Unlucky Dip
Saturday 16 & Sunday 17 September 2017. Southeastern Trains between Hastings and St Leonards.
Coastal Currents Festival.
In this fantastical public-consultation survey, Louise Ashcroft transformed the coastal train between Hastings and St Leonards into a seascape of sounds and spoken word , roaming the carriages with a feely-bag of objects which were used to harvest descriptions of monsters from the imaginations of travellers. A week later these descriptions became lyrics for Louise's band 'Monsters of the Deep' which performed a 3-hour musical ritual on a toilet roof overlooking the sea; aiming to attract sea monsters to the shore as part of a spoof thanatourism (dark tourism) strategy. Exploring how we conjure monstrosity through sound, voice, costume and gesture, the performances featured interpretations of soundtracks from monster action scenes in films like It Came From Beneath the Sea and Attack of the Crab Monsters.
In early maps of the world, drawings of sea monsters signified unknown marine territory, and since the beginning of cinema, such creatures have been rife in Hollywood. Today these beasts are experiencing a cultural renaissance, as images of washed-up monsters frequently go viral online. Are they click-bait hoaxes striving for online attention, and if so, why has there always been this cultural need for ‘monsters of the deep’ as signifiers of otherness?
Saturday 16 & Sunday 17 September 2017. Southeastern Trains between Hastings and St Leonards.
Coastal Currents Festival.
In this fantastical public-consultation survey, Louise Ashcroft transformed the coastal train between Hastings and St Leonards into a seascape of sounds and spoken word , roaming the carriages with a feely-bag of objects which were used to harvest descriptions of monsters from the imaginations of travellers. A week later these descriptions became lyrics for Louise's band 'Monsters of the Deep' which performed a 3-hour musical ritual on a toilet roof overlooking the sea; aiming to attract sea monsters to the shore as part of a spoof thanatourism (dark tourism) strategy. Exploring how we conjure monstrosity through sound, voice, costume and gesture, the performances featured interpretations of soundtracks from monster action scenes in films like It Came From Beneath the Sea and Attack of the Crab Monsters.
In early maps of the world, drawings of sea monsters signified unknown marine territory, and since the beginning of cinema, such creatures have been rife in Hollywood. Today these beasts are experiencing a cultural renaissance, as images of washed-up monsters frequently go viral online. Are they click-bait hoaxes striving for online attention, and if so, why has there always been this cultural need for ‘monsters of the deep’ as signifiers of otherness?