This project explores the route, uses and character of urban waterways. The Dighty Burn in Dundee and the Denburn in Aberdeen are both part of the history and mythology of their home towns; yet they constantly alter, reinventing themselves along their course.
Urban rivers are intimate, immediate places of contact with the non-human world for many city people. They are part of our own story. There is a sense of ownership. In a sense, they are nurturing, protective, defining.
They are pastoral / urban / domesticated / wild. They disrupt landscape categories; then they rise in spate, and disrupt them again.
They are characters in urban myths. They offer privacy, quiet (or river sound), colour, different light. They are places of ritual – we follow our favourite paths, with no need for explanation.
They are secretive, acquisitive – they carry walls, shoes, plants, names, soil …. They are also anarchic and disruptive, bursting through fences and drains, flooding and retreating suddenly.
Project diary @ makingspaceforwater.wordpress.com
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