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This blog will document an artistic collaboration between Ben Coode-Adams and Kris Cohen. The final work, to be performed from 28th-30th May at the Banff Centre, will stage simultaneous, real-time re-enactments of three related events: the first ascent of Everest in 1953, the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953, and a commericial climb of Everest in 1996 which ended in disaster.
CONTACT info@bencoodeadams.com Please send us thoughts, photos, questions. Or leave comments using the 'Shout Out' links. We'll post them here or try to use them in the performance.
BIOS Kris Cohen is a research fellow in the INCITE group at the University of Surrey, Dept. of Sociology. Ben Coode-Adams is an artist whose work spans traditional sculpture, video installation, performance and curating. All his work is based on developing innovative means of delivering complex and often esoteric ideas and information, in an engaging and accessible way. Working across disciplines collaboration is a cornerstone of his work. |
Wednesday, May 28, 2003
Mountain Madness team have just stepped into the tracks of Adventure Consultants team. The strings are already a chaos... 11:55pm Banff time. The 1996 climbers are waking up in their tents. The coronation began 25 minutes ago and (in the unnaturally slowed time of our reconstruction, to match the timing of the climbs) have managed a few metres of their procession to "the theatre", where all the action will be. There is a happy crew of volunteers, well-wishers, and curious folk here to see, help, and take part. Anna, Charla from Mountain Culture, and Linda (Charla's friend). Soon we'll have to start discovering what happened in 1996 again. Anna and Linda have already learned so much about the coronation by having to figure out the order of the procession. The power of reconstruction. -kris Here we are on site; it's all good... all systems a GO. The simplicity of the South Col was beyond our imagination.... The team work at base camp is remarkable and loads of fun... we stayed a few extra hours to play with wool, cut out bios, cover th edge of Everest in snow and actually assemble the mountain!! Off to bed, but back for the anointment on Thurs @ 11:30am... be there or be square!! Adios from Banff. -Jade Azzaria-Byrne & Steve Byrne, Banff, AB Good news. We're almost there. I'm about to start calculating the rates at which 1:240 scale mountain climbers and 1:22 scale coronation goers walk their respective to-scale routes. And...camblog is back up, which means...photos soon. -kris Thanks for the comments everyone. We're in the dining hall now. Steve (one of our heavenly volunteers and Jade's husband) and Ben are building the mountain. Jade and Trish and Anna (three more stupendous volunteers) are creating the biographies for the climbers and coronation participants. Lots of people are eating, an everyday activity that seems, somehow, very very far away from our present reality. We just talked to Steve from a local Banff-area newspaper, who was very nice and will probably come back for tomorrow's action. And the theatre people here are making a time-lapse photography film of the building of Everest, which is very exciting (I seem to have lost all of my interesting adjectives and adverbs: i'm all "very"s). Sorry everyone for the multi-blog confusion. Camblog seems to have disappeared from the internet, which completely scuttles our photo-posting capacity for now and is somewhat tragically sad. This is the problem of relying on someone else for your tech. Next time we'll build our own site. And for now, we'll wait for them to reappear. Keep checking back. Please and thank you. -kris |
