Elders
I strongly have this feeling that our everyday life is at one and the same time banal, platitudinous, over familiar, and yet mysterious, extraordinary. I have even more strongly the feeling that facing death leads one to search for some sense of meaning in ones existence.
Brian Magee
Elders is a light and sounds installation produced over a period of 12 months whilst I was resident artist at Jubilee Arts, in West Bromwich, England in 2002-03.
18 participants from the local area who were all over the age of 60 recorded conversations with me about their own perspective on life and what they felt that they had learnt as they moved into their later years. Motivated by an interest in the mixed and often negative perceptions of older people in western culture, Elders shares elements of wisdom and experience of the 18 participants in the form a dynamic light and sound installation.
The installation comprises of 18 purpose-built speakers that stand in a semi-circle. Attached to the rear of each speaker is blue halogen light that directly responds to the sounds that pass through that particular speaker through the means of a sound to light unit. The installation is an 18 channel system controlled by Logic Audio, allowing extracts of the recorded conversations and other audio move across the installation.
The participants also collaborated in the making of a series of portrait images of key aspects of their lives and the surrounding area in which they live. These have been shown along the project as an audio-visual slide show.
This movie gives a sense of what the installation looks and sounds like, along with some examples of the portrait images that were made.
http://www.vimeo.com/7084391Writer and artist Brendan Jackson and cultural theorist Giles Peaker have written introductions to the project.
Brendan Jackson: Words from the End of Time
Giles Peaker: Between Hearing and Listening
This project was supported by artist Cath Tarbuck who undertook several of the recorded conversations and the portrait photographs. Artist Bobby Bird made a significant contribution to the building of the installation.
