Millican Dalton: A Sublime Midlife Crisis
The relevance of a 20th century cave-dweller to environmental aesthetics.
Wednesday, 23 December 2020
At the mouth of the cave at Borrowdale, May 2020. Photograph: Lewis Eaton.
On a swelteringly hot day in the North Western Fells of The Lake District, the gaping mouth of a cave offered itself as a refuge and swallowed us mercifully into its cool damp interior. Caves are otherworldly places. This particular cave, set into the hillside of Castle Crag, allows you to peer out at the gently swaying trees and glimmering daylight of the outside world from a viewing point void of light and sound. The daytrip itself had been to seek refuge in The Lakes; an attempt at replacing the stagnancy of a locked-down city summer with a more welcome, less claustrophobic, kind of tranquillity. We spent a few minutes scrambling around on the siltstone, marvelling at the height of the cave walls and exchanging the obligatory comments about feeling small in big spaces. On leaving, I noticed a large, flat stone covered in scrawlings. At the centre in neat, deeply-etched letters read ‘Don’t Waste Words, Jump to Conclusions’ with dozens of smaller sections of writing surrounding this. Each gave names and dates, with many faded with age and dissolving back into the stone’s surface. It was from a frantic Googling during the car ride home that I came to find out we had happened across a sort-of pilgrimage place for hikers: the cave in which a man had lived out his summers for over forty consecutive years.
In 1904, at the age of thirty-six, Millican Dalton gave up his life as an insurance clerk in London in order to dedicate himself to The Great Outdoors. Having spent part of his childhood in Nenthead, the North Pennines, he found life and work in the capital stifling in comparison. From then on Dalton split his year, spending the summer months in the cave under Castle Crag and winters in a canvas hut in Buckinghamshire. Far from your conventional hermit, Dalton was an active and sociable member of the community. He organised camping excursions for the outdoors novice which included teaching hiking, rock climbing, rafting and how to forage for food. What I found extraordinary for the time was that these excursions didn’t exclude women, with one of Dalton’s advertisements for a mountaineering course stating his views bluntly: “Ladies are welcome to the camp. There is nothing new in ladies camping, the custom being at least 10,000 years old.” This rare indiscriminate approach led to Dalton forging a long-lasting friendship with geologist Mabel Barker, who over the years consistently recommended Dalton’s courses to women students and friends.
Dalton and Barker atop a needle, 1913. The Mable Barker Collection.
Interview
CryptoZR presents the “Arrival” project at Saatchi Gallery: interview with the curator, Li Zhenhua
by Federico Bonezzi | 25 May 2023
Courtesy of Saatchi Gallery and CryptoZR ©
Understanding the power of human connections through art and technology: this is, in brief, the aim of the new exhibition by CryptoZR (Liu Jiaying) hosted from May 26th at Saatchi Gallery, in London. The artist, focused on blockchain technology, had her major solo shows in 2021 and 2022, respectively at the Guardian Art Center and in Venice, in correspondence with the last Biennale. Her manifesto speaks of an holistic and ideological conception of crypto art as a way of creating a new world and a new aesthetic system, with moral as well as societal implications.
The “Arrival” show project, curated by Li Zenhua, will reflect upon discourses on language, civilisation, and communication discussed in the homonymous 2016 film and recontextualized in the metaverse era.
The exhibition, as well as the work of CryptoZR, aims to introduce the public to the Multiverse through Crypto Art, being effectively a “portal to the metaverse”. How important is this kind of engagement in contemporary society and how can the traditional/physical space of a gallery succeed in conveying this multifarious message?
Li Zenhua: CryptoZR has been working on blockchain-based art for years, and have held two major shows already. Our concern is how information and knowledge can be transferred in tech-based conditions this time. We face accessibilities and digital divisions when discussing crypto art or tech-based art.
To showcase CryptoZR’s work we chose a large format LED screen to display the online artwork remixed in the metaverse environment. It isn’t easy to show crypto art without mentioning its technology or concept behind it; therefore, we want to bring that forward like a magician finally unfolding their magic moment - coding, trading, and communication from the artist would all be present at our showings.
Physical space and contemporary art context are still needed to form the cognition process.
Can people experience beautiful minds? Can they share those beautiful moments with others? Our goal is to break through cliches of crypto arts today by transferring knowledge between people - this is what creates powerful human connections!
“Arrival” is a milestone in the contemporary sci-fi genre that has enjoyed great acclaim among the public. How does the film relate to Crypto ZR's work? And why was this specific title chosen for the project?
LZH: To name the exhibition “arrival”. And by referring to the film. My concern is the entanglement of tech, language and human organization.
It also refers to CryptoZR’s condition and the condition of all of us, not knowing enough, not understanding, not accessible, not included, etc.
But I still believe we can achieve a better future, and we deserve a better future, right?
Arrival can be seen as a gesture of the unknown, a moment to come, a possible contact in between.
Responding, participating and reacting to the unknown would bring people further together.
Courtesy of Saatchi Gallery and CryptoZR ©
How does the "Arrival" Project contribute to the understanding of the “power of human connections” in the contemporary multimedia society?
LZH: Make things happen. We still believe in the ancient concept of the internet, tech democracy. When technology can support the management system, and it should also empower us. The question is how?
Since social media was invented after 2000, people are never engaging more than ever. We are experiencing tech democracy that involves more people and locations, which makes the impossible possible.
Arrival shall empower people on crypto art by sharing knowledge created and tested by CryptoZR.
Since 1985, Saatchi gallery has been a key platform and a global authority for introducing the work of emerging artists to the contemporary art world. What does it mean to you to be able to exhibit CryptoZR's art here and what are your expectations for the exhibition?
LZH: Saatchi Gallery is one of the world's leading institutions because of YBA in the 90s.
I wish to reassociate the spirit of YBA with CryptoZR. Self-organized, with no boundaries or fear, the multidisciplinary art form in a present unknown and untouched territory.
CryptoZR’s exhibition recalls the good old time in London. The art scene is energetic and vibrating, wild and young at heart.
We wish to reengage that energy of artists in the UK through Saatchi Gallery.
Your career in curation spans from cinema to contemporary art. How do you evaluate the major evolutionary patterns in such areas occurred in recent years, specifically in relation to the metaverse? What do they tell us with respect to the future of art?
LZH: We need to invent and discover the future of art together.
If you have read the artist’s manifesto, you might discover better what CryptoZR is willing to achieve. https://www.cookiecookie.org/m
My concern with media art started in 1999 at the ICA, London. My career is about speaking for the value of “new”, as in media art, new technology, new concept, new material and new artist.
I have nothing against old and classic knowledge.
I believe in the present. We are shaping the future.
To keep up with the new, sometime the old and classic knowledge might fail to function. There I need to learn with the “new”. Then, it’s a pure joy of cognition.
I have given the term Passage to the Metaverse, and I can feel the decay and transformation of our art system nowadays.
And there are many patterns of function and struggle simultaneously: Co-exist, co-habitat between the knowing and unknown, online and offline.
CryptoZR brings us to the frontier and heart zone of value through metaverse creations. It tells me art can go further, challenge other territories, and more.
Please rethink everything you can of what art can do.
Crypto ZR: Arrival
26th May – 28th May 2023
Free entry, no pre-booking required
Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York's HQ, King's Rd, London SW3 4RY
Gallery 3, Ground Floor