merry men – newlyn’s dancing stones

newlyndancingstones view pdf

conceived as a provocation, the merry men – newlyn’s dancing stones, is not a intended as a replica, but a translation of the merry maiden stone circle or ‘dans maen’, situated to newlyn’s west just above lamorna cove. each one of its standing stones, including its outliers, will be replaced with its own stand-in stones and positioned within the town in the same relationship to that of the original complex.

it is a response to the incursions made by recent storms, into that stretch of the promenade. it will be reminder of the ancient forrest  that sits below mounts bay, that have again been revealed, at low tide, by the workings of these self same storms. it will be an opportunity to ‘rediscover’ the physical relationships between the parts that made up this ceremonial land-scape but within the context of newlyn’s own history and ceremony. this urban-insert aims to provoke an ancient thinking (or a thinking about the ancient) and set this against the everyday-present and its habitual, repetitive experience.