SITTING - Telavag
A durational performance by Shauna McMullan
9.30am - 4.30pm
14 November 2018
Telavag, Norway
Programmed as part of the Creative Centre for Fluid Territories (CCFT) Event:
"Nomadic Dialogue 2 - Formulation of National Narratives"
In collaboration with the Faculty of Art, Music and Design at the University of Bergen and The North Sea Maritime Museum, CCFT initiated a series of creative interventions and events within the village of Telavag. The village was deleted from maps during World War II by German occupation forces and subsequently rebuilt by surviving families who returned following the end of the war. Given the significance of the village’s violent history and the years of rebuilding that followed the war, it provided a powerful and poignant context within which to undertake this 7hour Sitting.
The photographer Jane Sverdrupsen documented the action.
The resulting photographic work titled: SITTING – Telavag, Norway, 60°15’46”N 04°59’11”E, 14 November 2018 (9.30am – 4.30pm) has been shown in Gallery 61 at the University of Bergen, Norway and in the exhibition Practising Landscape at the Lighthouse, Glasgow.
SITTING is an ongoing series of actions created for and in response to specific locations on the edges of Europe; places with complicated historical, geographic and political landscape identities.
There are currently 3 Sittings in the SITTING Series:
1. SITTING – Agios Sozomenos, Cyprus
The deserted village of Agios Sozomenos is 30km east of Nicosia in Cyprus. Until 1964, the village was mixed, inhabited by Greek and Turkish Cypriots, but the last residents fled during the 1974 conflict and were displaced to nearby villages. The UN controlled Green Line, which divides the north and south of the island, runs along the edge of the village and a UN look out post situated on this line was my point of focus throughout the Sitting.
2. SITTING – Telavag, Norway
3. SCOTLAND AT MY TOES, ENGLAND AT THE TIPS OF MY FINGERS , Scots’ Dike, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland / England
On 31st January 2020, coinciding with Brexit Day, I marked what was Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland’s last day in the European Union, by completing a 3rd SITTING on the Scottish / English border at Scots’ Dike. Scots’ Dike is a three and a half mile long, low, interrupted earth ditch, constructed by the Scots and English in 1552 to mark the division of the Debatable Lands and to define a section of the border between Scotland and England.
