The topic for October 1, 2003:
Ancestral Place
We invite your thoughts on this topic! Dicuss this topic at DiscussAncestralPlace.
[Mulubinba Moments] Ancestral places are not just old places, they are places where we can feel a connection with the generations that have gone before us. Ubirr is an Aboriginal site in the Kakadu National Park of the Northern Territory of Australia and it is truly ancient. Thanks to Bill Neidjie and his people, when I stood and gazed at the rock paintings at Ubirr I could clearly hear the voices of his ancestors from thousands of years ago...
[Fragments from Floyd] ...Nevertheless, with the quick passing of decades, I do feel some need to find roots. If I am to know ancestral places, lacking any of the old-fashioned kind, I will be happy to adopt them: this old house, this patch of land, the Blue Ridge Mountains... and the people who have loved them long before I did. If they will have me, my belonging will be here to these places, these hills, these people.
[Laughing~Knees] I came across my first copy of "The Fellowship of the Rings" from J.R.R. Tolkein's "The Lord of the Rings" in 1974, when I was fourteen, while browsing a musty old used bookstore in London with my father. He mentioned the book in passing and I picked it up, curious. Since we were headed for Germany in a few days, I decided to buy the entire set, so that I would have something to read while in Germany. Little did I know that these books would turn over my world and grab a hold of something in my heart that to this day has never left...
[Bowen Island Jounral] I think we resonate with parts of the land that live in our genes. I felt at home the moment I arrived in Saskatchewan for the first time, having never been there before. My great grandparents farmed that part of the world and as a result gave me a piece of that place for my own. Other relatives lived in Toronto, Port Perry, Grey-Bruce and a myriad of other Ontario towns and villages, some for thousands of years, some as recent immigrants.
My ancestral place is not here. As much as I love it here, the ancestral place draws me home at this time of year.
[London and the North] I'm looking out for more exhibitions on artwork coming out of Germany.
In London, tomorrow, opens the Sigmar Polke exhibition at the Tate Modern, Bankside.
In Liverpool, also at the Tate, until 11th January is a Rebecca Horne exhibition.
But it's Anselm Kiefer's work which takes me (a)back the most.
Contemporary Berlin is, for me, an ancestral place. It's where my family lived. And quite a few family members still do live there.
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