‘… it is nessessary in an indivisible universe to believe that the principle of consciousness must extend everywhere. even now i imagine that i can feel all the particles of the universe nourishing my consciousness just as my consciousness informs all the particles of the universe.’
(jacquetta hawkes, a land, p30, cased edition, collins 2012, 1st published collins, 1951, the cresset press)

media: digital video
title: uncertain boundaries: a lossenham residency
shot and directed: kit warren
artist: russell burden
sound and mixing: kit warren and russell burden
editing and colour: kit warren
additional recordings: russell burden
cello improvisation: rachel dawson
duration: 38mins
production period: 2024/25

headphones recommended…

sound piece: a tonally enhanced sub-surface soundscape
description: at once complex and diverse, an unexpected acoustic ecology of tiny insect stridulations and hydrological sounds play below the water’s surface.
process: hydrophone recording, audio processing – spectral filtration.
pond site: adjacent to priory field, lossenham, kent, 2025

position: artist in residence
duration: september 2020 – june 2026
funded by: the janus trust
location: lossenham, parish of newenden, kent, (ngr tq 84136,27895)
description: the lossenham project is a community heritage and research project that investigates the archaeology, history of the lossenham landscape and its wider setting. it includes a biodiversity component and support for art and craft based projects.
professional associates: isle heritage cic

geographic setting: on the eastern boundary of the high weald in kent, lossenham forms a ridge, running roughly south west to north east, situated between the river rother to the south (the course of which at this point forms the kent-sussex border) and the hexden channel to the north. the hexden channel is a tributary of the rother and flows into it just east of lossenham. lossenham thus forms a peninsula between these two watercourses and the surrounding (now largely reclaimed) marshes of the rother levels. directly to the east rises the high ground of the isle of oxney, divided between the parishes of wittersham and stone-in-oxney. the rother flows around the southern edge of the now landlocked isle and thence south to rye and the sea. beyond the isle of oxney lies the level expanse of romney marsh.

lossenham residency
1. to create a set of personal artistic responses to the lossenham landscape.
2. to interact with the carmelites, visiting artists and artisans, musicians, archaeologists, historians and bio-diversity experts as inputs to artworking.

residency 5th year (2025/2026):
collaboration –  for with melvyn evans
sculpture developing a series of small sculptural pieces from rare bioclastic stone that has been collected from the lossenham landscape since 2020.
creating a ‘sky boat’ to carry fourteen colours of minerals foraged at lossenham.
sound – development of a sound piece based on hydrophone recordings from a pond at lossenham. amongst other musical techniques tones will bemade on a violin with a bow made by melvyn evans from yew wood cut at lossenham.
ceramics – supporting philip warren re-firing last years earth kiln with new flame-path adjustments.
writing – structural development for (working title) ‘drift: an artist journal’
residency 4th year:
materiality – ‘the colours of lossenham’ an exploration of the geological and living materials of the landscape. mineral paints from soil, sands, clays and iron. plant inks from water, plants and trees, and bioclastic stone.
print – further lumens including sun tracks.
writing – notes for (working title) ‘drift: an artist journal’
making – an initial small sculptural ‘handling piece’ from biogenic stone found at lossenham.
film work – with kit warren: uncertain boundaries: a lossenham residency.
sound –  soundtrack for film with kit warren.
commission: further development of the 21/22 pottery project in collaboration with philip warren and associated film work with kit warren.
residency 3rd year:
print – the production of works on paper and digital montage including cyanotype & lumen mono-prints made directly from the landscape.
audio visual – the creation of an ambient film and sound-piece, ‘drift where currents carry’ –  an elegy to the long-departed who lived and died on the lossenham landscape.
making – the initial development of sculptural forms in relation to the local stone.
writing – initial ideas for (working title) ‘drift: an artist journal’
residency 2nd year:
sound – the production of a series of sound pieces derived from field recordings and created drones with the addition of instrumental or vocal elements from invited participants.
photography – pietra dura. a giclee print displaying the underlying geological strata of lossenham.
collaboration: two visual musical scores and drone soundscapes, played to at lossenham by david leahy (double bass) and paul cheneour (flute).
commission: to develop and run a local community pottery project with experimental (earth kiln) archaeology that relates to local clay and medieval finds from lossenham.
residency 1st year:
exploration of the landscape – photographic/multimedia works on paper.
writing –  lossenham field notes and a mesostic poem.
photo-documentation – geo-physical work completed for the archaeological project.
commission: develop the project logo from an ancient oak present at lossenham.
commission: to create the concept and design for a walled garden and meeting place, including metalwork sculpture.

