Sharing the potentiality of voice, even when feeling small. Creating the illusion of safety whilst quite vulnerable. In a group or solo, voice has the power to release and connect. This piece was performed on High St. in Perth, Scotland as part of 3G 2019 at Threshold artspace.
(Dear Milton,) You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
We are at an uneasy moment in social history. On the precipice, looking around and seeing that despite all appearances… something just isn't quite right. But what to do about it?
This installation is a slice of our time, suspended, boundaries fluid, straddling the line of what is and what is possible. One at a time, participants become co-authors of that line between how we are and how we could be, together.
Installation Artifacts
Endlessly curious about connection and disconnection, I stumbled across work by The Trailblazery in Ireland. Their Census of the Heart asked how Ireland was feeling at the time of the national census. The results were interesting, especially on feeling cherished. Women of working age, in cities, reported feeling less cherished in society and families than older women. The difference was even more striking in language groups with Gaelic speakers feeling more cherished than English speakers. So many questions…but the biggest is why?
I also got to wondering, given what’s going on in the UK, how Scotland was feeling. What is like to live in Scotland at this moment in time? Might folks in Scotland be feeling similarly? And of course, why or why not? And so the Heartbeat on Scotland project was born. Which starts with a survey to ask, What does being in Scotland at this moment in time feel like? Conversations over tea, performing being, together, with willing folks will follow, to get more into the whys, to really get a good sense of how respondents define what they are feeling, what it looks like. The product will be an art work that reflects, explores, and interprets what I’ve heard into a visual and interactive experience.
The survey is currently up in English, Scots, and Gàidhlig. It's open to anyone 16+ who lived in Scotland. At the moment there's just under 200 responses in English and only a handful in Scots and Gàidhlig. I hope to have more representation across languages by this summer when I’ll be digging into the data and contacting folks for a chat. So if you live in Scotland, or know someone who does, pass the survey along. That’d be awesome of you. And stay tuned...
