Outdoor walks, installation and performance for Sanctuary 2017
Collaboration with Dave Donnelly and Eleanor Thomson
The piece will begin with a guided walk through the whole site, led by the artists, where an imagined history of the site will begin to form like a tapestry. As the walk is carried out, small transmitters placed in key story areas will broadcast a whispered, at times contrary account, adding more texture to the telling. These Chinese whispers, overheard by the participants, may have as much credibility – or more – than the first-hand oral telling. Each talk will be recorded.
As participants finish their walk, they will be encouraged to attend later walks, either as freshly-minted narrators or as passive listeners to a gradually modified tale.
As those further walks occur throughout the day and night, the progressive mutation of tellers and tales will escalate. Moreover, the artists will layer the previously captured audio into the whispers being broadcast on the site. In this way the stories will grow, be continually re-layered, become more indistinct and yet somehow more authoritative in the telling.
A multifaceted oral telling of the imagined history of the site will develop, linking together all the participants on site and of course, the wider network – people brought together through passing on tales, creating folklore, imaging worlds together.