film: drift where currents carry
details: candles on pond
location: lossenham, kent
soundtrack: river river
duration: 6:00 mins
date: september 2023

1.1 – the year folded
gazing east, oxney rises over rother levels, water-fields, swards of sedge, and the black rill of the hexden. to the west are higher grounds, the wooded ridge of frogs hill and onward to the high weald. here, where i stand, my feet have found peat-water sponging underfoot and, on occasion, i hear the slow rattling hush of reeds or the tonal rhythmic creak of wing joints. long since ceased are the sounds of sacred footfall, no bells ring here. just the countless dragonfly outposts and shallow snail wallows, and the loam-loaded, leaf-littered margins of wooded ponds, shards of sunlight where cloudy gnat gatherings hang hazy of over dark ribbon ditches, and there are great opening gestures of light. this is a constant flowing of discontinuities. the inconceivable compounds of uncertain boundaries.

1.2 – the lengthened shadow
long branches cast their smokey penumbras over jelly-soft arils of yew, shade the countless, leaf hosted, spangle gall sculptures. the yellows and greens are now in quiet retreat and a crisping, oaken, leaf-paper canvas is emerging. there are lustrous fire-red punctuations of wax-fat berries and powder-dusted bruise-purple drupes. i stand witness to these small things as they disclose themselves in the warm, afternoon light, not simply to my eye but to some deeper imagination. the indwelling thread of a far longer poem. a poem grounded in place and the earthen past. of untold folk, the weathered field, and space to dream, or seek, or pray. entangled i stand, in a theatre of uncanny presence and distant whisperings. of people long gone, the slow moving waters of their times now far out to sea.

1.3 – the distant image
a dew pond. secret vessel. a threshold at dawn pouring forth its droplets of obscuring mist. a lone tree standing silent in the grey distance, its stark watery reflection veins deep to earth. i hear the dull fog callings of dark birds circling, and then, appearing gradually, a slow procession of several forms, hooded, swaddled and sacked in dense coarse cloth, their leather wrapped feet tread a worn path by a quiet moving water, an unbroken channel that follows the grain of the mossbound land. reflected in its glassy surface i see a coarsely painted sky that repeatedly opens in small fissures and floods the eye with sears of white stark light. this is an old imagining, one that has risen through me from the nadir of this ancient place.

photo-assemblage (strata and fallen blocks, cliff end, east sussex, 2021)
underlying sections of the geological sequence that include the clays and silts of lossenham

timefullness III, a place between stars
found object assemblage (bracket clock, clock plate, antique bead, antique boot stud, 2025)

2.1 – the unsure reflection
in the mirror of the iron-pool, on the surface of its deep, i am reversed. i stare at my air rippled image and as the wind stills, the sky and the deep become one, opening a vision to my origin. this is an unsure interface, a modulating meniscus between movement and stillness. sometimes a mirror to a life lived, more often a portal to an ineffable otherness, an invitation to light. whichever it may be, i feel subjected to the finalities of this place. i am enmeshed in the material. if i hold long enough in this evening’s slow spun awakening, the sky will eventually darken to reveal the countless scintillations of long lost stars. their nocturnal passage searing lines across the void. slow on their arcs, they will enter the dark contours of the land, passage through the earth to burn away our grim stygian dreams.

2.2 – the leavings returned
amongst the trees, the cut green woodpile smoulders, slowly reducing to cinders and ash. the ash an in-breath, a food for the land. the rising out-breath, an exhalation. a drift of carbon to circle the planet, close to stars. i learn so much from the slow progression of things, this unfolding and undoing. the cycles returning, the lichen on the bark, the fungi in the wood. this fraying and eroding. this patina-coated, iron stained, water worn beauty dissolving the land. all things are entangled in such small writings, minute geometries chanting phrases on the surface of existence. the endless undercurrent reverberating, never still.

