5 Quotes by Rob Cowen

Every year we become more insular and more inward-focused, at once connected to an amazing virtual global multiplicity yet often detached from the world in any physical, emotional and moral sense. Every decision, from buying food to switching on a light, is mediated by so many logistical, institutional and technological layers that we have no sense of what our actions are responsible for. Our profound alienation from the earth continues.

Ours [Britain's] is a deeply entrenched culture of exclusive land possession, of privilege and poverty, begun with the Norman land grabs and legitimised by a 500-year system that spread from these shores and would go on to change the physical and psychological landscape of the world.

We are landless and listless, so estranged from our planet, so removed from the decision-making that governs it, so isolated from each other and the life we share this world with that we're seemingly unable even to come together and prevent global human and environmental catastrophe. We're still being decided and conquered by [land] enclosure, only now the fences are invisible and internal too.

A hoverfly is held in a sunbeam, an insect in amber.

A hare's movement seems plagued by the flicks and judders of restrained energy, as if carrying an ache that can only be relieved by running. The rest of the time it's as though they're absorbing the earth's energy, tapped into a ley line, shivering with pent-up static