Prospect Cottage filmed by Kayla from the passenger seat as we drove away from Dungeness in 2009. We had left Plymouth early that morning to film an epic phantom-ride in a Marjon Ford Mondeo estate car. Tapeless video cameras were relatively new technology which I used to film the long drive. This pilgrimage recreated the journey I had made in 1989 with a local TV crewing company to film Dungeness B power station for a promo. Now such filming is beyond easy as dash cams record endless miles every day before automatically deleting the footage.
Jay Appleton proposed a ‘Prospect-Refuge’ theory – we look for opportunities to receive visual information, to explore, and find opportunities (prospect); we search for shelter, protection, and places to hide (refuge). Appleton also talks also about hazard as: ‘the proximity of something which threatens, menaces, or disturbs our equilibrium.’ Appleton’s book is The Experience of Landscape (1995??) So at Dungeness – views, prospect. Cottage, refuge. Power station, hazard? The trip echoes Appleton’s P-R – looking out from the car there’s a sense of prospect, with an illusory sense of refuge in the cocoon of the car with the ever-present hazards of the journey.
In Perestroika, Sarah Turner (or her alter-ego) is aghast when her sense of safety (refuge) in the train carriage – looking out into the passing landscape (prospect)– is shattered when a train pulls alongside allowing others to look in (hazard).
It’s strange how looking back some times feel like a golden age. At the time I of the Dungeness trips I could borrow a car from my university to make research trips to the other end of the country, visit film festivals in Norwich or conferences in Falmouth and not even have to pay for fuel. A few years later and things would change dramatically for the worse.