TOM LONGS TRUTHS . single colour screen . stereo sound . RAW stills & HDV . DUR. 00:01:38:00
At the intersection of 5 ancient roads on Minchinhampton Common, Gloucestershire, official history, folklore, received truth and established fiction converge in the form of Tom Long’s Post, a simple sign post, whose arms direct one toward tragedy, romance, mysticism, cold logic and the polyphonic nature of truth.
Tom Long’s Truths explores the multitude of oral narratives that flow around the post that bears this mysterious figure’s name – the patchwork voices of folklore, the studied tones of researched history, the romantic shades of gothic fiction, the broad tumble of local opinion and the intellectual rigour of anthropological theory.
Tom Long’s Post exists as a node around which information flows, from the obvious geographic indices of distance and location to the
polyphony of intertwined narratives regarding its origin and purpose and its curious status in the minds’ of the local populace. It exists as a monument to transition and offers the opportunity to explore the structures within anthropological notions of place and the ceaselessly busy palimpsest of cultural history.
