The Drift Film. The Drift: An exercise in self-magic and change.
If I could place new memories at specific points in the landscape through my own actions, I could make a new set of memories to counter my current thinking. Connect again with the land, and through it, with my myself in a different way.
My magic had to be the real deal. Real Magic that facilitated real change of self. Myself. Dangerous stuff. Self-awareness from behavioural autopilot to manual control. Effective change through action. To be part of the collective again. Moving spark or reabsorbed.
My culture of thinking had become normalised, and these ideas were real to me. if I could change the ritual and implant new triggers, the landscape could reprogramme me. Routine is the ritual.
The Drift is taking positive action. Personnel. Remythologising my environment. To be productive again. To be creative again. To find coherence. To communicate again.

Images and field recordings for The Drift were made on Craddock moor, Cornwall between winter 2021 and 2025. Through 3 of the wettest winers on record. It uses film and audio from multiple format including mobile phones. In the moment. This has been a solo mission.

The concept of “The drift” in surrealism. The flaneur: The Psycho-Geographic response to place and object is well known. In my case, The Drift isn’t a passive reaction to a feeling. External or internal:influenced by the ideas of Paul Nash's unseen animated landscape, William Blake's vision 4 fold and the landscape memory of the T C Lethbridge. The drift is a proactive attempt to programme the land memory, or at least overlay it as an act of positive change. The kinesthtetic act of movement and performance through the landscape captured by plants as they react to the shadow of my passing to join sedimented layers of history in the landscape.

Blake’s Spectre of Los. Carl Yung’s Shadow. Both dark qualities that grow when cut off from the light but not to be killed or suppressed. Existential Artist angst maybe ? or just the threat that needs assimilation and a creative response:
The animals, plants and rocks felt like that. All these things run on different clocks and their perception is different.

I remember reading somewhere that some literary researchers believed that the main characters in The White Peacock by DH Lawrence were all aspects of his own personality.

Mark E Smith said: “ People think of themselves too much as one person. They don’t know what to do with the other people that enter their head”.

Jon Chinn said “I’m just a sheep trying to be a Horse”.

The Drift became my final major project for my Photography MA in 2023. When I was asked about its genre, I said it was documentary. Paul Nash said that some things are beyond language and that’s okay. I paraphrased that.