NABROAD | NEWS

Following Christian Bermudez’s three-week residency at ISIS Arts in October/November 2011, N|N have caught up with him to learn more about his project Ballast Hill. Peter Merrington met up with Christian at the Ouseburn Valley, a former industrial hub on the east end of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, to find out more about the history of the area and Christian’s interest in the hills.

Peter Merrington on Christian Bermudez:

On route we discussed Christian’s experiences of the city, good and bad. He explained his research into a particular area of the Ouseburn; known as Ballast Hill Park. Having lived in Newcastle, on and off, for nearly four years, I’ve frequently walked past the park but never thought of it as anything other than a flat, green grass field surrounded by trees and a scrap metal yard.

We snaked our way through the Ouseburn, past the offices of start-up media marketing agencies and through derelict and abandoned roads, yet to be touched by the regeneration plan.

As Christian explains, the hill itself is composed of ballast, layers and layers of discarded rock and earth that once made up the unwanted freight of vessels travelling between Newcastle and the rest of the world. The site has been the focus of exchange and transference ever since the Ballast hill began to grow at the start of the industrial age. The hill grew until earth was replaced with water ballast in newly designed ships in the 19^th Century. At their peak, the hills resembled monolithic almost pyramid like structures.

Christian showed me archive photographs he discovered during his research. The images depicted families and children posing on the hills for the camera. Their symbolic industrial presence and intervention into the landscape makes them out to be almost trophies from the growth of the city. His interest in the hills, stems not from their symbolic status but from how the history of the city can be read through the composition of its terrain. In his short time in Newcastle he has examined ways to map the history of the city through the seeds that were transported here from all over the world. From archive research he has uncovered documents and historical surveys of the seeds and plants that arrived within the Ballast material.

Searching Ballast Hill today for any surviving species proves a difficult task. The flora of the landscape has undergone many dramatic shifts and interferences in its two thousand year engagement with human kind. Yet, Christian has managed to identify plants from as far away as Japan and Siberia within the Valley.

Love-in-a-Mist (Nigella Damascena), from the Buttercup family and a native of South Europe is one of the ballast plants identified by Christian. Not only is it prevalent in damp, dark, neglected patches of the Ouseburn to which it is suited, but he also discovered it as a house plant for sale in the local branch of Morrisons, a large supermarket chain. It was once, a sort after feature in many Victorian gardens but subsequently fell out of favour and is now back, in the supermarkets, only 200m from where it has been quietly growing, year on year, in the Valley ever since the seeds were deposited as ballast hundreds of years before.

The history of the landscape of this valley is fraught, constructed, and fought over and it continues today. Examining the development and flux of landscape through the movements and migrations of seeds and plants is a nuanced and fascinating way to read the history of our city. Capital flows, legal structures and the operation and exercise of power may frame the landscape of the city, but how this manifests in architecture or infrastructure is not the only way to see a city. Mapping the seed migrations provides a valuable insight into what lies beneath our feet. 

Christian Bermudez was educated in Costa Rica and Norway. His practice focuses on film, sound landscapes and public art installations. He has had several solo exhibitions in Norway, as well as participated in group shows and international film festivals in Norway, Germany, Spain, Greece and the US. His next solo exhibition Hidden Eden will take place in 2012.

Christian lives and works in Oslo, Norway.

www.christianbermudez.com

Peter Merrington is currently undertaking an AHRC-funded collaborative doctoral award with AV Festival and the School of Arts & Cultures at Newcastle University. His research seeks to critically examine festival curatorial practice, with a focus on the analysis and development of site-responsive strategies. He is a regular contributor to rhizome.org and has previously worked with various organisations including the Liverpool Biennial and AV Festival.

Peter lives and works in Newcastle, UK

www.creamthenyield.com