'A place for listening.'

        Art  

     Skegness

Title: 'A place for listening'

Artist:  Malcolm Tait

Artist Located in: East Lincolnshire

Format: Installation / Sculpture/ Sound

Project description: Giant Deckchair, Parasol and bucket and spade with a soundtrack emanating from 1960’s radio of old music and travel extracts. These pieces will form the central construction of the work and it will be surrounded by four life-size satellite copies of the central work. At each of these satellite sites, each co-ordinated differently to give a sense of travel as you move between them, there will be different soundtracks audible only through earphones, each soundtrack will reflect differences experienced in travel, one collected thoughts of local people, a second immigrant thoughts on there experiences in there own language and translated, a third with sounds recorded in a completely different setting, and at the fourth will be a recording facility where visitors can leave there views on the individual work, travel and journeys and the project as a whole.  

Premise: ‘It seems to me that I would always be better of where I am not, and this question of moving is one of those I discuss incessantly with my soul."

                                                                                                                                                                                                   Charles Baudelaire.

As a society we are captivated by new destinations, both spiritual and worldly, immersed in a search for something that will fill a sense of lack we cannot locate in our present temporal and spatial home. In a world incessantly “becoming” something else, we try to locate improved futures in examination historical events, but both the future we desire and the past we examine have taken on the quality of permanence both temporally and spatially, they are places where we imagine we cease ‘becoming’. This sense of permanence, given especially to nostalgic memories we transfer to our ambitions for the future, we avidly want to ‘arrive’, we want to cease ‘becoming’ and ‘become’ content, but the narrative never stops. The increased scale of the central work reflecting a growing desire for a nostalgic past whilst the life-size satellites sites explore the difficulties we experience as a result of all forms of travel, seen from the local and ‘other’ perspectives

Project Engagement: Audience members will have to listen to the soundtrack at each satellite site, travelling between them, and will be encouraged to use the record site to leave there views of the work, project and project themes.

Experience: The artist has completed various public art projects throughout 2007, including  ‘In search of Albion’ forerunner for this event.


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