an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 20, Fall/Winter 2023/2024, ISSN
1552-5112
Richard Long: Touching Stones Through Stones, Touching Landscapes
Through Stones
In a press release for his
solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, in 1971, Richard Long
introduced his work as of “A portrait of the artist touching the earth.”[1] In an interview during the same year, he
stated, “I want to touch the landscape... Feel it...”[2] For Long, walking is a means of touching and
feeling the landscape. Since making his first so-called “walk-work,” titled A
Line Made by Walking, in 1967,[3] Long has been making his sculptures at a
place he encounters during his walks, using whatever materials are immediately
available, such as stones, sticks, driftwood, scrap wood, grass, snow, seaweed,
and mud. Long joins these materials together to form circles, lines, and
sometimes spirals to create his sculptures. Over time, however, these
walk-works disappear or become dispersed within the environment by the wind,
rain, and snow.
Among materials Long uses,
stones are very important to him. William Malpas argues that “[n]o other
contemporary sculptor has made stones, boulders and pebbles so central to their
art [than Long].”[4] Long writes, “I like common materials,
whatever is to hand, but especially stones. I like the idea that stones are
what the world is made of.[5] For Long, stones are part of the world. Long
notes, “The world is continually in geological movement…. Nothing in the
landscape is fixed; nothing has its ‘eternal’ place. Stones are always moving
along in rivers and glaciers, being thrown out of volcanoes or
clattering down mountains.” In this sense, his stone works are made to mark
“part of this continuum.”[6] In an
interview with Martina Giezen, Long stated, “Stones
are useful because they are the material that I can find almost anywhere. It
gives me the possibility and the option to make art almost anywhere.”[7] Long can mark a place with stones where he
finds them. Long repeatedly emphasizes that stones are practical for his art.[8]
Long piles,
kicks, throws, lifts, carries, and scatters the stones while joining them
together. In his
physical contact with the stones, Long touches, and
feels the landscape itself. The stone circles and lines are marks of where he
has touched the landscape during his walks. This paper explores the
relationship between Long and stones—that is, between Long, and the landscape.
He touches stones and places, yet at the same time, they touch him. This interpenetrating relationship, or the reversibility of perception, is one of the
keys to appreciating Long’s works.
1.
Stone circles and lines
In 1971, Long made a stone sculpture in the form of a
spiral in Connemara, Ireland, and in the next year he created his first stone
circle in the Andes.[9] While in Connemara, Long arranged stones of nearly
identical sizes on the glassy ground. In the Andes, he used stones of various
sizes to make a circle on flat ground in the snow-capped mountains. The
sublimity of the Andes embraced this irregular-sized humble circle. In 1974,
Long began creating a series of stone circles in various places, resulting in
works such as A Circle in Iceland (1974),[10] Stones on Inishmore
Aran Islands: West Coast of Ireland (1975),[11] A Circle in Ireland: County Clare (1975),[12] Stones in Nepal
(1975),[13] Stones in Japan (1979)
[Fig. 1],[14] and Stones in Ladakh: Parkachik La Northern India (1984).[15]
Fig. 1 Richard Long, Stones in
Japan 1979.
Photograph. 88 x 124cm.
Keio Museum Commons, Tokyo
The stones he used in the Inishmore Aran Islands and Nepal were too large and heavy to be
freely moved around; therefore, Long stood them up like the stones at
Stonehenge. At the foot of the snow-capped Mount Fuji in Japan, Long created a
humble stone circle titled Stones in Japan. In Parkachik
La in Northern India, he heaved stones of various sizes upwards into standing
positions so that irregular outline of the stone circle resembled the jagged
peaks of the mountain behind the circle. In County Clare in Ireland, he built a
stone circle on the limestone pavement in the Burren, exposing the incised
surface created by glaciers. The circle marked a part of the continuum of the
movement of the limestone —that is, the movement the earth.
In addition to these stone circles, Long has also
created a series of stone lines, such as A Line in Ireland (1974),[16] A Line in the Himalayas (1975),[17] A Line in Australia (1977),[18] A Line in England:
Yorkshire (1977),[19] A Line in Japan (1979),[20] four different lines in Bolivia (1981),[21] A Line in Scotland: Cul Mór (1981),[22] and Sahara Line (1988).[23] In Bolivia, Long
kicked stones to create lines. On Cul Mór in Scotland, he stood up several
large, flat, black stones to make a line on the stony ground. The line points
to a mountain that stands silhouetted in the fog. Meanwhile, A Line in the
Himalayas features a line of white stones against a backdrop of
grayish-blue stones. The white line points toward the snow-capped mountain that
is clearly contrasted with the blue sky. In A Line in Japan, the
end of a stone line on the slope of Mount Fuji disappears in the fog,
heightening the mysteriousness of the landscape.
