Remeandering is a film about shifting a river. The Eddleston Water is part of the River Tweed catchment and flows down into the Scottish Borders town of Peebles. In the 1800s, a section was straightened and canalised, removing the river’s natural meanders through the valley. Houses in Peebles are prone to flooding. So a pilot project was set up to establish the effect of restoring bends in the river, on biodiversity, on habitats, on the community downstream.
I visited and filmed the project over several weeks as one of four Borders artists on the Working the Tweed project – part of Year of Natural Scotland 2013. On one particularly eventful day, the operation began to block the old straight section and divert the river. Volunteers from Tweed Forum and Tweed Foundation came to rescue the fish and transport them to their new home.
In Remeandering, I wanted to dramatize the river viewpoint against the scale of land shifting by people, planners and diggers. As a Borders child, I played and paddled in burns from a young age and never made the connection to catchment. So the maps, shapes and water behaviour seen by the engineers and hydrologists was fascinating. I can never see a river again without thinking of riffles, eddies and the lives and air within. The Iapetus Ocean history made me think that beyond this epic landsculpting project was an even more epic scale of movement. This is a companion piece to Unconformity.
During excavation, objects from previous land management were found, including a clay field drain with hand imprints from the small person who made the drain. We also saw stones that suggested previous river fords and different sediment layers from agriculture. This archaeology was also seen against modern Laydar technology and maps which uncovered information about the flow of the river at different times, as well as a future map of the remeanderered river. This raised questions about what was “natural” and how to decide a restore point. Interventions such as tree-felling and digging looked invasive, but the impact was to slow the flow of water down the valley into the town.
The recorded voices belong to Hugh Chalmers, Scott McColm and Chris Spray, who were working at the site. Many thanks! The poem voice is that of the river, and the Scots for me evokes the layers of memory stirred by the excavation.
Thanks to Tweed Forum, Tweed Foundation, SEPA and University of Dundee who helped us to learn about the Eddleston Water Project.