Audio
A Century of Industrial resistance
Audio work Performed by Christopher Eccleston
This oral performance by English actor, Christopher Eccleston, proposes a relentless history of uprisings that begin with the formation of the Labour Party in 1900, and conclude with the anti-capitalist protests of 2000 and the global anxiety of the ‘millennium bug.’ This period also signifies what Holman refers to as a ‘crisis of identity’ in working class communities, as industry declined and whole areas of the country are laid waste.
A concise history of rural resistance 1800 - 1900
Audio work Performed by jane horrocks
Jane Horrocks voice echoes through the former drawing room of the mill owner as she reads a chronology of 19th Century historic resistance, gatherings and cultural explosions that narrate the shift from the rural to the industrial by way of land reform, suffragette actions, the cotton famine before concluding with the formation of the Labour Party in 1900.
'Early Doors' - An Incomplete History of Blackburn Pubs
Audio work Performed by Christine Bottomley
1893, The Times published Blackburn as 'The Beeriest' town in England - these 456 pubs (over 600 if I include 'licensed premises',) were located in a two or three mile radius; many of which are lost, some that still remain- and are read by Actor Christine Bottomley in the third iteration of my performative audio works that present alternative historic chronologies of culture, resistance, gathering and class.
In each of these works, the performer is specific to the piece. Christopeher Eccleston, Jane Horrocks and now Chrissie, were all invited because of their specificity to the piece. Chrissie was on my list of collaborators due to her work in the wonderful 'Early Doors,' where she played barmaid Melanie in a version of the pub I recognise from Lancashire, but a version that is already in terminal decline. This list of pubs that emerge in the mediaeval landscape, but explode through the Georgian, Edwardian, Victorian and second Elizabethan eras - are all but gone from the geography of the town and again symbolise notions of heritage that are idyllic, when the truth was far from that.
Chrissie performs the list of buildings as a 'last orders' poem, a memorial to the spaces rather than the people in them. The heritage is architectural, industrial, folkloric and resides in the language and semiotics of the imagined painted signs of 'Volunteers' Arms, Weavers' Arms, Old Industrious Bee, Quarryman's Arms, Anglo Saxon, Spinners' Arms and Heights of Alma.'