Narrative Script

Content

I do not want a museum style guided walk.

There will be some site specific facts from the narrator which needs to correlate with the walk.

There will be the sound of walking and ambient sound. 
I have binaurally recorded 'digging'
'horses and carriage' and 'bell tolling' was downloaded from a sound archive.

Also I want to introduce music, poetry and 'ideas'.

Music

'The Lamb' by John Tavener 1995: a haunting piece of modern sacred choral music using words by the poet William Blake.

'The Dead March' (from Saul) by G F Handel 1738: a bit of a potboiler but a great finale and if this was interspersed with metro/train sounds it could work.  

Joseph Chamberlain

Radical Reformer

Joseph Chamberlain M.P. non conformist and radical, is arguably the most famous  person buried in Key Hill.
He was responsible for huge changes including vast slum clearance schemes in Birmingham, which in a few short years  became known as the best run city in the world.
As a keen advocate of municipalisation, he purchased  the water companies and the gas companies for Birmingham making great improvements to the availability and quality of both utilities and ultimately reaping great profits for the city.


He expressed a wish for a simple burial despite the wishes of parliament for a state funeral. His name is merely added to the bottom of the tombstone on the family grave.

Joseph Chamberlain

The arrival of the Hearse at the main gate for Chamberlain's Funeral

The Burial

Last Moments

Grave diggers finish the burial

The gravestone

The Chamberlain Memorial in Victoria Square

Birmingham University Clocktower 'Old Joe'

Old Photographs of Key Hill Cemetery

I have found many old photographs which document how Key Hill cemetery used to look. I will try to identify the positions and take photographs in the same position.

I think this is by the main gate

The Memorial Chapel

Main Gates with flowerbeds.

 Celtic cross memorial

Unknown Burial

Relaxing in the Cemetery 'garden'

Looking towards the memorial chapel from the catacombs. 
Avenue of young trees.

Looking towards the memorial chapel,
 possibly from the metro/ rail side of the cemetery

Notice the flowers on the left

View of Chapel.Possibly from the metro side again?

Heterotopia

Michael Foucault

Philosopher Michael Foucault discusses the concept of Heterotopia "other spaces"  with particular reference to cemeteries.
Cemeteries do have an atmosphere of another place, one is aware of the city below ground the 'city of the dead'. No matter how rational we are few of us would choose to spend a night in a cemetery.


http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html


'As an example I shall take the strange heterotopia of the cemetery. The cemetery is certainly a place unlike ordinary cultural spaces. It is a space that is however connected with all the sites of the city, state or society or village, etc., since each individual, each family has relatives in the cemetery.............

Atemporality

Amrit Srecko Sorli

I find the Theory of Atemporality fascinating, and very relevent to my current artistic practice.In essence this states that time is not a universal linear event and is merely a convenient convention through which we organise our lives. Light and sound waves have no beginning or end raising the intriguing possibility that what we see and hear is a continuum.


Quote from 'The Theory of Atemporality' a paper by Amrit Srecko Sorli .www.chronos.msu.ru/EREPORTS/sarli_the_theory.pdfSimilar

"The Theory of Atemporality is based on elementary perception: time cannot be observed in the universe. With clocks one measures duration, speed and numerical order of events that run into atemporal universe. Man is not existing in time, time exists in man. There is no past and future into the universe, both exist only in the human mind. Time is an observer effect. Time exists only when one measures it. Universe is an atemporal phenomenon"

Bruce Sterling lecturing on Atemporality

http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2010/02/atemporality-for-the-creative-artist/


All of these pieces are, to a greater or lesser extent, oriented around a singular idea: atemporality – that the intermeshing and interweaving of the physical and digital causes us not only to experience both of those categories differently, but to perceive time itself differently; that for most of us, time is no longer a linear experience (assuming it ever was). Technology changes our remembrance of the past, our experience of the present, and our imagination of the future by blurring the lines between the three categories, and introducing different forms of understanding and meaning-making to all three – We remember the future, imagine the present, and experience the past. The phenomenon of “ruin porn” is uniquely suited to call attention to our increasingly atemporal existence, and to outline some of the specific ways in which it manifests itself.

Ruin Porn and Atemporality

A term used to describe an interest in ruined and abandoned places, there is a link between  these places and the concept of atemporality 
http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2012/01/12/the-atemporality-of-ruin-porn-part-i-the-carcass/


We can and should understand abandoned places as atemporal spaces in and of themselves – they are physical spaces in which the experience of linear time breaks down. Through the experience of the space, explorers and photographers (and blends of the two) break out of a conventional experience of the present and into a space where the artifacts of history feel at once fresh and new, and ancient and decayed. Imagination is key to the atemporal experience of these places: One can exist in an abandoned, ruined space and see shards of a dead past on which one can construct a live imagining – who were the people who lived and worked here? What were their lives like? What were their stories? What happened to them? What happened to them in these spaces
http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2012/01/20/the-atemporality-of-%E2%80%9Cruin-porn%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-part-ii-the-ghost/

Joseph Gillott Penmaker

 The Pen Museum

Joseph Gillott was known as a good employer by the standards of the day. Nevertheless he became extremely rich and was not known for his philanthropy. He owned some of JMW Turner's early works amongst other things and left a valuable estate on his death.

