bcnsfld – Anna Best Archive

One of the ideas behind this collaborative live project was to confuse the space of rehearsal and performance time in relation to the audience, asking the question of how to represent process. We invited the public to come in when we were improvising and practicing/researching; for instance a trip to Bekonscot when Beaconsfield afficionado Robert Ellis came along.

Bcnsfld was a collaboration between myself, Paul Whitty – a composer, and Marina Collard – a choreographer. We’d all met at PAL (Performing Arts Labs) in Sussex. We worked with Beaconsfield in Vauxhall as part of their Field V series. For this project there were people doing contemporary dance and [rout] were making live audio work by sampling, remixing and playing audio. I was filming elements of what was happening in the gallery space, which were directly replayed on monitors , and was asking people in the audience to take photos. There was one camera in the middle, doing a 360? pan every half an hour. There were alarm clocks going off telling us when to change our actions. During the week there were traditional performances of pieces of music – some by Philip Glass, a presentation about local political issues by Lambeth Walk Partnership, and an interview with David and Naomi. The audience had the flyer with the week’s timetable, so they could see that it was a durational performance.

David Lillington, a writer who attended, said:

“the whole thing is like a garden, a time-based installation with lots of moving parts you walk through.“

Date

2000

Collaboration

Marina Collard
Paul Whitty
Paul Newland

Venue

Beaconsfield, London

Media

Performance
Video
Photographs

Credits

Beaconsfield:

Naomi Siderfin
David Crawforth

[rout]:

Sam Hayden
Paul Newland
Paul Whitty
David Arrowsmith
Philip Howard

prang:

Marina Collard
Niki Gladstone
Megan Flanagan
Nix Dominy
Alex Beach