Commenting on these various works created in different
places around the globe, Rudi Fuchs stated,
They demonstrate an astonishing variety in
idea and feeling and scale. The differences between them must somehow come from
the feel and character of the landscape in which they originated. Sculptures
situate themselves in landscapes whose features produce or, at least, suggest
them: not only in their material, scale and form but also in their mood.[24]
Long’s stone circles and lines evoke atmospheres and modes that are
particular to the landscapes in which they are made. These atmospheres and
moods capture the physical sensations that Long experienced while walking to
these places and creating the sculptures. Indeed, these works reveal both the
time and distance that Long traverses on his walks.
For Documenta
7, held in 1982, Long provided the following explanation of the meaning of
circles and lines: “A circle, a line: they look good, they are abstract, they
are common knowledge. They belong to everyone and equally to the past, the
present, and the future.”[25] Long believes that “it is much more powerful
to use a line and a circle than to make my own individual, idiosyncratic shape.
It means a mark, a sculpture can be a human sign and anonymous as well.”[26] As Rudi Fuchs points out, these stones
selected for his line and circle sculptures are also “not chosen for their
individuality.”[27] Rather, they remain anonymous.
Regarding the nature of his sculpture as a
mark, Long provides the following explanation:
If you put a circle down in any place in the
world, that circle would take up the shape of that place. In other words, every
place gives a different shape to a circle. The circle becomes like a
thumbprint. It is absolutely unique. It is that place
and no place is like another place. So a circle fixes
a place in a very classical way.[28]
Universal and timeless shapes made using common materials can “fix” a
place, if temporarily. It is noticeable that Long
compares the circle as a mark to a thumbprint. Long again likened the
universality and timelessness of the circles to “the image of a human hand” and
remarked “that [this resemblance] is part of their emotional power.”[29] The circle is a vestige of Long’s hand and
touch. In fact, with his mud works, which are created directly on a wall, Long
makes circles of mud with his hand, leaving hand imprints in the mud (always
with his right hand).[30] As Paul Moorhouse argues, “A mud work by
Long is a constructed thing: its cumulative handmarks
echoing the individual steps in a walk or the separate stones that comprise a
sculpture made in a landscape.”[31] Indeed, the stone is another of Long’s “handmarks.”
In contrast, Long states that a line creates “the exact shape of the
land” and describes it as “a unique undulating section” and “a portrait of the
country,” since “[t]o walk over them [the features on the land] is to walk over
the shape of the land.” A road that traces the shape of the land also makes “a
pattern of a social and historical system of travelling, linking villages,
going around fields.”[32]
The circles
mark not only his footprints but also his “handmarks.”
They evoke, as Long remarks, the
emotional power. Stone lines trace the shape of the land as the part of
the continuum he walks. These sculptures of circles and lines are not
permanent; they soon disappear or are dispersed throughout the environment.
Long stated, “I like the fact that I can be almost invisible, that I can come
and go almost unnoticed. I can be an anonymous person walking down a country
road, or I can make an important work like THROWING A STONE AROUND
MACGILLYCUDDY’S REEKS (Ireland 1977) [Fig. 2], and because the stone returns to
its original place, the landscape is literally unchanged.”[33] For the Throwing a Stone around MacGillycuddy’s Reeks, Long picked up a stone, threw
it, and then walked to where it landed. He then threw it again and walked to
its now landing place. He continued throwing and walking after the stone while
tracing a circular route until he reached the place where he first picked up
the stone. He made 3,628 throws over a walk that lasted two and a half days.
The circular route itself resembled his stone circles. The stone retains Long’s
hand movements, and his act of walking forms the shape of a circle.
Fig. 2 Richard Long, Throwing a Stone Around
Macgillycuddy’s Reeks, Ireland 1977.
black-and-white photograph, graphite and colour
pencil, 87.3x 122.6 x 3.1 cm.
Van Abbemuseum,
Eindhoven. Reproduced in Fuchs, 53.
2.
Heaps of stones
Beginning in
the 1970s, Long repeatedly took walks on Dartmoor, in south Devon, England.
Long has praised the abstract moorland landscape. It has become a site of
experimentation for Long, where he can test his various ideas related to
walking. Long has also referred to Dartmoor as “a place of regeneration,
knowledge, history and continuity.”[34] The moorland has many granite masses known
as tors, and it is noted for containing pre-historic stone circles, as well as
rows of standing stones. Long formed a relationship between his body and the
abstract and historical landscape of Dartmoor by using abstract permutations
and combinations of the figures that he constructed during his walks.
