James Paul Burton

Proposal 6: Waldeinsamkeit.

The sublime has of late been the key interest in my practice in response to the notion that the sea is the gateway to the romantic elsewhere. A place where a true encounter with the sublime can be found; an infinite entity juxtaposed to the temporal presence of man. Over the course of the next few months, my practice will see me return to the role of the nomad, exploring the sublime through the more romantic use of phenomenology as a means of inserting a narrative into the landscape. 

I will investigate Waldeinsamkeit, a word of German origin that is not translatable to English, to explain its meaning creates a description of an ambiguous emotion, ‘The feeling of being alone in the woods’. It is said that the woodlands of ancient Germany (or as the Romans called the territory, Germania) were so dense, that once entered there was only darkness. Many fables that originated from these areas played on the idea of the dark woods which created the feeling of uncertainty and unease leading to  rumours of evil and supernatural happenings within.  

Through a series of works in varying mediums including sound and video, I want to create this feeling of waldeinsamkeit and force it upon a contemporary audience. I will toy with the most primal of fears, looking into folklore and mythology regarding the proverbial forest, composing a link between Burke’s definition of the sublime and the notion of discovering infinity through the solitary experience.