Who Can Turn Skies Back & Begin Again

This series is the fifth part of what has become a greater, multi-modal psychogeographic exploration of Aldeburgh. In essence, an elegy not for the past, but the loss that is to come.

It’s now an inevitability that man-made climate heating will cause sea-level rise that inundates parts of the town and surrounding countryside. A matter of when, not if. The village at Slaughden was washed away in the 1953 floods that inundated parts of Aldeburgh. Large areas of farmland (the drained marshes to the north and south), are already below high-tide level, their fate consigned to managed retreat. New holiday lodges, currently under construction, hundreds of metres from the beach will become sea-front homes as Aldeburgh becomes a vulnerable peninsular.

Who Can Turn Skies Back & Begin Again uses analogue negatives made of Aldeburgh which are then repeatedly soaked in seawater over a period of weeks to mimic the tides that increasingly threaten. The resulting images seek to challenge our narrow perception of the changes to come and how we regard the past, present and future.