A Heap of Stones is a project around the landscape of Shap Fell in the Lake District of England. "Shap" derives from a Scandanavian word for "a heap of stones" and the human relation with stone in the Lake District goes back literally to the Stone Age, with quarries for axe heads. A very large prehistoric stone monument, Shap Avenue, stood here until the 17th century and the surrounding hills are littered with stone circles and burial mounds. There are still large quarries in operation for pink granite, blue stone and limestone, and there is a large lime works which uses limestone as its raw material. For the rest, this is an agricultural community, mostly farming sheep on the surrounding fells, an occupation that is severely under threat at the moment for economic and ecological reasons.
A Heap of Stones will be a cycle of audio and visual pieces which can be combined in different ways looking at the human inhabitants' relation with nature through history, and at present, when there is a lot of pressure for re-wilding and for ceasing the extraction of stone from the hills. Already one of the largest quarries has stopped production and is now a nature reserve currently with no access for the public.
The first outcome of the project is A Heap of Stones #1, a multi-channel audio composition first presented at the Přespolní art centre in the Czech Republic in 2024. This piece combines the sounds of rock, stone, animals and water with industrial sounds from the quarries and factories.