Up the Coal Chute goes live.
From the bowels of the building, if you are in the right place at the right time, you will be able to hear,
‘Turn towards the right, and to some extent abandon wrong-doing’: Theft in Anglo-Saxon England
In the heart of Sheffield’s legal district: the Magistrate’s Court, the Crown Court and the Probation Offices are all a stone’s throw away. The buildings now occupied by BSA were once the offices of Irwin Mitchell’s Criminal Department. This is the perfect place to talk about crime, sin and punishment. For the next few weeks at least, or until the crime rate drops accordingly, if you are passing BSA at lunchtime, stop and listen for a while and you’ll be able to hear how theft would have been dealt with in Anglo-Saxon England.
… Wulfstan, an Anglo-Saxon bishop, will berate you for your sins. The vicious Viking attacks taking place at this very moment in eleventh-century England are because of the crimes committed by the English people. Wulfstan is careful to include theft in the list of sins that stain the souls of the English people.
… You’ll be witness to three theft charms that will bring back stolen cows. The performance of these texts magically ensure that the cows are returned and the thief is punished.
… You’ll hear how the Church punished theft: depending on your age, what you stole and whether you were a priest or not, you could expect to fast for anything from one week to twelve years. The punishments you’ll hear here are for stealing a horse or cow (for which you’d fast for two years) and for kidnapping a monk (for which you must become a monk yourself).
The texts have been put together and performed by Dr Rebecca Fisher and Christine Wallis from the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, University of Sheffield.
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Submissions still wanted
We have further pieces in progress but we remain open to ideas, proposals and submissions for this new series of sound works to be broadcast/projected up the coal chute from the depths of the cellars at Bank Street Arts and up into the street to accost unsuspecting passers by in a kind of “if they won’t come into our space, we’ll come into theirs”, guerilla style onslaught.
We are not looking to restrict form, genre or interpretation of this idea in any way beyond saying that the series is about text based works (in any audible manifestation): monologues, radio style dramas, short stories, dialogues, arguments, sonic art based on manipulated texts, announcements, pronouncements and even better anything that defies classification. Most importantly, we are looking for work which fits the project in some way….
At this stage please send anything from basic ideas or proposals (either as copy or sound files) and we will be more than happy to discuss developing ideas with you or helping to find possible collaborators. Please send ideas proposals or any questions to john@bankstreetarts.com and entitle your e-mail Up the Coal Chute. There is no deadline for submissions as this is an ongoing project.
