Flat Earth Experience

December 7th, 2007

First weekend in December, we were invited by Roger Coleman to visit the Flat Earth, landscape around Ely in Cambridgeshire. For a long time lingering in my mind, the “Flat Earth 2007” photographic installation by Roger is no longer a series of pictures from distance. We were amazed how flat the landscape could be, despite the idea of world as a sphere had been fostered in countless classrooms. Feels like we were in Holland, with windmills and artificial drainage system built hundred of years ago! Roger was driving up and down the landscape, without effort he could explain where we are above and under the sea level, who owns the farm with troops of huge machinery, where the water goes into the cannel and distribute to nourish the Flat Earth….

It was a grey and rainy day, so the farm land was quite slippery and tricky. Roger drove very carefully but when we stopped by a river and scrambling down a slope, chubby Roger slipped down, of course. What a muddy black jean bum. Smiling and get on the 4-wheels with a plastic bag shoving over the seat, guess he must had get over it whenever happened in this Flat Earth.

The other amazing thing about it is what Roger raised in his Flat Earth Series about the massive scale farming which relate to what we shop at the supermarkets. With the awareness of ethics of our food, i.e. where our food is came from, visit of the Flat Earth brings us urban dwellers a really thought-provoking experience that also embrace a new, unromantic aesthetic in the modern landscape as it really is.

Yanki & Alan