Music on Impermanent Land
The Warren, Folkestone, October 2022
Collaboration with the Sacconi Quartet
“Begin, and cease, and then again begin” – Matthew Arnold (Dover Beach)
I was invited to work with the Sacconi Quartet as part of their Autumn Festival, to introduce the musicians to new spaces and audiences in Folkestone. I chose to place the Quartet in the somewhat risky setting of Folkestone Warren, an area of fragile chalk cliffs and crumbling sea defences, where the tide washes over the land in a slow reclamation. A no-man’s land on the very edge of the town, the very edge of England, where the music (by Philip Glass) might evoke a sense of uncertainty and curiosity about land and time.
The audience were invited to stop a while to listen and to feel the fragility and possibilities for transformation held within this liminal landscape by entering a chalk circle with the musicians and holding a piece of deep time in their hands as the music invited an imagining what has been and what may come.
Photography by Igor Emmerich; Film by Peter Blach & VidiAir