Date published: 13/08/2026
Matt O'Rourke explores what the present and the future of pilgrimage could look like, in a performance-film-zine project, which Ksenia Kopalova presents in the format of an online visual essay.
'Pilgrims': ecological nostalgia and human terraforming
“Pilgrims” explore the layers of history that compress with each footstep. The landscapes they walk through are turbulent and changing, rippling with the sediment of ecological nostalgia and human terraforming.
These historic routes were once busy with those seeking salvation; at present this idea is reviving, though the spiritual connection is more with the environment than a God.
Through these walks across time and landscape, what once was and what is possible, become fictioned with entanglement. What does that mean for the pilgrims of the future?
These historic routes were once busy with those seeking salvation; at present this idea is reviving, though the spiritual connection is more with the environment than a God.
Through these walks across time and landscape, what once was and what is possible, become fictioned with entanglement. What does that mean for the pilgrims of the future?
Baking and basking. Minerals and compost and worms, bark and hay. The farm has been kept here over a century. Wheat and barley, hops, fruit and poultry. A shepherd hut loomed on the hill top, and when dark came and people and dog returned, it was straight to the log fire, piling up and smoky. Warm woolen blankets and they curled together under the stars. A hot pot of something soupy, and breadcrust to dip it in, to do it all over again tomorrow.
Silt, slick, ground, earth soil. Shucked out, dug up, pulverised chalky sediment, ground down to depths underland. Roots stretching, winding, holding and pulling. Thickly, sinewy, deep, desolate and down. A tile, a pot, a cracked vase, a book, a rock, a scythe, a footstep. A sound echoes, talking and walking. They stopped for a moment, and rested. Then continued, their destination days ahead. Sacks and boots, packed to brim. Their hats held upright, blocking harsh morning sun.
Yesterday, a roman legion walked across here, settling at Ranscombe camp. They brought their metal wares, dyed clothes and strange sounding syllables. Their sandals turned from boat to sand, to grass to mud to chalk. Pollen samples, fossils and findings. Ancient woodlands were all around, and now they’ve gone into hiding. Roads and wind turbines, trains. There is still a path that goes from Glynde village, over the farm field, and takes you to the river. In autumn when most of the mushrooms came, they were poked and prodded, and the curiosity of a loose sheepdog nosing away at those fruits.
Geology and carbon data, tree rings and time, cracks in the dried path, footsteps printed deep, gates open and close, and the sound of thick rain washing it down again. Brown, yellow, beige and green. Moss, and nettles at the banks, the thick curl of a tree root to rest a weary traveller. A hand runs its touch against the surface and lichen crumbles away. Soft grass like a sponge, and a fire crackling beside. They walked alone, spread out in summer and in cold, in days or years. They walked in families, in friends and strangers, when they were lost they asked someone for directions who looked like they lived nearby, they got out phones to try and get signal, they got out their maps, and found the nearby village. They walked their cattle, their sheep, with dogs, or following the flight paths of rare birds, or the magical silent footsteps of a door mouse.
British pilgrimage trust says theirs a church at firle you can stay at if you ask reverend Peter. The path, guiding and splintering. Joining and separating, forwards, and towards, away from life, from modern, from new and towards old, trading and translating and shifting with the earth, to clay, to shifting muck puddling at the trodden crossing. Sliding and squelching. Seeds and nuts, fallen leaves turn to brown, mulching with plants, grass and mud. Fading and dissipating into the beneath. Then up comes a sprout, a green against the brown, stems searching upwards. The sun and the sky, blue, yellow and cloudy grey.
Flowers come, strange oval petals, pointed, stems thick and swaying, pollen rested inside. They wither and dull. Some of the fruits that fall to the ground are collected by nosing mammals. Mycelium systems, root networks, strata and an ant colony. Rotting trunk and bark shavings, old grass and the flotsam of a dry stone wall. Mole hills and yew trees. Embedded underneath, sealed over, compressed with more beating bubbling footsteps, pushed down against the next story. And then the one before.
A small group of traders, heaving slow and heavy up to the hill town ahead. Iron age wares, a horsecart, chickens, and eggs, strange stones, mules. At night, after they leave the village, they walk towards their next destination, and rest by hot fire, rich with tales of another walk. Ash in place where their camp once was, scorching the ground. Black logs, remains, left over, soon fill with rain. The place their bed mats once flattened, is soon to be returned to, new bodies coming back, rejoining with the contours of the imprint left behind.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Matt, could you elaborate a bit on how you approached the research for the project: what ideas, theory, and processes informed it?
morette
Clothilde Morette, Aloi, G., Aresheva, V., Bacquet, E., Baker, S. and Hoffmann, F. (2024). Science-Fiction. Spector Books.
I was fascinated by my own encounters with pilgrimage, and focused on a particular route that stretched across the south of England. I was interested in how it can be a space of escape, of connection with our environment, and as I walked the same footsteps of many others before, how it can be a form of connection with the history of a landscape. Each of those footsteps carry a story and the landscape looking back experiences those stories too, holding them in its layers of sediment.
