[WORLD SERVICE] , June 2001 - PAGE 3

22. VACUUM ACTIVITY - a heightened narrative. Adam Colyer, Berta Errando, Martin Hampton, Helena Thompson, Maria Garcia, Bibi Jacob, Suze Dietz, Louisa Leiserach, Katheryn Powell, Helga Farhadian, Desiree Scarpelini, Alice Scott. The furthest stretch of the cemetery: we could not get electricity out this far so everything was either battery operated or unelectrical. From the programme - "Caught in the twilight between life and death, a girl watches her mind turn jigsaw. But who is she? Who'se you? And who [on earth] is controlling her memory? Hear the pieces thud into place." top left photo Leonie Purchas

23. Polar bear flashes by Serena Bobowski /Suze Dietz, with David Barlia

24. Brigadeer and his armies by David Richter. Walking along a path in the dark you'd become aware of crunching underfoot. Look and you'd see you were walking on thousands of miniature soldiers. A brigadeer jumps out of the bush and has a go at you for being careless, and then stands them up again, only to then fall over himself and start shouting for help...

25. Feet and candles by Britt Hatzius "a long forgotten path of little gravestones, tucked away in bushed, are lit by candels. Feetcasts rest beside each gravestone. A hidden taperecorder plays the piano, with its broken pianokeys remaining displayed on an open gravestone." above photo Leonie Purchas


26. Telescope by Rotozaza. with Matt Minkin, Jackson Baird and Adem Ilhan. From the end of a straight path you look through a telescope and see a face in a window, high up in the ruined chapel 200 m away. You're able to speak with that face via walkie-talkie while you spy him. He asks you questions. Your answers are fed into Patrick McGinley's mixer and form part of the thunderous sound from within the ruined chapel, though you don't know this as you're too far away to hear. SEE ALSO NUMBER 6 [page 1]

27. Upside down Angel by Britt Hatzius. "a broken, fallen gravestone of a sculpted angel, disappearing in the undergrowth, mirrored so as to be seen by passers by."

28. Heart beats by John Bisset. John Bisset is a guitarist, composer and leader of the London Electric Guitar Orchestra, whose members provided the source material for this installation. The guitarists’ hearts
were wired up with stethoscopes inside which contact microphones had been fixed. Over a period of a week the musicians lay in the cellar of LEGO HQ in Brick Lane alone or in groups; for each session focussing their mind on traumatic or ecstatic incidences from their lives, or experimenting with more physical ‘preparations’ such as alcohol, auto-eroticism, etc. The resultant effects on their hearts were recorded upstairs and are here played through speakers buried in the cemetery. The work was originally commissioned to be part of the ‘Time of our Lives’ exhibition at Manchester’s Whitworth Gallery. The exhibition had the theme of rituals marking the passage from one stage of life to another. The piece uses heartbeats as the fundamental common denominator of the human condition, and invites the audience to become aware of their own pulse and finally their mortality.
Further information: www.2-13.co.uk

29. Filmloops by David Barlia. 2x16 mil films projected onto 2 tombstones.
30. Tree/king by Milo Taylor and Rotozaza.

31. Film of Hackney towerblock demolition by Kristina Kotov projected onto a suspended screen, framed in gold, hanging over the "dump" of the cemetery - bits of trees and tombstones.

32. Audio/visual log by Will Joh. Scenes of a car crash projected inside a tree struck by lightening which fell onto a gravestone. Sound via dictophone, also inside tree.

33. Performance piece by INCARNATE - Jeremy Hardingham, Simon Kane. Viewed from a distance: down a path a man is slowly covered in tiny white balls. A man films him from nearby with a video camera without moving at all ... his feet are buried underground.

34. Birds. Sound by Ollie Bown of Icarus. Ollie created a symphony for 4 cd players to be hung from trees and played at the same time. Sound would circulate a central area of the cemetry, a kind of meeting place. The sounds were a mixture of birdsong and morse code. Around the time many of the people in this cemtery were being buried was when electricity was being discovered... and with it the emergence of long distance communication which relied on wave signals. This discovery was immediately linked to an understanding of bird song and ideas relating to communication with the dead.


35. SLACK AS FUCK
by Charles Munn, with Gaëlle Bona and POLAR BEAR HEAD by John Gold. Masturbating polar bear dummy [with electrically powered hand] surrounded by empty beer cans and message stuck to bush with parcel tape. Munn responded characteristically to the reality of how some locals use the cemetery.

AROUND AND ABOUT...

Black Balloon Sequencer by Ben Foot. As well as being technical manager for WORLD SERVICE Ben Foot managed to produce self-inflating/deflating black balloons squirm out of the soil.

Grave Cleaner by Festerella. Dominique Fester went around hoovering and polishing graves. She occasionally took a break for a cigarette during which she would read a magazine.

Ice Sculptures by Maria-Victoria Goertz and Fred Labbé. Figures made from frozen milk [good for the bones], these sculptures would melt over the course of the event, the drips falling into cans which would then overflow onto the graves. photo leonie purchas

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