A Feminist Chorus: ‘Hen Run’ sound work at RIBA, London
Installed as part of Mackintosh Architecture, 18 February-23 May 2015.
Present day students speak the names and details of Glasgow School of Art’s first generations of women students. Composed from the student registers and yearbooks of the 1890s and early 1900s, their chorus forms a sound installation which echoed through the ‘Hen Run’: the corridor high up in the Rennie Mackintosh building, on the occasion of the Glasgow International Festival 2014. Their voices create a contemporary haunting of the space where their predecessors had once walked, re-registering forgotten names of a century ago in the cadences of today.
Bringing forth Glasgow’s Feminist history in collective voice, the ‘Hen Run’ sound piece also forms part of the score of A Feminist Chorus, and was spoken alongside texts chosen from the shelves of the Glasgow Women’s Library by its users and from the minutes and press cuttings of the Glasgow Society of Lady Artists. The score was performed live at the Glasgow Women’s Library April 2014. It is available as a spoken score and a film, through bookshops and library distribution, for collective choruses of the future to speak again.
With thanks to the participants:Elaine Ang, Hershey Patel, Olivia Sainsot-Reynolds, Zivile Siutilaite, Rebecca Snow, Morven Stewart, Tess Vaughan, Nattaporn Vuttipetch