2.3 – the narrative absorbed
a grey ash-paste sky and a fine rain has flattened both colour and perspective. in these conditions this land is a thinner place, porous to the uncanny, interwoven with unspoken narratives, some gentle, some darkened, possibly in need of clearing. a day in which ancestral landmarks sit more naturally under the blurred folds of fields, their contours softened. within the forms of these entombed workings i sense a slower, alchemic way of life. a visionary world, where gods and events coincide and the mysterious is ever-present, hovering at the edge of appearance. the rain is audibly thickening on the spalted earth. all is saturated. the last of the fall leaves are pasted to the branches. the mosses are emitting an improbable electric green and through this sea of airborne water, silver filaments are running fast, forming pools. i am looking for a way back, but beneath my skin, this particular enchantment has crept a little too deep.

title: lossenham frequencies
artist: russell burden
published: riverwork press 001: (water & iron)
release date: 20 december 2022
ambient scores written and arranged by: russell burden
recorded, produced, mixed: russell burden
mastered by: nick taylor at porcupine studios
final output: cd/mp4a
© russell burden 2022

sleeve notes
the first creative visits to lossenham were walked in solitude. over those early months, becoming intimate with the low secluded landscape and its wetland levels opened a sense of artistic engagement, and investigating the space with microphones revealed stretches of time utterly devoid of human noise. focusing on lossenham’s acoustic ecology became a regular and purposeful act of quietude and creative intention. sitting in stillness, listening deeply, the field of natural sound becomes an immersive experience, water, wind, bird calls – the more one listens, the more one hears – the texture of grasses, the clicks and tones of insects, all unpredictable qualities that hold one’s attention to the wider landscape and, at once, to the smallest of close, transient happenings. with the recorder running, without moving a muscle or making a sound, dragonflies begin to land, birds creep closer, and the moment expands. slowing and emptying the mind has played such a large part in the process of making these soundscapes. i hope they invoke some sense of the beauty, presence and spaciousness felt when holding silence at lossenham. in the words of a favorite ecological thinker, ‘the beautiful is the basic aesthetic experience, whose essence is the unconditional freedom of the sublime.’ ¹

charm (c. 1300) from old french – ‘charme’ to recite or cast a spell, an incantation, to enchant or fill with desire
from latin – ‘carmen’ song, verse, enchantment, religious formula
from pie root – ‘kan’ to sing

¹ morton, timothy. realist magic: objects, ontology, causality. open humanities press, 2013. p.93

1: a charm to banish shadows (6:00)
russell burden: field recording, voice edits, strings & pads, processed guitars, timpani skin
mike bintley: spoken word – text and translation from the phoenix (old english)
lossenham: woodpile burning

2: a charm to weave belonging (12:00)
russell burden: field recording, cello edits, string & pads, processed guitars, bowed bass
rachel dawson: cello improvisation
lossenham: midnight rainstorm

3: a charm to gather presence (12:00)
russell burden: field recording, string & pads, processed guitars, acoustic guitar, bowed bass
lossenham: daybreak riverbank

4: a charm to open boundaries (12:00)
russell burden: field recording, flute edits, string & pads, processed guitars, bowed bass
paul cheneour: bass flute improvisation
lossenham: on reed level

5: a charm to lengthen days (12:00)
russell burden: field recording, violin edits, string & pads, processed guitars, bowed chimes
freyja cox jensen: violin improvisation
lossenham: dusk hedgerows (nightingales)

6: a charm to nurture silence (12:00)
russell burden: field recording, voice edits, string & pads, processed guitars, bowed chimes
margaret cameron: voice improvisation
lossenham: priory field

sub-surface clouds of sediment lift and settle throughout the water column. a particle dance of entanglement and release.
here is a  gentle redistribution of materials laid down in the valanginian age. an ancient matrix of ochreised root channels woven throughout white clays and fine silts.

3.1 – the emptiness gathered
in still air and a liquidity of cool light, a chorus of insubstantial sounds sits close to silence. not one loud thing breaks or penetrates the gentle ticks, drips and fluttering hush. today, this rustling, fragile emptiness seems charged with potential. no ungathered energies to disentangle the space. a ground on which the unbound frequencies of past and future can collide in the dense chaosmos of all things now. i am standing amongst a billion stems and the tiny motions of untold happenings, watching the extraordinary fractal shimmer of it all. immersion is the temptation, but it is not the time for transcendental reveries. in image, sound and word i will capture and catalogue what i encounter and this self-imposed creativity will help keep such timeless disappearances at bay.