Long piled up 1,449 stones in an amorphous
shape at 1,449 feet above sea level on snowy Dartmoor to create 1449
Stones at 1449 Feet: 1449 Tinner’s Stones Placed on Dartmoor at 1449 Feet Above
Sea Level, England 1979.[35]
His direct, physical engagement with the heavy stones, as well as with the snow
and cold, is heightened in the frame of the combination of the number 1,449.
Stones are a medium through which Long explores the sense of place through his
bodily sensations. Paul Moorhouse argues that this work and others “provide
evidence of the artist’s presence in a particular place.”[36] Indeed, Long stated that he loves this
sculpture because it is about the place:
One reason I love that work is that it is a
stone sculpture but it’s actually about water… because
it is about the sea level. So, it is very much about that place because it’s
there that it’s 1,449 feet above the sea. It is also about that place because
of the stones I can find there to make that sculpture. There is also the added
interest that the stones have been quarried maybe a hundred years ago by the
tinners working in open pits, on Dartmoor. I also like it because it is unrecognisable, really, as a work of art unless you see it
as a photograph with the text. It’s just another heap of stones.[37]
Beginning
sometime in the 1980s, Long began accumulating and arranging the words of the
things he encountered during his walks as textworks
in a process that resembled how he piled up stones. Full Moon Circle of
Ground, Dartmoor 1983[38] describes his act of walking in a wide circle around his tent at night.
The words “STONE,” “ROCK,” “HOOF PRINTS,” “STREAM,” “GORSE,” “MARSHY GROUND,”
“REEDS” “GRASSY HUMMOCKS,” “BOULDER,” and “GRASS” are arranged irregularly in a
circular frame. He mentioned the word “ROCK” seven times, “STONE” eight times,
and “BOULDER” four times in the circle, revealing that he walked between them
in the night. Although Long’s perception and body movements are limited, they
are free from the daytime order, in contrast to the textwork
A Seven Day Circle of Ground: Seven Days Walking within an Imaginary Circle
5 1/2 Miles Wide, Dartmoor, England, 1984 which describes a midday
walk.[39]
In 1985, Long made a new type
of the work titled Wind Line: A Straight Ten Mile Northward Walk on
Dartmoor.[40] For this work, arrows pointing in various
directions were arranged in a line. These arrows reveal the invisible movements
of the wind that he felt during his walk. In this way, his work creates a
so-called “wind-scape.” In the same year, Long took a fifteen-day walk in
Lapland and made a textwork titled Wind Stones,[41] which describes the scattered stones he saw
on his walk. Long’s walk-works had been based on an ongoing engagement with
permutations and combinations of time and distance. However, in Lapland, he was
not able to arrange stones as he wished. In a photograph titled Arctic
Spindrift that accompanied the textwork, there is
no sculpture, only snow, wind, and sunlight. From this experience, Long’s works
became to be more afforded by a place or a landscape.
Similar changes can be seen in Stones on a Cairn, Dartmoor, England
1992 (Fig. 3) and Dartmoor Circle, Along Two Day
Walk 1992 (Fig.4). For the former, Long
would have had to carefully walk on the stones of the cairn to place stones
vertically in a circle on top of it. For the latter sculpture, however, he laid
rather large stones horizontally to make a circle on the grass with stones. He
likely walked without difficulty on the grass. In the photographs of the latter
work, the cairn, and the stone circle from the earlier work can be seen behind
the new stone circle. From this, it can be assumed that Long
made the first sculpture on the first day of his walk and the latter on the
second day. The mode of walking changes in the interface between the walking
body and the ground, and footprints also differ according to the surface of the
ground. Hard surfaces do not hold clear footprints, whereas soft surfaces
register them clearly. However, snow, rain, and wind can cover, or wash away
footprints. As Tim Ingold, an anthropologist, asserts in his The Life of
Lines (2015), footprints are not permanent.[42] The two stone circles created on
Dartmoor—one on the cairn and the other on the grass—retain traces of the
various physical movements Long made to construct them, although his footprints
are not impressed on these hard and soft surfaces. The stones there accosted
him to make stone circles as a token of his touching the stones of Dartmoor.
Fig. 3 Richard Long, Stones on a Cairn,
Dartmoor, England 1992.
Photograph and text. 84 x 114cm.
Reproduced in Richard Long: Walking the Line,
49.
Fig. 4 Richard Long, Dartmoor Circle, Along Two Day Walk 1992.
