Fr-Agile (performance part 1)

Fr-Agile is a performance piece about Spurn Point's shifting movement since the 1850's. It is the outcome of a research residency On Spurn during which I looked at how wind, water and tides shape Spurn. My blog describes and records the 'Work in progress'. The starting point of Fr-Agile, a piece about Spurn's slow movement westwards, was an 1850 OS map of the Holderness coast laid over recent aerial photographs of the same area (courtesy: Dept. of Geography, University of Hull). Having a closer look at Spurn's most vulnerable spot, known as the Neck, the overlay shows that today's North Sea beach occupies the area where 150 years ago the banks of the river Humber have been (click here to see the overlay). On the 1850 map the 'sand and shingle' on the river banks are marked as yellow dots. In the overlay some of these yellow dots happen to be located amid a group of currently existing defence blocks protecting the Neck against the North Sea. Fr-Agile is a performance based on this coincidence. At the dawn of 8 August 2008 I connected four yellow buoys, representing the yellow dots of the OS map, with silicon tubing to the defence blocks. They were exposed to the incoming tide, wind and weather, the elements which shape and shift Spurn over time. Jo Millett has recorded this process on video.