Inter-Disinter (for Violin) (2014)

Musica Subterranea. A violin interred at Ouseburn, Newcastle, for one month, and later disinterred. The relic instrument was then installed at Brinkburn Priory.

The process of interment coincided with a period of heavy rain in the north-east, resulting in the violin being effectively destroyed. The act of retrieval therefore became imbued with archaeological resonances, and the sounding of the instrument’s disarticulated body was akin to a seance: an interrogation of the dead.

Inter-Disinter was the public re-enactment of a previously private process alluded to in the book Landings, and performed at various sites across the West Pennine Moors between 2004 and 2011. It was not originally conceived of as a deliberate act of transformation, but rather as one of contact. A surrender to telluric energies; a ritual of contagious magic; an exchange with the genius loci.

Nevertheless, the bodily metamorphosis that the violin underwent stimulated an abiding interest in edaphology and taphonomy that can be seen in subsequent works, such as Belated Movements and Scaleby.

Commissioned by AV Festival.