RAINHAM, ESSEX, UK, 1987. Bow Gamelan Ensemble (Paul Burwell, Anne Bean and Richard Wilson) were invited to make a piece specifically for television by 'Alter Image' (Channel 4). They chose to work with the concrete barges near Rainham where they had previously explored sound on several of their many river trips into the estuary, recognising the huge differences in sound from low to high tide. They were filmed for over ten hours as the tide ebbed and flowed capturing the massive energy of this amount of incoming water and the ways one could harness this power to shift and shape sound. As the huge resonant chambers of the barges filled up, they deepened the sounds of the metal reinforcing bars sticking out as they were played with sticks and beaters. Passing vessels obliged by blasting their horns, adding to the Bow Gamelan’s own array of foghorns, sirens and hooters.
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Resisting the binary essentialism of contemporary second-wave feminism, Bean's work points to a more complex celebration of being. Here, she draws on the ecstatic yet troubling inter relationship of a small beetle and its ant hosts, where the beetles secrete a substance that is greedily licked up by the ants to suppress their usual aggression, meaning they can be torn apart by the beetle whilst still submitting themselves to it.
Anne Bean, John McKeon, Stuart Brisley, Rita Donagh, Jamie Reid and Jimmy Boyle are interviewed about their artistic practice and the legacy of Surrealism on their work.
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