'In Stalker I wanted there to be no time lapse between the shots. I wanted time and its passing to be revealed, to have their existence, within each frame.'
Sculpting in Time, Andrei Tarkovsky (1986).

Where are we and what are those noises? Is that a Richard Long circle or a Tarkovskyan apparition from one of his many Zones? Dungeness, Orford Ness or post-apocalyptic Wilderness? No matter. The horizon and the light are making their way across the vista. Hinterland and flatscape. We can feel the light changing, the emulsion registering; celluloidic static and haptic happening as we are carried through the camera’s gate.

I have also spent time sitting next to a tripod anticipating the camera’s eye-view, ingesting luminosity and then waiting for the film laboratory to set about its alchemy. These are the precarious joys of film processing; the never-really-knowing. The vulnerability of it all. The uncertainty-of-outcome.

Cobra Mist is a contemplative zone of the unknown.
This is Land-escape-art.
Existential, visceral and elemental.
Akin to a recent channel swim. I was beyond the foreshore, waterbound and in amongst the Mackerel Rising. Touching and all consuming.
Invigorating.
Astounding.
Stuff against the skin.
Wind, fog, sun, the cold and mist.
It passes through the body.
Corporeal feast.

Chris Welsby’s Seven Days (1974) or Sea/Shore (1979). James Benning: Circling the Image (2003).
The familiar made magical.
But Cobra Mist has been choreographed to dance to a different tune.
An implied narrative?
I am in mind of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
Could this be the place to which the story goes? Forlorn and abandoned, devastated and miserable. Is this the Flatland, Edgeland, Land’s End and Journey’s End?
More than just structural, this is subtle and physical.
And all is underpinned by the glitching and scratching of sound. Their trace elements lie all around and the film’s sonic emissions ooze out across the land. But you have to listen...
Being in one particular place for a long time helps with the ambition, and watching, at the same time, becomes an obsession. This horizontal landscape pulls us to her. We cut in closer, deeper, until we are at one with the decrepit architectural interior. The roof long gone, skies and shadows pour in, doing their ebb and flow.

Perhaps the only disjuncture is when the camera pans and we have to process time passing and point of focus moving. Both at the same time. Together. Disorientating and irritating. This oppresses and seduces in equal measure. Images blend together to create a panoramic blur. A Turneresque wash of shape and colour.

But for me though, the climax is the fleeting humanistic ‘presence’ towards the end. A hand is holding a cloth and it deftly touches the lens. This is a vain attempt to remove the rain and thus tidy up the picture. Cleaning things in order that they are made better. The desperate plight of human endeavour.

In no small part it is the sound recordings of Chris Watson and the collaboration with Benedict Drew that help hold this beguiling time-lapse piece together. Emily Richardson has cast a spell.

Andrew Kötting is an artist and filmmaker.