EDITH LOOPS
By Andrew Kötting
6 minutes 66 seconds
EDITH LOOPS is a 6 minute 66 second INSTALLATION inspired by a walk from Waltham Abbey in Essex via Battle Abbey to St Leonards-on-Sea in East Sussex. The film documents a pilgrimage in memory of Edith Swan Neck.
Bits of King Harold's body were brought to Waltham for burial near the High Altar after the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and his hand fast wife Edith Swan Neck is seen cradling him in a remarkable sculpture at Grosvenor Gardens on the sea front.
The sculpture is the focus of our gaze as the camera digs into it like an archaeologist looking for signifiers and meaning. The site resonates as does the adjacent beach on which children are seen shooting arrows into the eyes of king harold.
The looping projection allows the audience to reflect upon all things Edith and her role as the great visionary and Christian Queen to these muddled isles.
The film was shot with David Aylward, Claudia Barton, Anonymous Bosch, Jem Finer, Alan Moore and Iain Sinclair in hd by nick Gordon-smith in collaboration with tony hill and his satellite crane and falling-down-slowly machine.
These images are ‘songs’ as the film-poet Stan Brakhage understood them. Integrity of light in its shifts and simmers. Synaesthesia: sound becoming colour becoming sound. Becoming the taste of the world.
Iain Sinclair
Andrew Kötting – Hastings – September 2016