Gelatin silver print, mntd 83,5 x 71,1 cm
Reproduced in Richard Long: Walking the Line,
50.
Stones are
components of the very surface of the ground. Tim Ingold makes four
observations about the ground when seen from the perspective of someone
walking: First, “he [a walker] perceives the ground kinaesthetically,
in movement” according to his own bodily movement. Second, “the ground is a
field of difference”—that is, “it appears infinitely variegated” in
contour, substance, colouration and texture. Third,
“the ground has a fractal quality.” Fourth, the ground surface “undergoes continuous
generation” caused by “reactions between substances and medium.”[43] Long’s walk-works reflect all these
characteristics. In the context of stones, in particular, the third
characteristic must be explored further. Ingold describes the “fractal quality”
as “composite”: “It is … the surface of all surfaces, matted from the
interweaving of a miscellany of different materials, each with its own peculiar
properties…. In places, the ground may be more granular than textural, heaped
up rather than knotted, as with sand dunes or stone shingle.”[44]
Stones and
other materials—such as mud, dust, sticks, and water—form the surface of the
ground. Long picks up stones from the ground surface and makes a sculpture that
is a part of the surface of the land—that is, the earth. With stones, he said
he can make works anywhere; that is, he can be on his way anytime and anywhere
with stones. In 1981, he noted, “A walk is on the ground, passing by, moving
through life. A sculpture is still; a stopping place.
A line is a human sign, and anonymous.... A circle is shared, common knowledge.
It belongs equally to the past, the present and the future. Stones are the
material of the Earth. I pray the Earth still has a future.”[45]
3.
The agency of the stones
The textworks Walks of
Chance and From Uncertainty to Certainty were made along walks on
Dartmoor in 1998,[46] and they relate that Long walked by following words
written on pebbles. He walked carrying a bag with eleven pebbles for the former
textwork and ten for the latter. A single word—up,
down, fast, slow, north, south, east, west, straight, or meandering—was written
on each pebble, and in addition to these ten words, the word “end” was written
on a pebble for the former walk. He drew a pebble from the bag at random and
walked according to the directions provided by the pebble. For the former walk,
he returned each pebble to the bag and repeated the procedure until the “end”
pebble was drawn. For the latter walk, he placed each pebble drawn from the bag
on the ground and walked from that point. He repeated the procedure until the
bag was empty. On From Uncertainty to Certainty, he wrote that
“this work is a narrative of a dispersed sculpture which uses language, stones,
chance, walking and Dartmoor.”[47] Each pebble, which he
drew from his bag and then placed on the ground following the words on the
pebbles, is a sculpture. Ten pebble sculptures are dispersed along his way.
From this process merges a narrative work written on pebbles.
For his textwork Walking
Stones, England 1995,[48] Long walked 382 miles from Welcombe
Mouth Beach on the Atlantic Coast to Lowestoft on the North Sea Coast over
eleven days. Long picked up his first pebble on Welcombe
Mouth Beach. Each day, he picked up another stone and carried it with him until
the next day. He then placed that stone on the place where he picked up his
next stone. He continued this process until he threw his last stone into the
sea at Lowestoft. He walked carrying a stone, and therefore, a stone also
walked with his body. He explained this work, stating, “In WALKING STONES, by
the action of a walk, stones get carried from day to day and from place to
place. My work is another agent of change and placement. And walking is simple;
stones are common and practical.”[49] Stones became an agent of change and placement for
Long. The relationship between Long and the landscape or a place became
incidental through the agency of the stone. It is not him but rather a “common
and practical” stone that places him somewhere and relates him to the
landscape.
Long walked 1,020 miles with stones over mainland
Britain from the southernmost point, the Lizard, to the northernmost point,
Dunnet Head, in 1998, and produced a textwork titled A
Line of 33 Stones, A Walk of 33 Days.[50] Long picked up a
stone each day of his 33-day walk and placed it on the road. Each of the 33
stones became a sculpture, and the invisible line that connected all the stones
was also a sculpture that traversed space and time along Long’s 1030-mile,
33-day walk. Long made the following statement about this work:
The stones of A LINE OF 33
STONES, A WALK OF 33 DAYS constitute an artwork, but
of course are still autonomously and anonymously in the world, now as before.
Yet they all also happen to be where they are now through the mediation of a
moving common denominator, that is, me doing a walk. Each stone represents an
interface of scales—one small stone represents a day in a walk of 1,030 miles.
