Just a little bit of history repeating

'Just a little bit of history repeating' is a long-term context specific live art project for public space, initially developed and presented as the culmination of publicly funded research residency and commission awards by b-side (Weymouth, UK), Bilbao Eszena (Bilbao, Spain) and BAD (Bilbao, Spain). Subsequent developments having been commissioned and produced by Brown University (Providence, USA), and Salina Arts Centre (Salina, Kansas, USA). The project is expected to culminate in the propositions and public presentations that result from further research residencies and public art commissions produced by Artium (Vitoria, Spain) in 2016. The project is realised within Brookes’ ongoing artistic collaboration with Spanish artist and performer Rosa Casado.

'Just a little bit of history repeating' is constituted as a series of context-specific public intervention works that explore the generation and meaning of place. The project returns traces of past or now absent events and places to their original sites. The work has focused largely on reactivating or returning selected elements of archival material, such as archive audio recordings or first hand vocal description, to the site that generated them - the audio being publicly rebroadcast within the location of the event or place that it records or describes. The resulting public works are manifest in the act of that relocation, in the gatherings they proposes, and in the refreshed and personal perspectives of a place that might be revealed through direct meetings with proposed or remembered alternatives to its current uses and understandings. The research was completed through an extensive period of collaborative assessment and analysis, culminating in Casado’s successful PhD submission on the project, awarded by Glasgow University in 2018.

Research questions include:

How might an artistic event allow and enable direct and shared public encounters with past or alternative uses of place?

How might familiar processes of description and visualisation allow an absent site or event to be directly met, in situ, without simulation or interpretation?

If our understanding of the public and social landscapes that we inhabit is shaped by our relationship to their use and history, how might that understanding be revealed, exercised, or renegotiated, through located art practice?

In what ways might art engage absent or remembered sites and events within a landscape as a lens to refresh or problematise our vision of that landscapes in the present, and to inform our choices and assumptions about their possible futures?

How might performance itself be constituted as a critical situation and social space in the present? 

Individual public manifestations within the long-term development of the 'Just a little bit of history' project include:

'Alexandra Gardens Bandstand', commissioned and produced by b-side (Weymouth, UK), 2010 

'Euskalduna shipyards', commissioned and produced by Bilbao Eszena (Bilbao, Spain) and BAD (Bilbao, Spain), 2011

'Greetings from Salina / crossroads of the nation', commissioned and produced by Salina Art Center (Kansas, USA), 2013

'The historic parking lots of Providence / introduced birdsong', commissioned and produced by Brown University (Providence, USA), 2013

'Providence cove walk / a shoreline no longer there', commissioned and produced by Brown University (Providence, USA), 2013

'As unremarkable as breathing', commissioned and produced by AZALA and Artium (Vitoria, Spain), 2016/17