The Viscous Shape is a research and film project by Hermione Spriggs & Curtis Tamm which revisits and responds to the text and film archives of volcanologist George PL Walker.

Through the 1970s and '80s Geroge Walker intimately studied and photographed the pahoehoe and a’a lava flows incessantly overtaking the local roads and coral reefs of Maui, Hawaii. The Destruction of Royal Gardens features a 16mm time lapse taken by Walker of an a'a flow destroying an inhabited area known as “Royal Gardens” over the course of a day. The slowly creeping movements of the molten rock and lava are rendered animate and viscous in the geologist's time-condensed footage.

16mm archival footage is intercut with an animation we created from thousands of diagrams and drawings produced by Walker for an unfinished manuscript known only as “The Book”. Walker's writings rigorously describe different types of flow which emanate from volcanic action, from tephra clouds, falling deposits, and underwater landslides, to a’a rubble and pahoehoe lava rivers.

We were privileged to work with Walker’s unpublished manuscript, which is both a textbook on rheology (the study of flow) and a subjective document of research obsession, including diaristic notes and packing lists, food preferences and fantasies. Our film pulls from Walker’s text and his personal fictions to appropriate the flow-dynamics of lava itself as "viscous" approach to research material that refuses to separate subject from object. 

This film was made with generous support from the Arts Council England International Development Fund & Skaftfell Center for Visual Art. Special thanks to the Walker Family and GPL Walker Archives.