Each stone represents a kind of measurement of Britain, in relation to the
speed of my walking and my route. Each stone has its geological history, yet
perhaps momentarily, conceptually, symbolically or privately becomes ‘something
else’ as well.[51]
The stones Long carries become “something
else.” That is, they become “an interface of scales” and “a kind of measurement
of Britain” in the relationship between his walking body and the landscapes he
encounters along the way. However, the stones eventually disperse and again
become simply anonymous stones within the landscape. This transformation from
“something” to “a stone” demonstrates that “[n]othing
in the landscape is fixed; nothing has its ‘eternal’ place.” Just as stones are
always moving in the world, Long also never ceases
walking.
4. Stones as ritual materials
Anne Seymour
reveals that Long compared his work to Samuel Beckett’s character, Molloy. Long
told Martina Giezen that he liked the comparison
between his work and Molloy:
I like that comparison! I have read a few
bits and pieces of Beckett’s works and things that have been written about him.
Obviously he does use things like country lanes and
bicycles and stones and doing nothing, an incredible
minimal view of life which is very attractive and powerful. So
I think there are some similarities, in the same way there are similarities
with Zen Buddhism.[52]
Molloy ponders how to cycle
through sixteen stones so that he can suck on each one evenly at the seaside.[53]
I distributed them equally between my four pockets, and sucked them turn and turn
about. This raised a problem which I first solved in the following way.
I had say sixteen stones, four in each of my four pockets these being the two pockets of my trousers and the
two pockets of my greatcoat. Taking a stone from the right pocket of my
greatcoat, and putting it in my mouth, I replaced it in the right pocket of my
greatcoat by a stone from the right pocket of my trousers, which I replaced by
a stone from the left pocket of my trousers, which I replaced by a stone from
the left pocket of my greatcoat, which I replaced by the stone which was in my
mouth, as soon as I had finished sucking it. Thus
there were still four stones in each of my four pockets, but not quite the same
stones.[54]
Molloy continually ponders how he can suck on each stone evenly. He
reaches “the only perfect solution,” which is “the sixteen pockets,
symmetrically disposed, each one with its stone.”[55] He plans to suck on a given stone and then
move on to the next of the fifteen other stones, moving each one to the next
pocket. He seems to suck on the stones haphazardly; however, he thinks that he
has a particular method, and it is his “bodily need.” The solution that he
arrives at in the end is “to throw away all the stones but one ... which of
course I soon lost, or threw away, or gave away, or swallowed.”[56] Molloy finally went back inland in search of
his mother.
Molloy must
follow the procedure of circulating stones among his pockets to meet his
physical desire to suck the stones as his own seaside habit or “ritual.” Long
similarly admits that his walking is a form of ritual:
[W]hen I use the word ritual it is especially
about some of the walking pieces. I mean that I am walking, but the purpose of
the walk is not to make a journey…. The whole purpose and the idea of doing it
is really to make art. The walk is done in a special way for special reasons
which is, I suppose, what makes it a ritual.[57]
Walking as art is, for Long, is a ritual. This walking includes all the
processes involved in making sculptures. In 1994, Long made the following
statement in an interview with Colin Kirkpatrick:
I also like the day-to-day ritual of camping
every night in a new place, getting firewood or sleeping under the stars; having amazing dreams, eating quite little food, but
really enjoying it. All that’s a great pleasure, which is what my work is all
about. The sculptures along the way are just another part of that daily ritual.[58]
While Molloy abandons his stones and his ritual, Long continues the
walking as a “the day-to-day ritual” so that he can create art as a part of his
daily life. Stones are common materials; however, at the same time, they are a
medium through which Long can practice his daily ritual.
This ritual endows Long with a sense of being in the world and in the
moment. Clarrie Wallis points out that “[t]his sense of present or immediate
experience has something in common with Zen Buddhism’s concept of ‘now-ness’,
of being in the moment.”[59] As cited before, Long admits that his works
resemble the spirit of Zen Buddhism in many ways.[60] He states,
A walk can often be the means of stripping
away many things; it can be the spectacular embodiment of the Zen idea of the
‘here and now’. To be alone for a few days in a wilderness is the simplest,
best way to be in a one-to-one relationship with a place.[61]
Long visited the Ryoanji Temple in 1992 and
made Mind
Rock, Japan Winter 1992 in Kyoto.[62] After looking at
a rock at the Ryoanji Temple rock garden, he began an
11-day walk in the mountains in the north of Kyoto. This walk continued until
he returned and saw the same rock at the Ryoanji
Temple.[63] In “a one-to-one relationship with a place,” Long not only saw the rock,
but was seen by the rock.
