Walking together the Watery Commons: common tools for interdependant artistic research

Walking Together the Watery Commons read by Charlie Fox

This September InspiralLondon took a brief dip into the watery commons of the Thames Delta, walking some of the lesser known tributaries and marshlands of SE London. Over 16 days exploring together – experimenting through 12 Hydrodetour walks that combined other ways of seeing, experiencing or observing our water inflected environment – in sharing artistic and practice research approaches: capturing livestream sound, encountering complex geology, ecologies or archaeological remnants, and in reimagining the old Woolwich/Deptford Dockyards; through Lantern shows, foraging and mudlarking, activist and performative walks, even sailing.

a group of people with their backs to the camera looking at a hedge. Some of them are reaching their hands up and touching the leaves. — *Hydrodetour – Thames-Side Foraging with artist Clare Qualmann, 2021.*

Much of this watery commons’ collective walking has been informed by interdependent artistic research practices shared over one year with Gammare Collectif (offshoot of Hotel du Nord/supported by Bureau des Guides GR2013) based in North Marseille. Walking Art as one form of expression or engaged practice is perhaps less well appreciated in France than in ‘English-speaking cultures’, but here in the North Districts it has been augmented by community based practices; as a way of reanimating the rich interdependent cultures lying seemingly undiscovered in the hinterland ravines of Marseille’s vast extended port. Since 2015 this collective walking as a way of rediscovering the hidden or dormant threads of shared common culture/s remains the core to InspiralLondon’s method. We continue to be enriched by this international exchange, in tracking something of this ambitious project to take care of the urban river Aygalades. Through complex, threaded walking art practices, the Gammare Collectif, work and walk ‘for common and integrated management’:

“…to give real meaning to the ecological restoration. By organizing conversations, the collective promotes the meeting between technical considerations and the local dynamics, to imagine with all the actors a management that is caring and inclusive.

this takes many forms:

Walking again, always, because walking allows us to spend time with the stream, and keeps us in contact, alert, in motion.

The development with the gradual reconstruction of the riverbank magnificently restored by la Cité des arts de la rue,…

The collective re-appropriation of memory in the thousand and one searches for traces left in the soil, and in particular at the source.

A steep bank of grassy plants sloping up to 2 tower blocks of flats painted light grey and yellow. Darker trees fringe the line of a fence between the bank and the flats. — *La Viste social housing on the high ground, above the river Aygalade*s

The imagination and the attempts of the inhabitants of the Viste, the social housing built in the 1960s above the cliff, to reweave these links, both topographical and social, between the plateau and the valley, through an actual pathway.

Then higher up – by getting to the sources – today hijacked by Lafarge’s cement factory quarries, in the civic commitment to observe, and sometimes report on the impacts of contemporary industrial activity …” (extract Raise up the Current edited from Les Veines de la Terre, 2021).

A view down a steep slope covered in bushes and trees to rooftops of a city with a curving road passing through it. Mountains in the background and a cloudy sky. — *Looking down from the cliffs of La Viste to Aygalades Valley and the hidden waterfall*

In June this year, Inspiral made a collective walk across Swanscombe Marsh encountering this rich unkempt Thameside wilderness*. Talking to the resident creek dweller, we were only mildly surprised to find the land owner of this largely quarried out waterlogged realm, was the multinational company Lafarge. Lafarge, who a thousand miles south owns the hillsides of North Marseille. And precisely there in its hollowed-out crater, a reservoir, now the ‘hijacked’ source of the Aygalades River. Just one more common tale of watery walking in/circulation.

Inspirallondon (Charlie Fox 2021)

*Crossing Swanscombe Marsh in June 2021 – towards the Marsh Creek and encounter with Lafarge.*

*A site revisited and a walk remade with Susie Bear (UEL student) with the cooperation of foundation course led by Dr Mikey Georgeson, end October 2021.

This is a brief introduction to two rich interrelated projects – more information can be found here https://bureaudesguides-gr2013.fr/collectif-des-gammares/ for Gammare Collectif https://www.facebook.com/gammares/ and for InspiralLondon Hydracity https://www.inspirallondon.com/projects/2019-associate-artist-projects/ Hydrodetours https://www.inspirallondon.com/projects/hydrodetours-projects/ and in forthcoming book chapter Inspiral(G)round: An urban explorer’s guide to on the ground mapping (2022)

Publication of Gammare’s enquiry is in Wildprojects – Les Veines de la Terre

Une anthologie des bassins‑versants (2021), Marin Schaffner, Mathias Rollot, François Guerroué (Éds). Une enquête-fleuve populaire – Collectif des Gammares, La Gazette du ruisseau.