Only my second visit to the intriguing town of Barrow-in-Furness with its paradoxical industrial and military manufacturing on the edge of the beautiful Lake District. Surrounded by wonderful coastline the town is a mix of terraced housing that was predominantly built before 1919. It has a provincial shopping centre and impressive town hall ( with bell ). It has an out of town retail park complete with supermarkets and fast food restaurants. But it is BAE systems that dominate the skyline with its large factories and monolithic submarine hangar.
Talking to people there you quickly realise how the factory is a part of everyones lives. It determines peoples working cycles and the rhythm of the town. When new submarines emerge from its metal cocoon an alarm sounds across the town, signalling another cycle of creation. Most of the town are employed there in one form or another, as the whole town hangs on this industry of defence. But what is interesting is that this houses a workforce, highly skilled in crafting not only metal but also fabrication, plastics and other materials, alongside world class engineering and computer technology. Against this backdrop the role of the of the sole artist, artisan as experimentalist or innovator is fundamentally challenged. It is people working together using their talents to build something unimaginably complicated that no one person can fully comprehend. It compels a subtlety of thought to appreciate these acts of creation as great human achievements, in the face of considerable ethical considerations.
More personally, it put me in mind of my late father who was an aircraft fitter for British Aerospace working on Concorde in Bristol. Work would naturally mix with home, as camper vans would be fitted out with Boeing 747 carpet remnants and industrial grade paint. I wonder how much the lives of the workers at BAE Systems have little bits of debris from the factory? Or skills honed on the shop floor transformed into their customised motorbikes and cars.
The recordings I made on this trip start to map the obvious, the cars, traffic, the water, but the very familiarity of these sounds is what binds us. The banal is so because it is part of English culture, to those from elsewhere this may seem exotic. It is possibly a challenge for us to find the exotic in these sounds, new resonances with who and where we are. Or perhaps, simply to listen again to the everyday and see what emerges.
For those participating on the workshop these sounds are free to download. If you have time have a listen and take some notes on what you hear, how you hear them and what they trigger for you. I look forward to sharing your experiences when we meet.
Talking to people there you quickly realise how the factory is a part of everyones lives. It determines peoples working cycles and the rhythm of the town. When new submarines emerge from its metal cocoon an alarm sounds across the town, signalling another cycle of creation. Most of the town are employed there in one form or another, as the whole town hangs on this industry of defence. But what is interesting is that this houses a workforce, highly skilled in crafting not only metal but also fabrication, plastics and other materials, alongside world class engineering and computer technology. Against this backdrop the role of the of the sole artist, artisan as experimentalist or innovator is fundamentally challenged. It is people working together using their talents to build something unimaginably complicated that no one person can fully comprehend. It compels a subtlety of thought to appreciate these acts of creation as great human achievements, in the face of considerable ethical considerations.
More personally, it put me in mind of my late father who was an aircraft fitter for British Aerospace working on Concorde in Bristol. Work would naturally mix with home, as camper vans would be fitted out with Boeing 747 carpet remnants and industrial grade paint. I wonder how much the lives of the workers at BAE Systems have little bits of debris from the factory? Or skills honed on the shop floor transformed into their customised motorbikes and cars.
The recordings I made on this trip start to map the obvious, the cars, traffic, the water, but the very familiarity of these sounds is what binds us. The banal is so because it is part of English culture, to those from elsewhere this may seem exotic. It is possibly a challenge for us to find the exotic in these sounds, new resonances with who and where we are. Or perhaps, simply to listen again to the everyday and see what emerges.
For those participating on the workshop these sounds are free to download. If you have time have a listen and take some notes on what you hear, how you hear them and what they trigger for you. I look forward to sharing your experiences when we meet.
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