Swansither - Ronsack (2025)

Ronsack is an ancient and remarkable oak tree, that stands on a high ridge above Tom "Swansither" Kennedy's farm.

With immense views in all directions over the Shropshire countryside. The tree is remarkable not only for its size and shape, but it was also recorded in the Domesday Book.

Tom says of the tree: "it is at least one thousand years old and so the oldest living thing I am ever likely to encounter. I visit the tree often, and imagine it as a silent witness to some 40 generations of humanity, the changing landscape, Civil war and, most importantly, the Industrial Revolution that began in Coalbrookdale, barely a stone's throw away, and changed the world forever."

During this time, Shropshire has changed from a deeply forested area rich in folklore, magic and giants, to a county which has seen huge changes through urbanisation and industrialisation.

Tom muses: "This process began at about the time the tree was an acorn. The creation of the Domesday Book was the first time that everything in this country was quantified. With that measure came control and the gradual erosion of our culture and folklore. Later, the Industrial Revolution, which began right here, was a tidal wave which has now passed on to China and other parts of the world. The once hellish furnaces around Ironbridge are now grown over with brambles and the area now bustles with tourists and gift shops selling goods made in China.

Meanwhile, Ronsack remains unmoved, at the edge of the field, and for now it is my responsibility to ensure the tree survives through my lifetime and beyond. So in this album I want to use the entity that is Ronsack to explore the passing of deep time, changing of society, loss of innocence, industrialisation, and the future of the planet."

Tom also worked with visual artist Mick “Conflux” Coldwell. On talking to Tom about the historical significance of Ronsack, Mick felt inspired to produce a series of manipulated photographic images of the site, including a film which was later shown at the Belgrade film festival in 2024.

Coldwell conducts research into time, hauntology and AI. In this new kind of image generation, ghosts are summoned by artificial intelligence from countless photographic fragments, into a kind of spectral goo that Coldwell has recently dubbed “Vectoplasm” - a reference to Roland Barthes’ writing on the spectrality of the photograph.

This new ghostly digital “substance” is comprised of many traces of a real past mixed together, but unlike traditional photography, completely reconfigures them into bizarre new forms. While these traces can no longer be used as historical evidence in this formation, their digital deconstruction and reconstruction does allow us to visualise impossible perspectives on time and find haunting patterns in the data. Ronsack is the best current visual representation of this new concept.

Ronsack saw the very beginning of the industrial revolution – a 300 year process that would finally lead to artificial intelligence - in some senses a mirage of its memories.