Moving Stories has been an interesting journey for us, connecting the threads between the Brontes life in Thornton and early shift to Haworth gave us a focus but little documented fact. We followed the footsteps of the Brontes both literal and literary but also made reference to our own personal journeys.
We used workshops with local children to explore the idea of translocation through the eyes of a child, using costume and role play to create mini dramas within the Bronte Birthplace. Place or event has a special personal significance, invisible to everyone else but you. Sometimes the smallest or strangest things can trigger memories.
We recreated the journey between the sites and recorded with photography and film. This has been processed into 3 projections, overlaid with manipulated stills, one of which was used within our final installation. Siting work within 3 venues simultaneously forced us to try and bind them into a cohesive whole while responding to the individual circumstances and constrictions of each place.
The simplicity of the line became the overpowering symbol in our work and the final installations at the Birthplace, Parsonage and Gallery reflect this. Lines of footprints weaving across the moors, roads leading into distance, the lines on a hand, bloodlines, lines on a page …lines erased or altered by time and experience. Our installation at South Square Gallery signifies the abandoned space, reclaimed by nature, haunted by lines of stitched wire and crow feathers, which wind through the space and glow iridescent against the projected image. Tiny lost objects, wrapped carefully, interrupt the white surfaces. The projection is a chronology of a journey and is accompanied by a soundtrack, written by Japanese composer Hidekazu Wakabayashi.
Place, objects too, particularly clothing, carry real and imagined traces, imprints of those who used or owned them. Without access to actual artifacts we concentrated on the idea of trigger objects, domestic and personal: using wrapping and shrouding objects – with hair, fabrics and papers and documented the process using photography.
Moving Stories: A Burnett + Catt Residency
