This collaborative show with the students and James S.Taylor was the culmination of my artist in residence programme of five weeks at the Lycée Georges Pompidou. We’d discussed memory and the various categories of memory, collective memory, national memory, universal memory and so on. For the final show ‘Living Room’ I had invited students to bring in visuals such as photos for source material, whilst James invited them to record sounds at home and bring them in as MP3s etc. Whilst I was sifting through photos, photocopies and student’s smartphone screens, James was busy listening to MP3s and recorded sounds brought in by the students. I collated images of deceased relatives, newly born babies, valiant men in uniform, smiling Grannies, domestic pets, etc. James, meanwhile was listening to recordings of answering machines, printers, clarinet rehearsals in bedrooms, TV news etc.
We believed the combination of visual and audio memory would provide the heart of the installation which would resemble an average living room with old furniture kindly donated by Emaus.
James composed the soundscape while I set up the installation integrating the students work on porcelain into the furniture.

The result was Living Room which we showed twice. Once at the Lycee and once at the Agora Theatre in Le Cres. Sadly Covid closed the Agora show after only two days instead of a duration of 6 weeks.
For more in depth information on the residence in both french and english ;
https://charliebonallack.com/texts/artist-in-reside…-english-version
https://charliebonallack.com/texts/artiste-en-resid…rges-pompidou-fr