This project sought to explore how, in the processes of mapping, incompleteness and uncertainty can open up an embodied knowledge of place.

I wanted to question the implied objective truth of the map and the archive as records of place, using Portsmouth, my home, as an example. The city fully covers Portsea Island, whose coastline has considerably altered over time due to human and non-human factors. Similarly, Portsmouth’s role as a centre of naval power has fluctuated, mirroring the decline and loss of an empire and the certainty it once provided. Given this physical and symbolic flux, it seemed appropriate to adopt methodologies that subvert the certainty and finitude of archival practice, offering a more fluid and ambiguous perspective.

This work explores four locations around the perimeter of Portsea Island. The shape of the island’s coastline has altered considerably over time as a result of human and non-human factors, just as Portsmouth’s role has changed in response to world events. The work attempts to capture this state of flux and fragility by forming an intentionally ambiguous, incomplete and unreliable archive.

Through visiting these locations, certain features presented themselves which seemed to say something about ways in which we relate to one another and our surroundings; play (a rope swing at Hilsea Lines), nurture (an artifical rock pool at Great Salterns), protect (a submarine barrier off Southsea beach), and communicate (remains of a pier support near the former site of a signalling station at Tipner) - four responses we might make when the world lays a challenge at our feet and threatens our own personal shores.

Each of these features were mapped using photogrammetry - a process that seemed to encapsulate both the certainty and fallibity of the archive. One hundred photographs were taken of each one from different angles. But once they were combined to produce a virtual 3D object, inconsistenecies, assumptions and gaps were revealed. The same process was then applied to the physical archive itself, revealing new mysterious, imaginary forms and landscapes. These can be seen in the animation shown here with the archive, accompanied by a layered soundtrack of field recordings from each location.

How reliable can any archive be in capturing the essence of a such fluid and contested subject matter? Absences and gaps certainly formed a theme and their presence is felt throughout. But does what is missing have more weight than what is included? And does an archive say more about the archivist or their subject?

Rob French

August 2025