This weekend, February 1-2, Aldeburgh Music are hosting PLACE, their excellent festival "exploring the culture and meanings of landscapes", now in its fourth year. This edition revolves around the theme of ‘Occupation’, with the organisers saying: "A familiar term through the recent global encampments and ‘Occupy’ movements, forms of committed engagement and sit down protest – cultural, social and political – in rural and urban locations continue to take on different expressions, invested with a heightened feeling for one’s surroundings." As such, the festival has commissioned Stay Where You Are, four works responding to this idea by Jay Griffiths, author of the magnificent book Wild, artist and composer Jem Finer, poet Lavinia Greenlaw and film-maker Ben Rivers.
Elsewhere on the programme is a very fine run of talks from Iain Sinclair, John Berger, Philip Hoare, who followed Leviathan, tracing his personal fascination with whales, last year with The Sea Inside, travelling and exploring the world’s oceans, and Paul Morley, who last year published The North (And Almost Everything In It), reflecting on his home terrain in the North West. There will also by a live performance by Field Music, playing their soundtrack to Drifters, John Grierson’s 1929 film detailing a working day in the life of fishermen working the North Sea, on Saturday night, and a guided walk around the former RAF base Bentwaters and the nearby Wantisden Church during Sunday daytime.
Head to PLACE’s website here to get hold of tickets.
