participation – Ruth Ewan https://www.ruthewan.com Visual Artist, Glasgow Mon, 22 Jan 2024 17:05:11 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.0.8 https://www.ruthewan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/cropped-cropped-NoLandlordsYouFools-Custom-32x32.png participation – Ruth Ewan https://www.ruthewan.com 32 32 Sympathetic Magick https://www.ruthewan.com/sympathetic-magick/ Fri, 26 Oct 2018 14:19:10 +0000 http://www.ruthewan.com/?page_id=1580

Multi-sited performance, 2018

Nearly 50 performances took place in venues across Edinburgh as part of Sympathetic Magick between July and August 2018. Performances were derived for a wide range of city locations including pubs, arts venues, community gardens, a library and a cinema as well as on the street.

Through a workshop process magicians worked with Ruth and magician Ian Saville to bring new layers of social commentary into their routines. The month long series of performances slipped into the bustle of the Edinburgh Festivals. The varied acts which comprise Sympathetic Magick range from Marxist ventriloquism to topical street table magic, close-up card tricks with bespoke card decks to radical feminist performance art.

An artist’s pamphlet to accompany Sympathetic Magick was published designed by James Brooks.

Performers included Ian Saville, Jim Campbell, Marisa Carnesky, James Gavin Hessler, Wilf Keys, Jack Paton, Billy Reid and Mark Walbank.

Sympathetic Magick was commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival 2018.

Jack Paton  performing at The Waverley pub
Wilf Keys performs at The Quad, Edinburgh University
Ian Saville performing at Institut français d’Écosse
Marisa Carnesky performs at Institut français d’Écosse
Photography by Alan Dimmick
]]> The People’s Instruments https://www.ruthewan.com/the-peoples-instruments/ Sun, 12 Feb 2017 02:17:51 +0000 http://ruthewan.byethost18.com/?page_id=438 Solo Exhibition, Charlottenborg, Denmark, 2012

Members of the public were invited to contribute their unwanted or unused instruments for display as part of a unique archive of contemporary musical instruments in one of Charlottenborg’s largest galleries.

The project explored how music can be a progressive social force, but also how alternative histories of music and society might be preserved for the future.

The exhibition was accompanied by performances staged by an alternative orchestra, specially assembled for this project, who preformed using instruments from the archive. The Peat Bog Boorach Band (‘boorach’ means ‘a muddled crowd or collection’ in old Scots) featured a range of amateur and professional musicians from Copenhagen.

After these performances Ruth and the band deposited a selection of the instruments into a lake, in an event echoing prehistoric burial techniques. The site is projected to become a future peat bog and the burial is intended to preserve the instruments for the future.

The exhibition drew on the work of the Swedish music archaeologist Cajsa Lund, an expert on prehistoric instruments from the Scandinavian region – such as the whistles made from bone and wood that have been found preserved in peat bogs.

Part of Ruth’s research for the project was conducted in Christiania, and the exhibition also featured a series of performance events and posters created in collaboration with children from the free town.

Music archeologist Casja Lund
Burial of Instruments, 2012

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