6. The reversibility of sensation and perception
Christopher
Tilley has explored the phenomenology of landscape in relation to Maurice
Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. Tilley is an archaeologist who has worked on
Scandinavian rock art from the Bronze Age. Stones are one medium that enables
him to explore the phenomenology of landscape. Tilley discusses the
reversibility of sensation and perception, stating,
I touch the stone
and the stone touches me. To feel the stone is to feel its touch on my hands.
There is a reflexive relationship between the two. I and the stone are in
contact with each other through my body but this
process is not exactly the same as my touching my own body because the stone is
external to my body and not part of it. Touching the stone is possible because
both my body and the stone are part of the same world. There is in this sense a
relation of identity and continuity between the two. Yet there is also
asymmetry and difference.[64]
Tilley admits that the reflexive relationship between the hand and the
stone is not identical to that of two hands touching because the stone is not
sentient. Ingold agrees with Tilley that stones are not sentient, but he does
admit the following:
Yet in truth, the stone is no mere object,
nor is it lineless. Its surface is textured like a veil by dint of its long
endurance of the atmospheric elements—thanks, that is, to its weathering. And
it is this lined surface that greets the digits of the archaeologist’s hands, and joins with them in the movement of feeling.[65]
Even if the stone is not sentient like the hand, Ingold still argues
that “Tilley can claim that he is indeed touched by the stone. ‘I touch the stone and the
stone touches me’.”[66] Such stones, Tilley says, “are sensible
without being sentient.”[67] In this sensibility, things like stones can
be entwined with the human bodies. That is, things and humans can be entwined
because things and people share a commonality: “The commonality between other
persons or other things and me is that we all fleshily
exist or have our carnal being in the world and participate in it together.”[68] In this sense, things, and people are part
of the phenomenal world—or “chair du monde,” in Merleau-Ponty’s words—in which
the reversibility of sensation and perception are possible. In this
reversibility, the thing affects the human body—or, as Tilley claims, “[T]hings, like persons, possess agency because they bodily
affect us, help to structure our consciousness.”[69] He observed how rock art affects the human
body through his fieldwork in Sweden.
In a textwork titled Dolomite Stones made in the South
Tyrol in 1996,[70] Long dropped stones into a chasm, placed
them in a circle, jammed them into fissures, threw them to hit a rock, skimmed
them across a small lake, threw them over a precipice, placed them on
mountaintop cairns, dislodged them from the path, used them to secure the tent,
and threw them into a cloud. Following his movements during the walk, it is
possible to imagine how he and the stones are related and picture a landscape
from their movements.
Moreover, the textwork Dolomite Stones does not cite an agent;
instead, the first and second lines read as follows: “STONES DROPPED INTO A
CHASM/ STONES PLACED IN A CIRCLE.” It is clear that the agent who moves the stones is Long,
even though his name, or that of any human subject, is not mentioned. However,
the viewer can imagine various states of stones without a human agent and
assume that stones require a human being (Long) to move them. The reversibility
of Long and stones is embodied in this work.
From this reversibility
emerges Long’s perceptual and physical experience of the landscape. Tilley
argues that Scandinavian rock art in the Nordic Bronze Age offered him certain
sensory experiences. The rock art is a part of the landscape, and unlike a
tableau of a painting, it cannot be removed from that place. It was made of
materials available at the location; that is, it contains colors, textures, and
forms particular to the landscape. It requires that the viewer engages in
various bodily movements, such as walking on a rock, looking down, and touching
a stone, and provides him/ her “multisensory” experiences. [71]
Therefore, Tilley argues that to experience the rock art does not require the
traditional iconographic approach but rather a kinaesthetic
perspective that can “stress the role of the carnal human body.”[72]
In the
iconographic approach, rock art is deprived of the landscape context and its
materiality is reduced “to a white, two-dimensional space” in published books
and journals. Moreover, “the power of visual imagery ultimately becomes dematerialised” to decode the meaning.[73] In contrast, “[f]rom
a kinaesthetic approach, the material medium—that is,
the rock and its landscape context—is as fundamental in understanding the art
as the imagery itself…. Thus, rock art is a relational nexus of images,
material qualities of rocks, and landscapes.”[74] With this approach, Tilley stresses,
[W]e study the direct agency of this imagery,
the bodily effects this imagery has on us and others. Images are thus regarded
as significant not because they possess meaning but because they produce
material sensory effects in relation to the bodies of those who experience
them.[75]
The power or agency of the image is, thus, produced in the dialectic
relationship between the materiality of the stone and the image drawn on it, as
well as between the stone and the body that experiences it. From a kinaesthetic and sensory perspective, it is important to
feel what the stones, in a particular landscape, “do to the body” and the manner in which the stones and the body meet.[76]
Indeed, when Long makes stone sculptures within a particular landscapes,
he uses his body in various ways, lifting, throwing, kicking, piling, and
placing stones in relation to their materiality. He arranges the stones in
circles or lines not only because their forms are universal but also “because
they do the job.”[77] Unlike Scandinavian Bronze Age rock art,
Long’s stone circles and lines soon disperse yet remain as photographic images
produced by Long himself. The images record the stone sculptures in situ,
as well as the physical sensations experienced by Long while making
them. As William Malpas points out, [78] Long’s
favored black-and-white photographs heighten the surface textures and
materiality of the stones.
