Chanctonbury Rings Album Videos

Justin Hopper is a writer from Pittsburg, USA and now lives and works in England. Justins’s work explores the intersection of landscape, memory and myth through non-fiction, poetry, site-specific writing and audio pieces. Justin tracked me down a few years ago to speak to me about my Beachy Head project for the research of his book The Old Weird Albion. The Old Weird Albion is now published through Penned the Margins and is a poetic essay that narrates a series of encounters with the South Downs told through personal memories, social history and ancient myths of the landscape.

This year Justin approached me to create some videos for the live performances for a spin off project of The Old Weird Albion titled Chanctonbury Ring. Chanctonbury Ring  is a spoken word and music piece written and performed by Justin and folk musician Sharon Kraus. The project has now been released as an album on Ghostbox Records and is a psychogeograhical account of Justin’s experiences at Chanctonbury Ring on the West Sussex Downs and is a blend of folk, electronic music, poetry, prose and environmental sound.

Justin & Sharon launched the album in London in June this year with a live performance at a Summer Solstice Event hosted by State 51, Ghostbox Records and Trunk Records. I created videos responding to each track of the album and mixed and projected them live to accompany their performance. The night was a success and I was invited to project the videos again at a more recent performance of the album on 24th September at The Horse Hospital in London..

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