Heartlands Cornwall Film - The Installation
Heartlands is the re-development of a former tin mining site. Many primary extractive industries in the UK have declined or disappeared. In the case of tin mining this decline has been going on for a long period - over a century, at least since the 1870s. Mining nevertheless remains deeply ingrained in the Cornish psyche. In setting the creative direction for the project we were concerned not to create yet another heritage attraction. There are plenty of those in Cornwall already and the landscape is dotted with abundant relics of the mining past. Instead we wanted to create a space which opened up the question of Cornish culture - past, present and future without providing instant answers. The resulting piece of work is a sound, image and light experience which immerses the visitor and asks questions; questions the Heartlands development itself starts to answer. A low carbon mixed use community with heritage at its core, it points the way to a future which honours the past and is not trapped by it.
This part of the project (and the touch screen interactives) was developed with Centre Screen, Manchester, who provided production, direction and creative services under the umbrella of our creative brief and direction.
To see the film as visitors see it start the movie clip below - for a better viewing experience click on the full screen button.
To see the whole piece as it is played out click on the link below. The film is shown on a 9 projector set up and because of the required aspect ratio, it appears here as a thin letter box like shape, in segments. For a better viewing experience click on the full screen button.
Creative
The piece balances a number of elements:
- Geology and geography - land and landscape are obviously fundamental to the story. The sheer difficulty of winning the ore, Cassiterite, raising it to the surface and extracting the pure tin is striking. Pumping the mines (de-watering) is an absolute basic which is why the pumping engine is central to the story and why James Watt and Richard Trevithick feature
- Energy - to get coal to Cornwall in the C18th and C19th was not easy - heavy cargoes had to come by sea. Energy has been a key theme in the Heartlands story which is why we end the film with wind turbines. Also why Heartlands is a low energy consumption site - projects (if they are to make a difference) have to do what they say and carbon neutral (oil-less) energy is vital to a resilient future
- Equally important is the human story of ingenuity, graft and hardship
- This play of forces creates a social, cultural, economic and technical history - a narrative of change we needed to explain
- Lastly, change is not all decline. The project itself shows the way forward and the power of Cornwall to attract new settlers with drive and spirit is also palpable
The piece ends with two scenes - wind turbines lining the horizon - a wonderfully evocative shot. More importantly, there are a series of video portraits of people who live and work in Cornwall. They look in a frank and powerful way at the viewer. There are no captions and no voice over. The faces are singular and haunting.
Production
To find out about making the film click here. This shows a morning shooting the scene where the Trevithick road engine traverses from right to left, as if it is on a journey across Cornwall. Which it almost was.
Etymology - Tin
The name derives from the Greek kassiteros for "tin"—or from the Phoenician word Cassiterid referring to the islands of Ireland and Britain, the ancient sources of tin—or, as Roman Ghirshman (1954) suggests, from the region of the Kassites, an ancient people in west and central Iran.