Long values
his photographs and textworks because they make his
invisible walking and sensory experiences tangible. Indeed, he states, “My
photographs are facts which bring the right accessibility to remote, lonely or
otherwise unrecognisable works.”[79] He continues, stating, “A sculpture feeds
the senses directly at a place. A photograph or text feeds the imagination by
extension to other places.”[80] Such photographs and textworks
require the viewer to access his works following what Tilley refers to as a kinaesthetic approach. The image betrays how the stones and
Long’s body meet.
In Glacier Stones and Summit
Stones, both of which are subtitled A 13 Day Beginning and Ending in
Leuk, Switzerland 2000,[81] it is possible to imagine Long
walking on sharp stones beside glaciers, and erecting large and heavy stones to
form a circle. Glacier Stones reveals the
surfaces of the dark stones, which have been flattened by the movement of the
glaciers and bear white traces from this process. Long’s photograph captures
the glaciers and fog beside his stone sculpture. The stones are still part of
the glacier. In Summit Stones, Long’s stone circle is in view on a stony
summit framed by the snowy summits of the Alps above the clouds. The viewer is able to access Long’s stone circles, which are surrounded
by glaciers, fog, and stones, as well as a panoramic view of the Alps, which he
experienced while making his works and walking. The photographs convey Long’s
sensory experiences. Indeed, Long writes that the photograph is “the
distillation of experience.”[82]
7. Exchange stones
While Maurice
Merleau-Ponty admits that there is asymmetry or “imminence” in reversibility,[83] Long relates
reversibility to symmetry. In 1997, he made a new attempt to engage with the symmetrical relationship
between particles in the subatomic world. He produced the textworks
The Same Thing at a Different Time at a
Different Place, Winter 1997[84] and An Exchange of Stones at a Place for a Time
on Dartmoor, England 1997,[85] both of which reflect his deep interest in the
subatomic world, where, he says, “particles are in a flux of changing
relationships between speed, mass, positions and time.”[86]
The Same Thing at a Different Time
at a Different Place, Winter 1997 mentions
that Long placed a stone, which he had found on a past
walk, on Snowdon Summit while on a five-day walk in North Wales. After the
walk, he carried the stone down to be left somewhere on a future walk. Even if Long did not make a sculpture, a stone was left to mark
somewhere “in-between” of place and time. By placing the stone somewhere during
the walk and carrying it somewhere, Long did the same thing at a different time
and a different place.
For his textwork An Exchange of Stones at a Place for a Time
on Dartmoor, Long, walking on Dartmoor, exchanged a stone he found on
Saddle Tor for a stone he had brought from Tierra del Fuego, an archipelago off
the southernmost tip of South American mainland. The stone from Tierra del
Fuego remained there while Long walked for three days
on Dartmoor, carrying the stone he had found on Saddle Tor. After the three-day
walk, Long retrieved the Tierra del Fuego stone from Saddle Tor and returned
the other stone to the Tor. He threw the Tierra del Fuego stone into the River
Avon in Bristol. For three days, the two stones were exchanged in an
interaction. He explains this work as follows:
I
wanted to make works that were metaphors for things that happen in particle
physics. A walk is an event in space–time, and I may carry, scatter,
concentrate or place stones, or exchange their places along a walk, as
required. My stones are like sub-atomic particles in the space of the world.
These works represent parallel phenomena at a different scale. Our human scale actually exists somewhere nearer the outer boundary of the
universe than the sub-atomic limit.[87]
In the quotation, Long
confesses that he moves stones “as required.” That is, Long
carries, scatters, places, and exchanges stones from day to day and from place
to place as required by the agency of the stone. He states, “My stones are like
sub-atomic particles in the space of the world.” Like particles, they affect,
or change each other in a symmetrical manner. Afterward, he walks “somewhere
nearer the outer boundary of the universe than the sub-atomic limit.”
