Bram Thomas Arnold is an artist who started with walking and kept going, into performance, installation, drawing, academia, broadcasting and writing. Walking has become the foundation of his transdisciplinary practice, informed by his undergraduate studies in Ecology, Gaia Theory and Fine Art, and his MA in Arts & Ecology from Dartington College of Arts.

For A Transect for Trelowarren he drew a line from the Environment and Sustainability Institute in Penryn to the Trelowarren estate near Helston, Cornwall. Working collaboratively with a team of researchers, including ecologists, geologists and cultural geographers at the ESI, Bram walked and talked with them along this line finding out more about their individual areas of research.

This team worked with the Trelowarren estate to gather data that informed a process of ‘wilding’ on parts of the estate, allowing nature to flourish once more. Bram’s transect worked with and in parallel to other transects drawn by the researchers as they measured, counted, surveyed and remotely sensed the landscape and its inhabitants. The project uncovered what was already there, what could be there and what should be there, which in turn created a composition of narrative gestures and performed texts out of fragmented conversations.

Find out more about how the project unfolded in the film below.