Co-commission of an immersive performance installation by Turner Prize winners, Assemble.
Assemble: Logbook
Commissioning Partners: Woodland Trust, Lincoln Cathedral and Threshold Studios
A performance of material process. Reflecting on the beauty and skill of labour working with raw materials.
Assemble used the occasion of the anniversary of the Charter of the forest to reflect on the woodlands role as a productive resource. A process-led installation of hewing logs celebrated the beauty and craft required to use raw timber. The exploration of the acoustic and dramatic qualities of material processing reflected on the value of labour and our relationship to the material world around us – presented in Lincoln Cathedral’s Chapter House, a building that is itself formed by an extraordinary but normally invisible timber structure.
As the first legal document to protect common rights to economic use of the woodlands, the Charter of the Forest, was a formative moment in defining our cultural relationship to the landscape around us.
Assemble is interested in the reciprocal relationships between material, economy, culture and place. Over the course of Frequency Festival 2017, this installation saw a mass of raw material – 50 Lincolnshire logs – hewn and processed into square sections that could be used by the Cathedral’s works department in structural maintenance of the roof. A meditation on the time, sound and drama of labour, Logbook drew a direct and productive link between contemporary local woodlands and the architecture of the chapter house – opening up public access to the extraordinary, but normally invisible timber structural frame in the roof.
About Assemble
Assemble is a multi-disciplinary collective working across architecture, design and art interested in the reciprocal relationships between material, economy, culture and place.
Photo Credit: Electric Egg 2017
