Sandbag Haiku
On a journey
To a place
No longer there
A bright moon shone
To a place
No longer there
A bright moon shone
This work was an experiment with physical and digital methods of using words and the element of water for a series of photographic print, and an installation, based on experiences of flooding. In October 2010, an event, ‘After the Flood’, was held to commemorate the Tenth Anniversary of the Lewes Floods. I invited visitors to leave words and short phrases on postcards to represent their memories of the flood. I then typed those words on to more postcards and filmed them floating in water. Shortly after beginning this work, the title "Sandbag Haiku" coincidentally gained a terrible irony with the post-earthquake floods in Japan. The scale was so large and the suffering so great that I could only make an oblique reference to the disaster by borrowing a TV reporter's striking reference to 'a place no longer there'. Selecting words gathered from anonymous Lewesians, the resulting haiku was stencilled onto sandbags, forming the centrepiece of an installation in a brick-lined cellar. In the darkness, a looped film showed phrases floating and dissolving to the sounds of rain, birds, and water lapping. The haiku itself, stencilled with UV paint, became visible on the sandbags as the film faded to black.