Audio from the video: 'Becoming Bird, 2022' The collection of sounds began in lockdown, February 2022 with a request to a group of colleagues and friends to leave voicemails or messages with and about the bird song they heard as they walked through parks, fields, or city streets. In exchange I would call them and leave similar messages. These sounds were layered into other local and collected sounds recorded on daily walks.
‘The Dreamer Awakes’ (2022-2023), an audio project that focused on remembering, and the capturing of lost memories, and stories. The Dreamer Awakes, brought traditional storytelling to new audiences to harness and access its healing properties creating new ways of being together after lockdown, while simultaneously exploring new perceptions and processes to reframe the past. Recordings made over a 3 month period June -August 2022.
The Dreamer Awakes was created by Anna Walker, PhD, with musical composition by Ben Park, percussion by JT. The performance was directed by Michael Harvey, and the radio broadcast was produced by Lucinda Guy (2023). Funded by Farnham Maltings + The Rothschild Foundation, with support from Wycombe Arts, and The Public Engagement fund, Plymouth University.
Images by Anna Walker. For more information: www.thedreamerawakes.com
Images by Anna Walker. For more information: www.thedreamerawakes.com
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When we look away, 2021
Somewhere Over The Rainbow (2021). My parents' arrived separately from Ireland to the UK in 1954. They didn't talk much about their arrival here, but constantly referred to Ireland as home. Throughout their lives, they held onto the notion of 'returning' to the motherland. For both of them migration offered an escape from difficult social circumstances as they followed a long tradition of Irish migrant labour. Their expectations like so many others were at odds with the realities of post war Britain, but despite having the choice to do so, they remained here in the UK and died in Birmingham with the request that their ashes be strewn in Snowdonia somewhere along the route they drove from Birmingham to Holyhead to catch the ferry to and from Ireland. They like so many others were trapped in a place of in-betweenness. A liminal place of disconnect, reaffirming the homelessness or lack of 'home' embedded within the breath. Sometimes consciously, most of the time unconscious—passed down from generation to generation.
