Derek Jarman project is the title of an old entry in one of my notebooks. I made this entry after I had bought Die Skizzenbücher, the German translation of the book presenting parts of Jarman’s legendary notebooks.

The entry is about the idea of a sound art piece related to the art and practice of Derek Jarman, especially to The Garden. Since I did not have any opportunity then to make sound recordings of the sea I had to suspend the project.

In July 2022 I finally had the chance to record the sea in northern England. In August I started to work on the Jarman project, hunting for and recording the sounds I had imagined in my notebook: the noise of power lines, the humming of bees, the noises of gardening activities, and the ticking of a clock. The soundscape I composed of these sounds I called Borrowed Time. It is about the tension between timlessness and the passing of time.

My original plan had been to compose only one sound art piece, but studiing the Skizzenbuch I found this page in the notebook for Bliss, the original title for Blue.

These words inspired me to compose a second piece themed around the rhythms or the heartbeat speeding up, slowing down, sometimes irregularly beating, and once more the sounds of the sea and the wind. This peice, called Bliss (Blue), will be premierred on YouTube on Saturday, 1st of October at 22:00 CET:

Maybee there will be a third piece too. In this case the Jarman project will finally be a trilogy with the title Gardening with Jarman.