PAUL CHANEY

Artist's statement – FIELDCLUB:

 

In 2004 I purchased two hectares of land in the Southwest of the UK and started an 'ultra-slow-living' experiment that was to become a durational research work known as FIELDCLUB.

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FIELDCLUB was 100% off-grid and had no electricy, piped water, waste connections or internet. Between 2004 and 2012 I lived there permanently through winter and summer in a small 'bender' made of hazel sticks and canvas – the traditional temporary dwelling of itinerant charcoal burners and clog makers across Northern Europe. I grew all my own food and biofuels on the site and assigned land to crops based on a model of equal division of the UK’s agricultural land among the UK population. I used another of my artworks, FieldMachine, to design the system of land-use.

 

Far from being a successful experiment in zero-carbon self-sufficiency, FIELDCLUB was a realist critique of environmentalist 'back to the land' utility. Here, the principles of dark ecology played out in-vivo, and the human/non-human enmeshments that emerged from my interaction with the land were analysed and unpicked through the prism of embedded artistic practice. I framed myself as just another species in a geographically restricted food web complying with the rules of Hutchinson's model of biological niche dynamics and Bataille's solar economy. 

 

The project generated a substantial body of artistic research and documentation, and provided the theoretical underpinnings  for many subsequent works. Elements of the original experiment were developed in collaboration with curator Kenna Hernly, and £50 — a stray cat that showed up one day.

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I documented my time at FIELDCLUB with Fuji Instax photographs. A small selection are shared here: