In total, 46 pages of text were produced by typewriter, including 1921 resolutions beginning with “I will not”.
Every 15 minutes throughout the 24hrs, a photograph was taken of the workspace.
Tag: installation
Silent Cacophony
Silent Cacophony was an installation created in collaboration with Holborn office workers as part of a London-wide initiative exploring alternative ways of commemorating Remembrance Day.
“By experiencing your complex and profound works we have ended up with a shared language to deal with the unsayable.” – Maurice Biriotti, CEO SHM Productions.
- Footsteps installed on the pavement in Bedford Row mirrored the journey taken by a silent Zeppelin airship and its crew on the night of 8th September 1915, when over 40 bombs were dropped on the Bloomsbury area, killing 26 people.
- The journey was replicated on a scale of 1:125 and reoriented by 90 degrees. Each footstep corresponded to one of the bombs dropped, and the location it was dropped in.
- Some of the steps were marked with responses, questions and thoughts from local workers to the map and story of this raid.
Audiences were invited to take this journey in silence.
Dates: 11 Nov. 2013, Holborn, London.
This installation was part of a London-wide project of the same name by Platform-7 supported by Arts Council England, The SHM Foundation, and Queen Mary, University of London.
related projects
The International Archive of Things Left Unsaid
Silent Cacophony
Actions from the Afterlife
INK
“it was a great privilege to be involved” – Nicola Jennings, caricaturist with The Guardian
INK was an eclectic collection of 120 museum artefacts, artworks, texts, films and other items all relating to the history and substance of ink. It drew extensively from the remarkable teaching collections, personal archives and the work of staff at University College London (UCL), and contemporary artworks sat alongside priceless museum artefacts and everyday objects.
Every day a ‘live respondent’ inhabited the space and created an exhibit to add to the collection. These included political cartoonists Nicola Jennings and Martin Rowson, renowned tattooist Lal Hardy, artist and poet Ansuman Biswas, and calligrapher Paul Antonio.
related projects
Poems made from words found in the bin
BONE
The International Archive of Things Left Unsaid
BONE
“a riot of postmodern museum methodology” – John O’Connell, The Times.
“time and space open up” – Ruth Richardson, The Lancet
BONE at the Florence Nightingale Museum was created to explore a rich and vital material from an inter-disciplinary perspective. It was designed to present its contents evenly and accessibly with no one object – be it museum object, artwork, every day item or scientific imagery – prized above another.
Deliberately installed without labels, the exhibition design by Mobile Studio architects and field guide by MOTHandRUST were constructed to provide information as a departure point for the curious rather than as definitive answers, and to encourage audiences to make their own connections and relationships between objects.
A number of “live respondents” who work with bone were in residence throughout the exhibition, adding to the exhibition. They included sculptor George Nuku, taxidermist Amanda’s Autopsies, and artist Sue Palmer.
+ listen to a podcast interview with the curators
related projects
INK
The International Archive of Things Left Unsaid
Silent Cacophony
All About Sam
All About Sam considers what it is that we want to know when we say we want to get to know someone.
“By experiencing your complex and profound works we have ended up with a shared
language to deal with the unsayable.” – Maurice Biriotti, CEO SHM Productions.
All About Sam was an installation and game designed for and physically located in an office in Holborn. It was created in partnership with senior management with the following aims:
- to encourage curiosity among staff
- to interrogate the kinds of knowledge and insight required in their work
- to give a sense of occasion to the arrival of a new set of companies as clients
A performative documentation of the work was simultaneously broadcast on Twitter with the following aims:
- to experiment with remote access for participatory works with a limited audience capacity
- to explore interaction between live and online audience groups
Dates: 12-16 May 2014 in Holborn, London and on Twitter.
related projects
Can I Help You?
Hutong Watch
The Loveliness Principle
The International Archive of Things Left Unsaid
The International Archive of Things Left Unsaid collects unspoken words of love and pain from members of the public, and arranges for them to be listened to.
