2nd extract from"Transitions One"

INTRODUCTION TO THE THREE SECTIONS

Consider the ship. In Ships and Arks we will look at two views of the vessel as ark. Firstly, William Blake’s ‘moony arc’ that protects souls in their crossing of the Sea of Time and Space.  Blake’s metaphor that describes our lives as ships crossing a huge ocean has its bearing in myth and fable as well as in reality: our own Anglian Monarch for instance protects and saves lives. In sympathy with Blake’s concept Jim Fitzgerald explores the symbolism of Ark, but Karen Armstrong’s Noah’s Ark as a sealed box with blinkered mentality contradicts both. Then again a short story, Sunship, tells of the expansive rather than exclusive version of vessel.
Interesting to note, Triennial artist Tonico Lemos Auad has carved Carrancas - anthropomorphic figureheads used on fishermen’s boats in Brazil to protect them from evil sea spirits on the sea - on timber posts in Folkestone’s harbour. Hew Locke’s work of  model ships suspended from the ceiling of St Mary and St. Eanswyth church entitled, For Those in Peril on the Sea has also used the protective, talismanic metaphor of the ship. Straight to the Christian heart of this belief we have the blessing of Folkestone’s fishing fleet every June. And Zineb Sedira also in the tradition of Blake’s ‘moony arc’ has called her film installation  Lighthouse in the Sea of Time.
  Crossings and Descents. Crossings remembers old biblical stories such as Jesus’ walking on water or Moses’ parting of the Red Sea, but in particular the heroic sea crossings of Odysseus, Jason and Leander made in Greek myth - as if in there is something of the mythic in the everyday journeys we make to recover kingdoms, homes or passions.
So to the new. Sonia Overall’s poem concerns Jason of the Argonauts.  James Bennett’s addresses boundaries as an integral part of crossing. Nikolaj Larsen, film-maker of the Triennial’s Promised Land talks about the plight of refugees waiting in Calais to cross the Channel. Shaukat Khan, Cross-Channel swimmer, describes from his fictional biography, what it was like to swim the freezing cold waters. And Maggie Harris lends lyrical and rhythmic voice to her experience as migrant from Guyana.
For Descent myths we cite Blake’s character Los,  Orpheus seeking Eurydice, Demeter Persephone and Isis Osiris as introduction


Bennett’s article Earth’s Dark Underbelly.  A short story retells the Sumerian myth of the goddess Inanna who abandons sky and earth to journey down into the Great Below. Maiuko sees the light after a Channel Tunnel fire and a short story features an allegorical tunnel.
Exile and Epiphany. Crossings and descents imply arrivals and ascents - sometimes characterised by an epiphany. But supposing there is no return, only separation and exile where Orpheus is separated from Eurydice and Cupid from Psyche? Yet also in some telling of these tales they are reunited  as is Demeter is with her daughter and Isis with Osiris.
 A Triennial installation by A K Dolven, Out of Tune, features a lonely sixteenth century bell standing out against the sea and sky whose exile nevertheless can be twined with epiphany. The bell  suspended from a steel cable strung between two high twenty metre beams thirty metres apart had been decommissioned by its church for having the wrong sound and lacking purity of tone. Like an exile, it stands alone, but rings out over the waters under the firmament, unfettered by a bell-tower’s bricks and mortar. Dolven has given it new life, turning difference to virtue and isolation to strength.
So in contrast to exile and descent there  are returns and ascents whether allegorical or literal.  Mirroring the downward and upward direction of The Leas Cliff Lift Martin Creed’s soundscape installed within, alternates sombre then jubilant notes as the lift goes down, then up. Perhaps the return or reunion is an epiphany or a moment of great or sudden revelation. Perhaps we have arrived. Has our journey transformed us? Julie Crick has transformed a painting and while two short stories describe local epiphanies Gillian White having finally arrived in Folkestone is transformed into a local!