tracing mobility: cartography and migration in ... - Trampoline

The Electrification of Dark Peak
(a proposal), 2011
digital photograph, digital drawing
The Electrification of Dark Peak (a proposal),
(2011), is the result of a walk through the
landscape of the area known as “Dark
Peak,” a famous romantic landscape of
empty rock-strewn heath-land in the north
of England. Ironically this ‘Peak District’
while preserved as a national park and
therefore free of the signs of industrial and
post-industrial development, is nonetheless
surrounded by some of the most densely
populated urban areas and post-industrial
landscapes in all of England.
Thus the surrounding populations infil-
trate the empty landscape in a paradoxical
quest to fulfill an ideal isolation, clad in
Lycra ramblers enlightening one’s own dark
peak. In this way, the rough hewn and lonely
landscape that still exists in its so carefully
preserved ideal becomes a living simulacra
for romantic idealism. Simon Faithfull’s
proposal, The Electrification of Dark Peak, pro-
poses, as a prepositional piece, overlays of
the romantic ideal with the industrial ideal.
Using the photographs that the artist cap-
tured during his walk as a ground, Faithfull
merges these with his own electronic draw-
ings of street lamps and motorway lighting
taken from other meanderings the artist
has embarked on traveling through various
spaces, places, and time zones that conjoin
the world.
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The Electrification of Dark Peak (a proposal), 2011