“creates a different kind of approach to most confessional material emphasising empathy rather than sensationalism” – Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
The International Archive of Things Left Unsaid is an evolving collection of anonymous testimonies donated by members of the public responding to the question “think of a time when you wanted to say something to someone, but didn’t”.
It is a treasure trove of real life intimate testimonies, delivered with special care to honour the emotions expressed and preserve the anonymity of the people involved.
“a dichotomy of personal encounter and observational distance […] beautifully achieved” Caroline Darke, Artvehicle
“a simplicity and focus of care that is absolutely astounding” – Griffin Gilligan, blogger
“small moments of defiance that are also celebrations” – Jane Frances Dunlop, Exeunt Magazine
The Archive was established in 2006 in response to a provocation by curator Ali MacGilp to create a performance for an exhibition entitled ‘There’s Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You’, at Space Station Sixty-Five in London. This one-to-one performance grew and now exists in multiple forms:
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- an installation and one-to-one performance that has toured nationally and internationally
- a web-based work at www.unsaidarchive.com (The Space’s inaugural commission for a web-based performance)
- an interactive textile
This project is regularly remade for different contexts including at HMP Feltham Young Offender’s Institute, East Bergholt High School, for Haringey Advisory Group on Alcohol, and at various galleries including W139 in Amsterdam, Barbican Gallery, ALMA Enterprises, Propeller Island, Space Station Sixty-Five, Battersea Arts Centre, Pulse Ipswich, SLAP Yorkshire.
+ more about the one-to-one performance
Everything You Ever Wanted to Say But Didn’t – Part 1 is a one-to-one performance lasting up to 10mins and takes the form of a verbatim delivery of some of the testimonies from The International Archive of Things Left Unsaid.
Audience members are told about the Archive and given an allocated ticket number which determines which testimony they will receive.
This performance is usually presented with a site-responsive installation to enable participants to contribute their own testimony to the archive.
+ more about www.unsaidarchive.com
The online version of the work was commissioned by Battersea Arts Centre and The Space CIC in 2015.
Each testimony is performed verbatim, and includes binaural beat technology to induce calming brainwaves in the listener. Visitors may browse the Public Index, choose a testimony to listen to, and are then invited to contribute their own. A text-only version is available for those who do not use headphones, and anonymity is guaranteed.
Created by Rhiannon Armstrong
Designed by MOTHandRUST
Construct by Halo and Rob Grundel
+ more about the work in non-arts settings
The Archive has been presented in a number of community contexts as a catalyst piece to stimulate communication and discussion, in particular amongst teenagers and at risk young people; at HMP Feltham Young Offenders Institute, in schools including Crossways Sixth form and East Bergholt High School, and for Haringey Advisory Group on Alcohol who commissioned a new version Called VIP Room.
In 2016 the online work toured as an interactive textile to shopping centres, cafes and park benches in towns across England.
The Archive has also been presented in workplaces including at SHM Productions in London:
“It created conversations. It created conversations about conversations. It created conversations about things we leave unsaid with our clients. It created conversations about regret.
It created a number of conversations which if we had tried to define them beforehand, we would not have had that result. We got a fantastic result that we couldn’t have predicted.”
Maurice Biriotti, CEO SHM Productions.
+ more about the textile work
In 2016 Rhiannon created a quilt as a physical interface with the web piece, with help from Significant Seams, a Walthamstow-based CIC working with craft as a means of combatting social isolation.
The quilt is made from everyday fabrics such as curtains, jeans, and suit material, and hand embroidered with extracts from the testimonies in the Archive.
In autumn 2016 the quilt toured as part of the Collaborative Touring Network, as a way of bringing unsaidarchive.com to a diverse range of audiences across the UK. Among other places it was installed in a leisure centre in Darlington, an arts centre in Wigan, a cafe in Gillingham, a shopping centre in Gloucester, and a supermarket in Peterborough.
performance at SLAP in York
GIF created for the launch of web work
performance at W139, Amsterdam
quilt on tour in Darlington
performance and installation at W139, Amsterdam
quilt on show at Battersea Arts Centre
performance at Shunt Vaults, London
performance at Shunt Vaults, London