Output details

Circumnavigation of the Outer Trial Bank/A study in Geography No.3

The subject of the film is a man-made island two miles from the shore on the east coast of England. Built in the middle of the 1970s, the Outer Trial Bank is an experimental island, the purpose of which was to see if it were possible to build a larger barrage across the Wash and transform it into a fresh water reservoir. Further development of the project was abandoned when seawater was found to permeate the walls of the island.

The transformation of a salt marsh into a freshwater reservoir and the failure of that container to defeat the tide is a narrative inherent in this landscape where nature and humans are locked in a battle against the inevitable. This almost alchemic project becomes entropic, as the system breaks down and fresh water merges with salt. We now have a new landscape, a defunct failed landscape now inhabited by thousands of sea birds.

The basis for the film is that the camera (using time-lapse) is left to observe the movement of water in and out of the island, using it as an observatory to record the tidal fluctuations, the movement of birds, astrological patterns, and the effects of light and the elements. The film has been screened at the 13th Festival Of Different And Experimental Film in Paris, December 2011, and as part of a screening on anachronistic spaces at the National Institute of Art History in Paris, May 2012. In May 2013 it was screened along side two older films entitled 'Three Studies in Geography' ('Circumnavigation of the Outer Trial Bank is the third film in this set) at the Media City Film Festival in Windsor, Ontario Canada.