Joseph Gillott was instrumental in automating pen nib manufacturing.

Rules and conditions in Gillott's factory

A typical pen nib manufacturing scene

Display case of Gillott's pens

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1513965&pageno=2
Page 89 for a chapter on Joseph Gillott

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~thegrove/gillott.html

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/browse/view.aspx?dbid=6892&iid=6892-7-5-111-1270&rc=1062,286,1227,332;808,2216,980,2248;1007,2213,1157,2244&pid=10882&ssrc=&fn=joseph&ln=gillott&st=g

Alfred Bird

I was interested in Alfred Bird because of the link with the Custard factory. Apparently he was an industrial chemist and entrepreneur. He created eggless custard powder because of his wife's egg allergy. He has a very simple flat family gravestone.

Maps of the Area

Links to various maps:
http://www.bham.de/
follow the LHS links for the maps

http://www.old-maps.co.uk/maps.html
http://maps.google.co.uk/

http://www.birmingham-jewelry-quarter.net/en_map.php

The Jewelry quarter  in 1828

This map shows the limit of the growth of Birmingham at this time, the jewelry quarter barely encroached on the countryside.

Key Hill Cemetery in 1903   O.S. map

This shows the site of the original chapel and the sand pit quarry. There is already a railway running through the area.

Key Hill Cemetery Plot layout

A-Z Road map

This is a map from the 1960's and shows Key Hill cemetery subsumed into the urban sprawl which is Birmingham

OS Map from 1962 Key Hill called Hockley cemetery

Website Links to the Jewelry Quarter and the Cemeteries

Some of my Research Links

http://www.jqrg.org/index.html
http://www.jquarter.org.uk/webdisk/index.htm

The research group for the cemeteries.

http://www.birminghamuk.com/wikipedia/Birds_Custard.htm
http://www.birhttp//www.jewelleryquarter.net/about/sub-page/cemeteries-of-the-jewellery-quarter/minghamheritage.org.uk/keyhill.html
http://www.fkwc.org/

The friends of Key Hill and Warstone Lane cemeteries have taken up the cause of rescuing the cemeteries from the vandalism and neglect which has taken place since closure to new burials in the mid 20th C.



http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/cs/Satellite?c=Page&childpagename=Bereavement%2FPageLayout&cid=1223092550037&pagename=BCC%2FCommon%2FWrapper%2FWrapper
http://penroom.co.uk/default.aspx

The cemetery archives at the Pen museum



http://www.bham.de/
http://british-history.ac.uk/place.aspx?region=5
http://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/forum.php

 General history sites for  Birmingham.

Online Journal of Embodiment and Technology

Justine Shih Pearson

A sound artist  creates an audio walk based on 'Her Long Black Hair' by Janet Cardiff.
There are excerpts from Janet Cardiff's walk and then excerpts from the artist's attempts to analyse and recreate it.


Ruminations While (Audio)Walking: Time, Place, and the Body

by Justine Shih Pearson

http://www.extensionsjournal.org/the-journal/5/ruminations-while-audiowalking-time-place-and-the-body-0

Binaural recording and problems with Technology

Technical equipment

I made a 'head' out of soft plastic padding. This gives a much clearer binaural effect.

Binaural 'head' connected to Zoom recorder

Side aspect showing the Omni directional Microphone 
shielded from wind noise

Here are some websites of artists who use binaural recording.

http://www.dallassimpson.com/

Dallas Simpson is generally regarded as a leading exponent of Binaural recording in Britain. He specialises in subtle environmental soundscapes

http://openfile.org.uk/stream/tag/binaural-recording

This is a binaural recording of a walk conducted by artist Matt Westbrook and Dallas Simpson for Grand Union in Birmingham.

http://openfile.org.uk/site-non-site/

More about the rationale for the Grand Union walk.

Key Hill Cemetery walk 2

Problems with Technology

Having borrowed the 'Edirol' I found it could not do binaural recording. Therefore I bought a 'Zoom' recorder.

The walk

• First binaural recording
• Disappointing! I had attached the external microphones to my earphones to simulate my own hearing, but there was insufficient binaural effect, also wind noise.
• However I identified some of the graves of interest notably Joseph Chamberlain and Goerge Dawson. 

I will visit the Pen Museum for more information as they hold the archives for the cemetery.

Catacombs and Factories on Key Hill

The site of Joseph Chamberlain's Grave

The Chamberlain Family Grave.

George Dawson's Obelisk

Inscription on base of George Dawson's Obelisk

Looking down from Key Hill drive

Looking down from Key Hill drive

Key Hill Cemetery Photographs from Walk 1

Walk 1

I am going to restrict the walk to Key Hill Cemetery because there is sufficient material.

Map and information at Cemetery entrance

Main gates on Iknield Street

Main path

Original site of Chapel

General view

Looking towards the Catacombs



Looking towards the Catacombs

Plaque of names in Common Graves

Catacomb

Catacomb niche

General view of Catacombs

'Beheaded' memorial

Factories on Key Hill above cemetery

Side view of Catacombs

Path towards Key Hill entrance

Looking back to site of Chapel