remaking history

Remaking History 2011

BeckandBurnett

Remaking History (2011)

Remaking History is a brand new participatory performance project devised and facilitated by artists Antonia Beck and Kim Burnett - BeckandBurnett. This multi-faceted, interdisciplinary arts project explores storytelling and memory through visual arts, performance and creative writing.This project was premiered at the Alone Festival in Worcester in August 2011, and this publication presents the outcomes of the first stage of this project. We were assigned a space at Worcester Arts Workshop, and invited one participant at a time to re-create a key moment in their history. There was no specific cri-teria, all we asked was that the moment was significant and personal to the indi-vidual in some way.We asked participants to re-create their moment as if they were setting a scene or creating a 3D picture, curating the way people, objects or pieces of costume were displayed. We transformed the space we were assigned into a photo-graphy studio / dressing up box (see images below), and offered participants the use of our props and costume to assist them in re-creating their key moment in history. The participants were also able to place themselves in the picture if they so wished. Once the scene was set, we then took a picture of their re-enactment. Some time after the event, we reviewed the images we had taken and presented seven images (in the order they were taken) to a group of creative writers. We asked the writers to respond to the images in any way they wished, but asked them think along the lines of a picture book or storybook. The writers had no other stimuli or information apart from the images. Their responses are below.We hope you enjoy our first storybook. It is our aim that this will become an or-ganically expanding project, where more images, stories and subsequent story-books are created. We aim to be able to create both printed and online story-books for people to enjoy or use as resources if they so wish. We are great be-lievers in cross art form work and collaborative making, and feel honoured to have been able to work with such a dynamic and open-minded group of people on this project. We hope this project will demonstrate how accessible the arts are, and that it is possible to turn that slightly odd idea you had one afternoon into a reality.Artists Antonia Beck and Kim Burnett are emerging, interdisciplinary artists who have come together to form a progressive arts partnership called BeckandBur-nett. We have a shared desire to explore progressive, interdisciplinary arts op-portunities and we are particularly interested in challenging the predetermined concepts surrounding arts and culture and exploring the relationship between the performer and the audience member. We often make work that is based on discourse and interaction with our audience members as we believe that this cre-ates unique and accessible opportunities for communities or individuals to com-municate and express themselves. Previous work has been shown at the Stoke Newington Intimacy Festival in London.

*All images taken by Antonia Beck and Kim Burnetthttp://beckandburnett.wordpress.com/

http://beckandburnett.wordpress.com/

Remaking History

in Worcester, 2011

Remaking History in

Worcester, 2011


By Lauren Pennell

David looked out at the ominous night sky. It was as if Hammond had van-ished in a puff of smoke! He never went anywhere without his favourite boots and lucky white ball. Bad things happened when he didn’t carry his lucky white ball.

Hammond sat up in a daze, on a road he didn’t recognise. His bike was wrecked, well, he assumed it was his bike. He realised three things in the exact same moment; 1. He couldn’t remember anything. 2. Blood was gushing from a cut on his head, and 3. He just had to get out of these clothes.

He pulled back the moth-eaten curtain to reveal what felt, overwhelmingly like the real him, and Hammond swaggered back into the heart of the charity shop. The feel of the silk dress brushing against his skin felt famil-iar, and sexy. But surely, he was supposed to be somewhere?

But before Hammond could get to the counter to pay and get outta there, he was summoned by a beautiful lady. I want to take you dancing she said. We are ladies of the night.

Hammond was unable to resist, he had a hot new outfit after all.

They danced until Hammond’s new old dress was wet under the arms. But the lady of the night kept on dancing. She was in a dance trance. Ham-mond wanted to go home, but he didn’t know exactly where home was anymore.

Eventually, she snapped out of her trance, just when Hammond couldn’t last a second longer. Thankfully, the lady of night had a room nearby. . .

. . . When the lady of the night woke up, Hammond had vanished. His wig - the only thing that proved he had existed at all.

David was running out of time. Hammond’s disappearance was getting scary. At first he cried. Then he got angry. Then he hit the booze. And then, he took to the streets.

Hammond, Thomas Hammond. . . has anyone seen Thomas Hammond. . . he promised me his bone marrow!


By Laura Williams

One day, Michael was looking for his friend and protégé Sheila but she was nowhere to be seen. She had spontaneously combusted. Sheila was known for her ping pong skills and so Michael was at a great loss as she was due to collect her Ping Pong Championship prize money for coming second in the national competition, and share the winnings with him. Mi-chael fainted at the sight of her remaining boots, aviators and lucky Ping Pong ball.

Michael cycled to towards the nearest police station to inform them of her combustion but got hit by someone on a unicycle and woke up from the accident with blood pouring from his head. The accident had caused him to have a brainwave...

He decided to dress up as Sheila in order to collect all her winnings. This was fraud of course, but the prospect of claiming her £500 winners ping pong money was too appealing. He had grand ideas of opening up a school for training people to become ping pong champions.

After dressing up as Sheila and collecting her money, he admired how beautiful he looked and decided to become a woman. That £500 prize money would go towards many wigs and dresses.

Michaela, as she is now known, performed her first cabaret show a year ago to rapturous applause. Life was going well for Michaela and she de-cided to forget about ping pong and concentrate on her burlesque shows.

As reported in yesterday’s news, Michaela, like Sheila, spontaneously combusted. She was performing her favourite track, ‘Dancing Queen’ when she exploded everywhere onto unsuspecting customers. The punters were horrified and spent the rest of the evening crying and pick-ing bits of brains from their clothes.

