method and the spirit of Orford Ness

Figures & data

Box 1. Spirit of Place statement for Orford Ness. Source: National Trust 2015.

Spirit of Place for Orford Ness A remote, exposed and wild place rare now in England, appearing waste yet full of life. A place of rare habitats, precious vegetated shingle and hidden natural beauty, always changing even in apparent stillness. It is a landscape and seascape that slips away to the endless line of the horizon. Lost in the vast scale you can feel liberated but at the same time oppressed and challenged. There is a changing subtlety of light, shadows and reflection which shift and change the features within the landscape. A place of secrets, physically inaccessible and once deliberately concealed: a former Official Secret now decaying physically, metaphorically and morally, imperceptibly revealing its myths, stories and meaning. Where once experimentation creation and destruction combined to perfect the physics of warfare wildlife now thrives. Where human destruction was planned and tested nature reminds us of the limits of human ability. Mouldering transitory artefacts, flimsy buildings and brutally engineered structures play counterpoint to the equally significant natural elements. The tension between these suffuses the landscape, an attenuation almost palpable above the daily soundscape played out by the wildlife, wind and water.

Figure 1. Screenshot from ‘Recording Loss’ of volunteers engaging in archaeological recording at Orford Ness, supervised by CITiZAN archaeologist Lara Band (second from left).

Figure 2. Screenshot from ‘Recording Loss’ illustrating that recording also involves photogrammetry (a) and digital uploading (b).

Figure 3. Screenshot from ‘Recording Loss’ of the Grade II listed Bomb Ballistics Building.

Figure 4. Screenshot from ‘Recording Loss’ showing one of the volunteers as filmed inside the Bomb Ballistics Building.

Figure 5. Screenshot from ‘Recording Loss’: ‘that’s just my feeling’.

Figure 6. Screenshots from ‘Recording Loss’ that capture a process of erosion (a), recording (b), revealing (c) and washing ashore (d).

National Trust. 2015. Spirit of Place Statement at Orford Ness. Unpublished.

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