Cries fro the Tower (redux), 2021 – FESCH.TV

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

Cries from the Tower Redux premiered at the National Gallery of Australia in May 2021 as part of the Know My Name program of events. Barbara Campbell took the inherent performative quality of Dubious Letter (the embroidered skirt) and linked it back to the original context of the object within her solo performance Cries from the Tower (1992) that was last performed in 1995 in the same Gallery space.

For the Redux version, Campbell invited three other performers, Hannah Bleby, Clare Grant and Agatha Gothe-Snape to gradually build a multi-vocal, perambulatory reading-out-loud of Dubious Letter’s embroidered text. The text is taken from Letter III of the so-called “Casket Letters”, dubiously attributed to Mary Queen of Scots and used to implicate her in the murder of her second husband, Lord Darnley. Campbell had embroidered Letter III three times—in 16th century French, 16th century Scots and contemporary English—using historiographic documents.

The 2021 Redux version began in similar fashion to the 1992 original: with the opening section of William Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices sung live by a solo soprano voice. On this occasion, Canberra-based soprano, Hannah Bleby sang the Kyrie Eleison from a long vertical aperture high above the performers and audience.

As the high note fell away, Clare Grant began to walk carefully around the embroidered form, focusing her gaze on the lower section, reading the old French translation aloud, moving her eyes steadily upwards and pausing where the text joined with the 16th century Scots translation. At this point, Campbell took the lead in reading, with Grant following behind as an echo. When the text again changed to contemporary English in the top section, Agatha Gothe-Snape led the reading, the other two voices coming after, phasing in and out, overlapping, as all three wound around the work, increasing their walking pace in concert with the sharply narrowing conical form. With the readings concluded, Hannah Bleby sang the final section of Byrd’s Mass, the Agnus Dei. Bleby’s voice remained suspended in air, like the embroidered object itself.