FOREIGN MEMORIES
2021
Short film, Full HD 5'21''
In collaboration with Tim Lytc & Harry Willmott
Filmed at the former Gardiner Haskins building (Soapworks) during the exhibtion Centre of Gravity in November 2020.
Tim Lytc is an independent dancer, choreographer, writer, researcher, director and producer in theatre, film and creative tech. Their practice is centred on the joy of connecting with our bodies, and how physical movement can express, communicate and deepen connections between people. Through their work, they advocate for health, race, gender and Queer issues.
Harry Willmott is a multidisciplinary creative producer and digital artist. He's passionate about just making things happen, pushing the boundaries, experimenting and collaborating with other artists, practitioners, designers and bridging between industries. Harry’s work is broadly on the side of good and strives to decipher human nature, perceptions, relationships with the world, each other and ourselves.
The material was taken in the course of Harry Willmott's experimental photogrammetry capture in various spaces of the historic Bristolian soap factory and former Gardiner Haskins warehouse. 3D artist Harry Willmott recorded mixed media dance creative Tim Lytc's subtle dance performances in an attempt to depict fragmented motion in a photopgrammetric capture. The resulting models show imprints of an individual interpreting the history of these diaphanous spaces.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I'm frequently thematising urbanity and the exploration of cityscapes to create moving image and reflect upon the dualism of city and countryside and their respective heritage.
One of my main strands of work deals with unoccupied or even abandoned buildings in the wake of the UK’s social housing crisis and homelessness.
As a series of ongoing short films & images the collection ‘Foreign Memories’ shows facets of adopted anonymous pasts that are rethought, reconsidered, and translated into a framework of personal history in order to gain a sense of ‘ownership’.
This piece features Bristolian movement artist Tim Lytc's attempts of palpating spaces within the historic Gardiner Haskins building in Bristol which once was a striving 19th century soap factory.
During the performance and shoot, we worked with repetitive factory soundscapes to dive into the rhythmical life of a long-gone era.
By performing looping and repetitive movement, and gestures referring to the cleansing process, we developed a dialog with Charles Kingsley’s poem "The Bad Squire" (1847) which is a treatment of the punishment of poachers in times of famine.
'There's blood on your new foreign shrubs, squire,
There's blood on your pointer's feet;
There's blood on the game you sell, squire,
And there's blood on the game you eat.
'You have sold the labouring-man, squire,
Body and soul to shame,
To pay for your seat in the House, squire,
And to pay for the feed of your game.
'You made him a poacher yourself, squire,
When you'd give neither work nor meat,
And your barley-fed hares robbed the garden
At our starving children's feet;