Nick Edwards

An expedition to the source of the Dollis Brook, in search of the Consequences of the Sublime and the Beautiful.

On June 15th 2009, Nick Edwards led a small Party from the Welsh Harp reservoir on an exploration towards the source of the Dollis Brook. The objective of the expedition was to investigate the Sublime and the Beautiful, constructing a philosophical framework for contemporary consideration of ‘the natural’.

The mode of travel was Endotic, an exercise in staying close by, not leaving the familiar and traveling interstitially through a world we thought we knew. A narrowing of focus, a reduction in scale led to an expansion of insight, an unleashing of
interpretive and imaginative possibilities often smothered by the large-scale, long-range modernity. An example of this can be seen in Xavier de Maisstre’s “Voyage autour de ma chambre” (1794) In this account de Maistre treats his bedroom in Paris as if it were a vast, uncharted and perilous territory where moving from his bed to a chair has all the adventure of an expedition on the high seas, a trip every bit as arduous as that of Magellan and Cook. In this spirit the source of the Dollis Brook was sought.