I felt unsatisfied how existing methods of research did not imbue narratives and landscapes with the richness of experience. How historical records exist as words on a page, lines on a map, or sometimes, as physical artefacts, wedged in clods of earth. We have been confined to consider these lively pasts in the soil, not as bubbling with rich earthy compost, but rigidly kept to the page, imprisoned by pen and ink.
“History encompasses that which is real, non-history encompasses that which is possible”1. This idea of Non-History, offered an important starting point, where my focus could shift into speculative storytelling. To do this I explored theories of fictioning within a landscape. The idea of fact and fiction as a hazy spectrum rather than something binary. Illustration can be considered as a tool to help conjure these new perspectives, a method of researching what could be possible rather than strictly a form of visual communication.
I felt unsatisfied how existing methods of research did not imbue narratives and landscapes with the richness of experience. How historical records exist as words on a page, lines on a map, or sometimes, as physical artefacts, wedged in clods of earth. We have been confined to consider these lively pasts in the soil, not as bubbling with rich earthy compost, but rigidly kept to the page, imprisoned by pen and ink.
“History encompasses that which is real, non-history encompasses that which is possible”1. This idea of Non-History, offered an important starting point, where my focus could shift into speculative storytelling. To do this I explored theories of fictioning within a landscape. The idea of fact and fiction as a hazy spectrum rather than something binary. Illustration can be considered as a tool to help conjure these new perspectives, a method of researching what could be possible rather than strictly a form of visual communication.
The project intertwines archival imagery, on-site photography, and found digital materials. Could you talk a bit about the curatorial choices that went into the selection?
English archives of medieval imagery intertwined with 3d scans of trees, science fiction movie stills and a footstep in the mud. Sheep species sit atop cracked pot remains, and the meandering lines of an os map stretch amidst a flatbed scan of chalk soil. There are somewhat disparate links weaving between the images, a murkiness, but there is also an uncertainty in the stories we walk amidst in our physical worlds, and a precarious unknowing about what the future of our landscapes hold. It requires an observer, a wanderer to experience these journeys themselves, and for them to extract the story, to bring it to life.
Much like the layering of sediment in the landscape, centuries can be condensed into inches of soil, sitting within and atop the time before. This felt like a stronger visual metaphor than could be translated into communicating these ideas. Layering ideas and histories, offering strange interpretations of the past. How pulling together disparate sources can be a tool of adding murkiness to a narrative, rather than help draw meaning, how this can be a way of communicating the fictioning, provoking the certainty with which we hold historic “truths”.
Much like the layering of sediment in the landscape, centuries can be condensed into inches of soil, sitting within and atop the time before. This felt like a stronger visual metaphor than could be translated into communicating these ideas. Layering ideas and histories, offering strange interpretations of the past. How pulling together disparate sources can be a tool of adding murkiness to a narrative, rather than help draw meaning, how this can be a way of communicating the fictioning, provoking the certainty with which we hold historic “truths”.
In the introduction to the project, you write: 'These historic routes were once busy with those seeking salvation; at present this idea is reviving, though the spiritual connection is more with the environment than a God'. Could you talk a bit more about the dialogue between the ecological and theological perspectives intersections within this project?
“They could not tell when they did arrive at that place, the only sense that time had passed was the smell of new moss that covered their temple.” (Excerpt from author's visual essay)
In the final section of the visual essay I imagine what a future pilgrimage might look like. I considered the increase of people trying to seek physical connections in an increasingly digitised world, the decreasing numbers of people turning to christianity for it, alongside the human-made erosion of our environments. Where and why a future pilgrim might go? I imagined them finding their spirituality in nature, journeying to their last remaining ancient oak tree in England- The Majesty Oak Tree in Kent.
On those long walks, following a path kept for centuries, it was interesting for me to think about those who had come before. The hardiness of pilgrims taking each aching step with assurance that it would bring them a form of spiritual peace. There was an intriguing intimacy I felt they would have with the natural world. Alongside those walking through landscapes long before pilgrimages took place, the beliefs of those people that they were equal with the land, the birds that sang the morning song to wake them, the seasons that came to bring harvest, the soil that fed their garden, the river that gave them life.
In the final section of the visual essay I imagine what a future pilgrimage might look like. I considered the increase of people trying to seek physical connections in an increasingly digitised world, the decreasing numbers of people turning to christianity for it, alongside the human-made erosion of our environments. Where and why a future pilgrim might go? I imagined them finding their spirituality in nature, journeying to their last remaining ancient oak tree in England- The Majesty Oak Tree in Kent.
On those long walks, following a path kept for centuries, it was interesting for me to think about those who had come before. The hardiness of pilgrims taking each aching step with assurance that it would bring them a form of spiritual peace. There was an intriguing intimacy I felt they would have with the natural world. Alongside those walking through landscapes long before pilgrimages took place, the beliefs of those people that they were equal with the land, the birds that sang the morning song to wake them, the seasons that came to bring harvest, the soil that fed their garden, the river that gave them life.