In July 2003, Long walked Chokai Mountain in Japan for seven days and produced three
works: A Seven Day Walk on Chokai Mountain, Honshu
Japan 2003,[88] An Exchange, A Hundred and Eight Stones from
Each Cairn Placed Upon the Other Along a Seven Day Walk on Chokai
Mountain 2003 (Fig. 5),
and a textwork titled Transference, England and Japan 2003. The work A Seven Day Walk on Chokai
Mountain consists of seven lines of text. The sixth line reads, “SLEEPING
BY TWO CAIRNS,” and the last line reads, “EARTHQUAKE IN THE FOREST.” He
experienced the Northern Miyagi Earthquake that occurred at 7: 13 a.m. on July
26, 2003. The cairns cited in the sixth line are the two symmetrical cairns
photographed in An Exchange. Long exchanged 108
stones between the two cairns.
The stones in each cairn were exchanged as if they affected each other as
particles. The number 108 is the same as the number of earthly desires harbored
by human beings as recognized in Buddhism. In Japan, Buddhist temples begin to
ring their bells 108 times late on New Year’s Eve night to cast away these
desires. Long exchanged the 108 stones as if he was conducting the ritual to
cast out the 108 vices. In the ritual, the stones take on a spiritual meaning.
He slept by two cairns and experienced the earthquake. These common stones were
a medium that enabled Long to touch the landscape and, subsequently, to touch
the invisible—that is, the innermost place of human beings and the external, “somewhere
nearer the outer boundary of the universe.”
Fig. 5 Richard Long, An Exchange, A Hundred and Eight Stones from Each
Cairn
Placed Upon
the Other Along a Seven Day Walk on Chokai Mountain
2003.
Forever
Museum, Akita, Japan.
8. Conclusion
Stones are a medium that enables
Long to touch landscapes. They impel him to walk, determine the direction in
which he will go, and mark the distance, an elapsed time of his acts of
walking. They are also the materials he uses to compose sculptures. Long makes
stone circles and lines across the globe.
Long touches stones, and they touch him.
He is touched by the stone, and therefore, he touches the stones with stones. Indeed Ingold describes how Long touches the stone “with
hands that already know hardness and softness, roughness and smoothness.”[89] Ingold argues that the painter observes the tree “with
eyes that have already absorbed into their ways of looking the tree’s looming
phenomenal presence” and eyes see the tree in the same way that the tree sees
through them. Likewise, the archaeologist touches the stone in the same way
that the stone touches them. Although the tree and the stone may not be
sentient beings, Ingold states, “immersed in sentience, each can, as it
were, double back so as to see, touch and hear itself.”[90] Body, tree, stone, and even glacier are together—all immersed in sentience.
In this relationship, Ingold identifies
“two different kinds of ‘being with’”: “my being with stone, tree or
glacier,” and “the stone’s, tree’s or glacier’s being with
me.” While the first kind of “being with” is active and “an exhalation of
being,” the second is passive and an inhalation of being. In the second, “[t]he
one gathers and draws in the medium in which I am immersed, holding it in
tension like the pause of a held breath,” while in the first, “[t]he other
releases the tension in issuing forth along a line of growth or becoming.”
Ingold compares the inhalation to an atmosphere in which every living being is
immersed, and the exhalation to a “meshwork” into which every living being is
interwoven.[91] Indeed,
he writes,
In the
real world, where time runs forwards, the living, respiring being is the site
where atmospheric immersion is transformed into the haptic extension of the
meshwork along its proliferating lines. It is where the weather is turned into
the furrows of the ploughman, the wind into the wake of the sailboat, and the
sunlight into the stems and roots of the plant. It is a transformation, indeed,
that is fundamental to all animate life.[92]
Long walks while respiring. His footprints are traces of
the exhalation and the inhalation. On his way somewhere, he leaves stone
circles and lines as an ephemeral mark stating that he has been there. In his
touching of the stones and their touching of him, the stones become a medium
for him to touch the landscape and for it to touch him. Being with a landscape
and its being with him, he walks. The landscape is embraced by an atmosphere
that is evoked by Long’s photographs of his sculptures. It is within this
atmosphere—or rather, medium—that the two kinds of “being with” are
immersed. In the alternation between his touching a landscape and the landscape
touching him through stones—and between the exhalation and inhalation—he continues to walk as if he is
respiring. On his journey and a journey
of each stone, Long states,
I have never thought of stones as metaphors for people,
although we all share the state of movement. I think a walk itself is a
metaphor for time, a one-way movement from the past to the future via the
present. I am often aware of fellow-travelers that I pass on a walk: we are all
on the same path or road, but for our own different reasons, each one on a
different journey. And every stone is also on a unique journey.[93]
an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 20, Fall/Winter
2023/2024, ISSN 1552-5112
Notes