- Venue
- various venues in Lincoln
- Location
- East Midlands
I wrote a proposal for Lincoln’s inaugural Digital Arts Festival “Frequency” but wasn’t successful because the project I had in mind was too ambitious for the budget available.
However, festival organiser Barry Hale regards my proposal as the best he’d had, and we’re working towards headlining this for 2013. Barry invited me to come and see the works and meet some of the artists.
So I was invited to Spire, for the opening of Frequency, which proved itself to be a very inspirational evening, especially for the project I have in mind.
Spire brought contemporary musical and digital performances into the familiar and atmospheric setting of Lincoln Cathedral.
Spire is a particularly poignant title considering that at the time the Cathedral had spires, it was the tallest building in Europe, and the music was meant to replace those lost spires.
And so we were treated to Olivier Messiaen’s Chants d’oiseux, which I swear must be the soundtrack to a Jan Svankmajer animation, a composition constructed from birdsong. Many of the pieces had a bird-related theme seemingly designed to appeal to me. Philip Jeck, and my all time favourite, B.J. Nilsen, whose hauntingly Scandinavian sounds caused me to imagine that the Cathedral had been hewn out of a fjord, an icy glacier of a space, then the arched ceiling transformed into whalebone, as if I were Jonas inside a whale, swimming in frozen seas as in David Attenborough’s Frozen Planet.
Friday night there was a projected piece by The Collaborators in The Jolly Brewer pub http://frequency.org.uk/format/artists/the-collabo…
A montage of archival photographs and video footage of bands, this work was trying to reach out to a non-art audience; as such, a non-artist friend said it would’ve been better with some more information about the images shown.
Most of the footage showed high profile bands from the late 60s and early 70s that played at local venues. There was a huge rock festival hosting Jimi Hendrix and Cream in 1968 I believe, and I’m fairly certain my Dad came to Lincoln for one of those gigs back then. I chatted with a musician that was in one of the bands featured in the montage, she hadn’t been to Lincoln since.
Considering that I’m attempting to bring a contemporary high profile band to Lincoln for the next Digital Arts Festival, I can see how my ambition will blow away all of those old cobwebs, how these small pieces lead up to the kind of collaborative project I hope will happen in 2013.
On Saturday, Barry set up Ilana Reins’ “We Are Cylons” video http://frequency.org.uk/format/artists/ilana-rein which I could relate to with her use of fans of Battlestar Galactica, the themes seemed to match my own work in some ways, especially the notion that sci-fi is used to question and share philosophical ideas.
Luke Jerram’s beautifully crafted glass sculptures of viruses would’ve been better suited to being exhibited in a hospital setting, but gave visitors to the Usher Gallery a close up view of microbiology.
http://frequency.org.uk/format/artists/luke-jerram
Rosaline-de-thelin’s fibre optical light pieces in St. Swithin’s church were reminiscent of Bill Viola’s Ocean Without A Shore at Venice Biennale 2007
http://frequency.org.uk/format/artists/rosaline-de…
Alex Posada’s The Particle located within Roman ruins was an encounter with some kind of Nikola Tesla creation that caused the stone ruins to appear to move around it. Reminiscent of The Philadelphia Experiment.
I also went to see Metro Boulot-Dodo’s The Four Seasons. Located at The Collection and The Drill Hall.
In The Collection, “Spring” invited us into a child’s garden, an installation enclosed by fence panelling, entering through a shed, and including a playhouse, toys, a pet cemetary, interactive beehives in which you were invited to put your head into and listen to the bees. Birdhouses shaped like buildings each represented aspects of the girl’s world – one was home, one was school, and there were buttons to press and headphones to listen to conversations between “Polly” and people in her life.
A secret garden shared with us Polly’s secrets, fears, hopes and dreams and then we enter “Summer”, depicting beach scenes via photographic pixellated prints evoking memories of a day at the beach where a little girl goes missing. There’s an interactive Fortune Teller’s booth, a signpost showing roadsigns with direction for life and a piano with music stands floating away into the sea.
A double bed with a sculpture of red balls formed from the centre following a narrative of the lost girl chasing a red ball, summer representing transition to adulthood, lost childhood, a couple enjoying a date at the seaside, romance. Reminiscent of The Time Traveler’s Wife.
At The Drill Hall “Autumn”
The bed reappears with a tree replacing the balls – family. Old furniture, an old TV set with white noise, a piano, a gramophone, a dressing table with a frosted, dusty mirror and a light projected onto, but no image appears.
“Winter” A hexagonal labyrinth entered into via a hospital waiting room. There’s a hospital bed and the scenario narrated through headphones, like an old radio narrative, of an old woman found in the snow. A doctor and nurse are heard monitoring her and trying to find out who she is / whether she has relatives.
Passing through each space within the labyrinth shows scenes from the old woman’s life – a Christmas scene from a house with a table laid for two, a Christmas tree with foil balls replacing decorations, a piano.
She has lost her husband and has been searching for him all her life, It’s their story. He’s the piano player. Snow globes with paper cities in, but the snow is outside of them. Then a music room before passing through another room as the first hospital scene, but where the old woman has now died. (Perspex) ice blocks contain objects/memories from her life. The hospital bed has collected flowers from a mysterious visitor and a letter addressed to “Polly”. Finally at the end of her life, maybe her lost husband was found once more.
The Four Seasons is a journey through life, time and memory, loss; Polly says we’re always losing things, it isn’t just a sign of old age, but maybe she never really lost her husband after all. The story of one character theatrically recreated as an interactive narrative.
Philip Jeck @ Spire, Lincoln Cathedral