3.2 – the bowed chime
time in the unfixed mind is so malleable. one focused hour of listening, collecting sounds in the field, has somehow opened to an age. the chatterings of birds, the ratcheting of cricket legs, all transient clusters of territorial tone and attraction beating out time in discreet segments, in an outpouring of moments that, gestating in me, have feathered out my sense of time. but i have purposefully attuned to this sound stream, gathered its moments to work with, to extend. later, i will bow a harmonic form to the air, a high, resonant, lingering vibration to thread its way throughout the sonic complexity. the long reverberant shivering of a clock chime maybe, released to ensnare those callings before they can fine away to thinner air. and i can imagine a further holding to entwine this soundscape, a lower, resonant frequency. a deep humming constant, to release the mind, invite a richer sense of place.

3.3 – the hidden vessel
a flock of little egrets fly stark white against a grey sky. they land in a scatter. closely following, a great egret alights amongst them with little disturbance. white swans paddle a wide ditch and dark crow-like wings punctuate the distance. not all is so monochrome, the soaked greens and the pale buffs of reed-straw are lending their elegant tones. but last night was spent through the microscope lens and my thoughts are populated by a starry field of exquisite forms. of the minute glassy diatom shells that hide in this peaty land. impossibly ornate bifold sculptures, silica vessels, circles, crescents, vessicas, all tiny prisms shining, refracting their opalescent spectral colours against the black field of my condenser. a million could float in one cupped hand. i can hardly imagine the countless trillions amongst the tangle of ancient reed and root underfoot. i should probably return. i am lost to the day.

a mesostic visual poem inspired by the historic, hydrological and geological conditions of hexden basin’s alluvial infill and peat accumulation.
the poem’s length of sixty lines has been drawn from a 600cm borehole survey performed across the hexden basin wetland at lossenham during the autumn of 2020.

4.1 – the after image
i stand in the lower field above the reed-line. a low vivid light is rising, piercing a filigree of skeletal trees on the horizon. i close my eyes and a black silhouette appears. burnt to my retina, its coral reef edges shift colour as i blink, deep orange then rose. i stare again at the trees, at the gleaming outline of a rising aura. it glows, over-exposing edges, bleaching the image. shutting my eyes again, the tree line shifts to negative, a perfect reversal. this imprint must be the original camera lucida, an after-image held in the dark space of my mind, archived in some category of memory, unlabelled.

4.2 – the shifting vision
a northern lapwing flaps on the other side of the hexden. a black enveloping cloak of splayed wing feathers marked white underside, it twists and flops its form a few feet above the field. i gaze at its strange indeterminable behaviour, haunted by its thin bleating calls as it slowly fumbles through the sunlit air. it seems uneasy, or possibly enraptured by the year’s first warmth. pain and joy can appear so similar, but this shape shifter inscribes its folds and figures through the air with such a sense of unspoken language, holding no measure to this land or time. instead, obeying a deeper ancestral mystery, an unmediated relationship with the world, a stillness that dispels polarities, embodies the absolute.

4.3 – the unheard heard
the small random sounds of the everyday hide themselves through their constancy. an acoustic field that unfurls itself in proportion to the quality of one’s attunement. to the focussed mind, an unmediated stream of disquiet that dwells on the boundary of the inaudible. this evasive continuum is not just the domain of tiny frequencies. the avian chorus at first light also falls away from awareness, disappears in the coarser workings of the day. but here, for me, the field has opened. i hear bubbles rise to air through the water-laden levels, their soft gloopy tunings softening the mechanical mutterings of insects. i am focused on the minutiae, the dissonant drift of this micro-acoustic ecology.
below ground, buried in the silent heart of matter, i sense another field. a primal level at which the shimmer of chaos finds its way to the edge of form. a subterranean story of inaudible resonance, where the elements of life seek to coalesce and our proto-mythologies begin to emerge.

chesterhedron, stainless steel (lossenham, 2022)