A ‘Spontaneous Combustion Awareness Day’ is now being planned. The only way for this to come into fruition however, is to of course shout it from the rooftops with a megaphone whilst drunk. All publicity is good publicity after all!


By James Ellard

He turns his back on a life he once knew. He leaves, but he can't really leave...

As the blood poured down his face, he phoned the only person he could think of...

...his Mother...and oh, how he remembered how the blood poured from her neck.

Flashbacks of his lover...

...his seductive, alluring, demanding and manipulative lover.

It wasn't until she found her that I remembered what I had done...

Empty bottles, an image of my history, and I can hear it coming again...I wish I could leave.


By Jacki Evans

He stands by the chain-mail fence, staring through the tiny hole. He'd been pre-paring to leap over, psyching himself up for the climb and the drop, but now she's running back towards him, yelling. He can't quite make out the words yet, but clearly, he's not going to be called on to follow her over the fence. He looks down at her tie, her sunglasses, her not-at-all uniform-compliant DMs - all shed before she climbed the fence and broke into the golf club "because she could" - and wonders if he's meant to do something with them. Then he sees the figure following her, and suddenly it all makes sense.

"RUN!" she's yelling through her laughter. "This old guy's after me!"

He leans down and starts desperately grabbing at her stuff, but his hands aren't working and he can't pick it up. The rain slides off his hands, making him lose his grip, and before he's even managed to get a hold of the tie she's back on his side

of the fence, grabbing her stuff herself. She throws it into the basket on her bike, and yells at him again.

"Come on fatso!" she's laughing. "Get on your bike before that guy finally makes it over the fence and..."

He loses the end of the sentence as she cycles off. He picks his own bike up from where it's leaning, and climbs on, struggling to get his feet to stay on the pedals. He barely makes it round the corner when suddenly, the saddle seems to slide out from under him. And then he's on the ground.

He comes to, and she's standing above him, his phone in her hand. He looks at her blankly, as he becomes aware of a warm, trickling sensation down the side of his face. He puts a hand to it, and without even looking, he knows what his hand has encountered. Blood.

"Yeah, you fell off your bike" she says calmly, handing the phone back to him. "Seem to have hit your head a bit. I rang your house. Your sister's on the way."

He opens his mouth to ask a question, but he can't make his voice work. She looks at him like he's an idiotic child.

"You were only out for 30 seconds. Maybe a minute, at most. Stop panick-ing; your sis said she'd be here any minute. You're just round the corner, aren't you?"

All he can do is nod in reply. It's true, he lives barely 500 metres away. He holds his hand to his head, more out of instinct than anything, hoping that somehow the pressure will staunch the blood flow. Sitting there, on the pavement, he feels like he might die. And then he sees her rounding the corner. His older sister, umbrella up against the rain, bleached-blonde hair glowing around her head. And suddenly, he realises he's alone. His new friend has gone, vanished as soon as she saw the hair. When he phones her the day after he returns from hospital she says she didn't want to get in the way, didn't want to get caught by an authority figure and made to do penance for her crimes. He tries to tell her that his 20 year old sister is hardly an authority figure, but she refuses to listen.

... The next time he sees her, the sense of adventure is still there. She takes him to a nightclub, where her brash charm and her fake ID convince the bouncer that they're perfectly entitled to dance like lunatics and drink as much as they want. She's out on the dancefloor, dancing like mad in a ridiculous wig and begging him to join her, but he's frozen to the spot. He feels as though everyone's eyes are on him, that they're all aware that he shouldn't be there. He's just fifteen. He should not be there.

But she won't put up with his excuses. She tells him he's pathetic, that he should live a little, as she downs shot after shot. Soon enough, she's struggling to stand. Struggling to talk. Struggling to open her eyes, even. But she insists that she is fine; slurring the words as she leans against his arm, "I'm fine, you just need to live a little". But he knows she isn't. She seems a very, very long way away from fine, and he's worried that if he leaves her alone for even a moment she'll pass out, or fall down, or get 'taken advantage of' by some stray man. He'd never really been sure what that phrase meant before, but now it's completely clear to him.He holds out for as long as he can, tells himself that everything will be OK, that she'll sober up, that she'll regain her ability to speak English, and then they'll wander back to her house and his parents will never, ever know what has happened. He reasons that he doesn't need to ring them, that everything will be just fine. But then she falls over on the dance floor,

dislodging her wig, calling attention to them both, and he knows his nerves can't stand it. So while she's in the toilet, he makes the call.

He pretends that nothing's happened, that nobody is coming. He takes her outside for some "fresh air", and she starts trying to bum cigarettes off strangers. He watches her patiently, until he sees his mother's car park up down the road. Even though she's struggling to focus, she sees the car. She sees his Mum coming towards them. And before he can do anything, she's bolted again, running off into the dark. He tries to make chase, but she's too fast, even with that amount of tequila in her. When he returns to the club, all that's left of her is her stupid wig. And his mother is looking at him, with an anger he has never seen before on her face.

Years later, he hears of her again. She's moved into a commune, he hears, and joined "the resistance". He has no idea what she's meant to be "res-isting", but their mutual friend tells him it's capitalism, and consumer cul-ture, and the corruption of their souls. Her life became protests, and after-noon drinking, and living in whatever vacant property they could get into. And sitting in his suit, in the bar after his day in the office, he can't help but feel envious.

BeckandBurnett would like to thank the following...

Participants: Colin George, Jaffa, Tamara Carse, Lucy Rendle, Roger Berry

Writers: Lauren Pennell, Laura Williams, James Ellard and Jacki Evans.

Mark Ellis and other Alone Festival 2011 organisers.

Jacob Salder and Chris Lawson

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