performance – Ruth Ewan

There’s a Better Life and You Think About It Don’t You?

Benjamin Fallon — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 14:51:38 +0000

Live event, 2019

Featuring Tayo Aluko, Brooklyn Women’s Chorus, the New York City Labor Chorus, the Sing in Solidarity Chorus, and Lynn Marie Smith “aka” The Motown Diva, hosted by Morgan Bassichis

There’s a better life and you think about it, don’t you? was an evening of political song featuring vocal and choral performances to coincide with Ruth Ewan’s High Line commission Silent Agitator. Installed on the High Line at 24th Street, Ewan’s commission was a giant clock based on an illustration originally produced for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) labour union by the North American writer and labour activist Ralph Chaplin that reads “What time is it? Time to organize!”

Chaplin composed many of the galvanising songs for the labor movement of the early 20th century, including the famous “Solidarity Forever” for the Paint Creek–Cabin Creek coal miner strike of 1912 in Kanawha County, West Virginia. Celebration and song have always played key roles in the efforts of the Industrial Workers of the World, which has come to be known as the “singing union.”

Building on this history, the performers in There’s a better life and you think about it, don’t you? use music to relieve the fatigue of organising and celebrate labor rights victories, activists, and historical movements. For this event, Tayo Aluko performed excerpts from his one-person show, Call Mr. Robeson, about the life and times of the singer and activist Paul Robeson; the Sing in Solidarity Chorus sung a selection of their original choral arrangements for lyrics from the IWW’s Little Red Songbook; Lynn Marie Smith brought her energetic covers of pop songs recast with labor organising lyrics; NYC Labor Chorus performed selections from their repertoire developed over the last 28 years of singing together; and Brooklyn Women’s Chorus sung works including “We Were There” that speak to the central role of women in labor organising. Morgan Bassichis hosted the evening. Additionally, there was silk-screening of IWW graphics available on-site, provided by Shoestring Press.

Borrowing its title from Dolly Parton’s hit “9 to 5,” There’s a better life and you think about it, don’t you? recognises the uplifting significance of song in the workplace and in the exhausting job of labour organising. This evening of fun, lively performances invited musicians and organisers from across the city—and the world—to come together in affirmation that the time we have together need not be all work and no play.

A short video of the event can be viewed here.

Sympathetic Magick

Emma Ewan — Fri, 26 Oct 2018 14:19:10 +0000

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

Emma Ewan — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 02:17:51 +0000

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

The Glasgow Schools

Emma Ewan — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 02:17:17 +0000

Installation, documentary and live events, 2012

The Glasgow Schools mapped the city’s Proletarian, Socialist Sunday and Socialist Fellowship Schools, part of a network of alternative educational organisations that once spread across the UK, of which Glasgow was a particular centre.

The schools explored a spectrum of left-wing ideologies with children and young adults, from the Marxist revolutionary zeal of Tom Anderson’s Proletarian Schools (1918 – c1939) to the Christian leaning ethics of the early Socialist Sunday Schools (1896 – 1965), which later evolved into the Socialist Fellowship (1965 – 1980).

Research Image

The exhibition pieced together a history of the schools for the first time, bringing together archive material from a number of public and private collections. The installation was accompanied by a Sunday events programme of talks, discussion, song, performance and magic. Alongside this a series of poster works were created, an artist’s pamphlet, and a new documentary, made using archival footage and first hand accounts of the movements, exploring the affect they had on the lives of those involved.

The project’s chosen exhibition space, Scotland Street School Museum, purposefully brings this influential and hidden movement into the wider context of Glasgow’s educational history.

The project was curated by Kitty Anderson and Siobhan Carroll in association with The Common Guild as part of Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art. It was accompanied by an artist book.