Events outlines
Eva Vikstrom, Louise Sayarer, Gail Barker
In The Passing three artists -connected by deep friendship- create a promenade performance in which they invite a group, mostly of older people, to share their yearnings, memories, fears and dreams in a ritual of movement, stillness, sound and sharing.
For the past 18 months Gail has been knitting a cord each day. This cord is now a large ball, marking a passing of time. It will be carried to Walcot Street where the gathering of people (and anyone else who would like to join in) will unwind and then rewind the ball. This passing through many hands will form a mantra of movement and sound. Then performers and audience will be led to Walcot Chapel to share an acoustic dreaming session, in which "the intimacy of sound will allow the aasembled minds to playfully form their imaginary realms."
"The Passing has been developed in response to ideas of the continuous movement of life, between love and death. The piece considers the experience of love as the passing through hands of care. In death it is the hands of others that care for us and pass us into the next realm."
Andrea Carr, Kyra Williams
Orlando is a promenade performance piece that resurrects Virgina Woolf's hero-turned-heroine, who loved intensely and defied death for 400 years. And, in the end, she defied gender too. Written and directed by Andrea and performed by Kyra, who is dressed in a dazzling costume/scuplture, much of the action takes place in the time-heavy setting of the graveyard, with a final climax in the chapel itself.
"Created in response to themes of time/travel, body/politics, poetry/nature, memory/ancestry, love/death and power. Virginia Woolf’s lyrical, often poetic narrative style utilizes these themes to comment on the character’s search for wholeness, life and a lover. Orlando is a fantastical mock biography, based on Woolf’s real life love interest Vita Sackville West, combining fact with fiction in what is widely regarded as one of the longest love letters ever written."
Robert Booth and team
In two spectacular events -one at the beginning of FaB15 and one at the end- Robert creates a fusion of art production, reconstruction, ritual and ceremony. In his twin performances, Sulis Minerva and The Passage he references the long ago dead of the neolithic, bronze and iron ages, of Roman Britain and the Industrial Revolution ... and he explores how materials, symbols and actions can create a discourse across thousands of years
Robert and his team pour bronze to invoke ancient deities and they carve and carry the same bluestones that can be found at Stonehenge. Guided by the work of leading archaeologists, Robert believes these stones were carried from West Wales to Wiltshire for some way along the line of the Avon, which Walcot Street now tracks. He and his team of strong men recreate the method of transport he believes was used by the stone carriers of some 4,000 years ago.
Andrea Greenwood
"Territory was originally devised for a space backing onto Waterloo Station, in London. I became fascinated how commuters, at rush hour, while tightly packed in train carriages, create both physical and mental barriers through using their phones or by reading newspapers ... thereby enforcing a series of private independent spaces within a public one.
"I developed a piece using ash from burnt newspapers. I stood on the pile of ash and continuously drew large circle motions with my feet, marking the maximum amount of space my body took up. This work reflected on the ritualistic seizing of personal space.
The piece takes on a very different meaning within the context of Love & Death, becoming instead a reflection on loss. It is an ephemeral experience. Once the performance is complete the foot marks slowly become obscured, and disappear as people walk over them."
Catherine Phelps
Catherine will be taking her "JUST IN CASE (chance is the fools name for fate) shrine" out into the community on a specially constructed altar on wheels. With this she will be offering a short ceremony to members of the public where they will have a moment to consider ideas around belief.
"My collaborator and I will interact with people in a ritual, with scripted responses, directed movements and offerings (candles, flowers, thoughts), all brought together in a ceremony that echoes various religious practices but which, in our case, is entirely secular.
"This encounter between artists and public plays on ideas of superstitious habit, ritual, repetition, faith and the eternal human need for there to be something more, something beyond the known, which is so moving in its hopefulness
and desire for mystery. The short ceremony will be performed on individuals one at a time with the intention of starting an internal debate involving ideas of faith, curiosity, bad luck, trial, chance and fate."
Eunju Hitchcock-Yoo
In Dead Book of Bad Memory Eunju takes her work to the streets, as the light falls, projecting onto walls around Bath with mobile equipment.
Her video mural presents the ceremonial movements of warding off bad memories and bad luck. It adapts the formats of ancient murals and funeral rites. The work was provoked by the death of a friend at university.
"In the last few years, I have been dealing with subjects that people desire and fear (which usually come together): personal and social obsessions, customized rituals, traumatic memories, unforgettable dreams, habitual actions, old proverbs, acceptable or common evil, tensions in society, migration and utopia."
Molly Conisbee
Molly also takes to the streets of Bath - to lead a walk through city along the by-ways of death. Molly is a historian who shares her knowledge of the facts, anecdotes and controversies around the subject on a walk that starts in Queen Square, proceeds through the city centre and concludes at Walcot Chapel.