WORDS FOR THE LIVING, 2021
Live Performance | Beth Derbyshire | WERK
Words for the Living is a live performance in which an individual speaker, communicates a series of words and phrases through a megaphone in public space. The words are commemorative excerpts by loved ones for so many of the key workers who have tragically passed away from Covid 19. The poignant and celebratory recital of words is a living memorial, describing the qualities of these incredible people who lost their lives whilst saving others and is intended to pay homage to loss, whilst inspiring the living through their bravery. The performance will be filmed and presented in the digital space of Into the Parade.
Into the Parade is an online web encounter and live project that explores how arts organisation and practitioners across the Midlands are engaging civically. The digital ‘Civic Centre’ is both tangible and metaphorical concept to explore the role of cultural practice in a civic context. Into the Parade is a cultural intervention that undertakes projects that have online and real-world anchors points and has been initiated by Beth Derbyshire and developed with students from the MA Arts and Project Management course at Birmingham City University.
BETH DERBYSHIRE
SURRENDER, 2016
Surrender was a light installation for the Shadow Factory, The Longbridge Light Festival, 2016. At the centre of this project is the notion of how we mediate and remember war. The project considers that model making is in a sense a passive form of domestic (largely) re-enactment. To this end this work takes the phenomena of toy model soldiers as a point of departure. The piece is a scaled up (to near life size dimensions) section of a toy soldier model making kit through which searching lights are projected rendering flickering figures of light. The figures, formulated by the surrounding shadows mark both absence and presence. Surrender served as both as a memorial to local soldiers who died in WW11 and a display that hints at the how the human was used on an industrial scale in the World Wars.