Ulverston / Whitby: After The Event

Crowds have gathered despite the rain; in Ulverston they are here to
see the Oss and associated effigies , hear the Harmonica and the Human organs pipe band, and
the ostler's bewildered proclamation..
By 6 It didnt look promising; I watched
the wind pull on the bin-bag surface of the harbour water from the dining room
of the Jolly Sailors, (Sam Smiths. No mobiles, no screens, no swearing please) ate and went back to the digs to get a coat , returning just in time to miss the parade as it crossed the bridge.
And then back up Grape Lane it
came, a fleet of tissue and withy lifeboats
cresting the shoulders of the kids that made them; pyramids, an
abundance of hi-viz, we watched them cross over the bridge and around the old
Nat West and back to the square where the plan was to switch on the Christmas lights.
These are young events, taking root, growing slowly,
acquiring some trappings and jettisoning others , feeling their way
to the familiarity and consistency that sits at the heart of
tradition.
The work is done over decades; each slow procession through the streets is a footstep in an incremental procession through time,
the prism through which tradition is viewed.
Ritual or ceremony requires a witness rather than an audience.

Get it wrong and your event becomes schlock; the product of other products, contrived
primarily for the purpose of being recording. The balance tilts further towards performance, before the last notes have faded the documentation and re-shaping of the experience of those present has begun.

Fast cuts, filters applied to footage, lo-performance recording devices can transfer a moment to a desired space between the past and the present, cladding it in the characteristics of other remembered media events and archive material that inspired it.

Truth To Materials extends to the way we record things. In that Moment...there is no filter at work, no 2-D glasses to wear. Documentation can reflect this; the best of these images capture the undeniable rough edges that still snag these events as they take their first uncertain self-conscious steps away from the realm of simulacra; we see complicit laughter in the oldest faces and in the youngest a delight in being out after dark and having the run of the place.
Things like that keep things like this happening.
Things like that keep things like this happening.
Ulverston Oss Night
Images by Lindsay Ward Photography
Field Video by Jacob Brown
Whitby Lanternnight images by John Hall
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