Rhythm and Mobility in the Inner and Outer Hebrides: Archipelago as Art-Science Research Site

Abstract

This paper explores some of the dimensions of mobility and rhythm emerging from a voyage to the Inner and Outer Hebrides, island collectives on the North West Coast of Scotland. In the summer of 2011, this voyage, combining boat, water and islands, as well as their inhabitants, became a research site for members of Cape Farewell, an organisation that seeks to produce creative responses to climate change. Crew members specifically sought to consider the impact of climate change on island cultures and ecologies, and the sustainability and preservation initiatives deployed here, as well as broader indicators of climate change in the area. Using participant observation of the voyage and interviews, we examine the bodily experienced, rhythmic aspects of the voyage itself; that is, the aesthetics via which the spaces and places of the Inner and Outer Hebrides became known and felt. We consider especially the rhythms of nature and the sea that encompass the motility of materials that are central to a ‘politics of mobility’ that, for Cape Farewell, characterises these islands as frontiers of climate change.