‘A noise that will never leave me’: Inside the Memory Booth for Broken Orchestra’s ‘Fragments’
INTIMATE: Broken Orchestra’s Memory Booth in Trinity Market
This Place, a column by Vicky Foster
Review of Broken Orchestra’s Fragments
Tucked away at the edge of Trinity Market’s food hall is the latest of Broken Orchestra’s projects incorporating sound and film: Fragments. I’ve been excited to see it, after hearing them talk about it over the last few weeks as it was about to reach the exhibition stage, and because I’ve loved the work they’ve done on their Re:Score projects, which saw them create new soundscapes for archive film footage.
Those projects involved projections in grand spaces, on the staithes of High Street and in the studio of Ferens Art Gallery, and Fragments, at first glance, may seem smaller scale. It requires its audience to sit inside a refurbished photo booth, in ones and twos, and wear headphones to listen as they watch the screen. But don’t be fooled – the idea is just as big.
I visit on launch day, when Trinity Market is packed with people, and find that the booth – which I saw a few weeks ago in its old, unadorned state – has been transformed with 70s colours and info panels explaining what it is and how to use it – “an intimate and delicate exploration of the moments that make up our past, form our present and dictate our future. With original music composed and written to various recorded memories from people who simply just recorded a moment in their life”.
The first step of the instructions asks me to step inside the booth and I gladly oblige, take a seat, and find a touch-screen with instructions telling me to put on the provided headphones and choose a memory. I’m greedy, so I’m planning to see them all.
SOUNDSCAPE ARTISTS: Broken Orchestra
My first choice, The Smoke That Thunders, recounts a holiday in Zimbabwe – the woman’s voice talking me through the experience – a visit to Victoria Falls, a walk with umbrellas through a rainforest – and pictures from the 60s or 70s or 80s of the places she describes flash across the screen. A woman stands in the spray wearing a plastic headscarf, the falls seen from different angles, the streets and roads of a place I’ve never been. I let it all wash over me. Lost in this first one. Not trying to take notes.
Then I choose again: Growing Up in Hull. This time the place is more familiar. Pictures of Hull, but in a time before I can remember. Primary-aged kids rolling worms of plasticine and swinging on cargo nets as the woman sharing talks us through her school days, and her art lessons.
She moves on to the happiness of swimming lessons at Beverley Road Baths - “three in a cubicle” when it was time to get changed. She describes playing at Barmy Drain, and the rooftops and chimneys of Hull drift by. “When the war was on,” she says, “I was too young to know what was going on, but I do recall the noise of the planes. It’s a noise what will never leave me.”
It's flashed by again. I choose a new memory. In this one, titled Most Difficult Memory, a woman describes her struggles with mental health problems whilst raising three kids as a single mum in the 70s – attending church, living on North Bransholme, the judgement she faced. It’s honest and moving. It makes my heart hurt a bit. But her voice is positive and bright.
Footage shows shifting images of couples, babies, the streets of North Bransholme, a woman with her hair in curlers, a woman dancing in flared jeans and crop-top. “But now I’ve got to 70,” the voice says, “I don’t give a monkey’s whether you like me or not. I’m a survivor.”
Again, the film’s over before I have time to think about how they’re drawing me in this way, and so I pause before choosing again, think back over what I’ve heard and seen. I realise firstly that I’m moved by the cadence and rhythm of the Hull accents, as they’re elevated, showcased, in this way, by the music, and the accompanying films. It’s amazing to hear the dropped ‘h’s, the long, straining ‘o’s, the dialect – chuffed and well, you know, I never thought – presented in this way. I decide to pay attention to what else is happening as I dive into the next memory.
Pick Your Team has a man talking about football, both supporting and playing it. The pride in his voice, the half-repressed joy at remembering what it felt like to play, or when his team changed their colours, is immersing. I notice that sometimes the composers allow the story to progress along, driven by the soundtrack, but occasionally they cause it to stutter, echo, phrases repeating, crackles rippling out over the narrative.
The colours of the films bleed, spreading and blooming, and the grained effect that those of us who watched telly in the 80s will remember, dances across the screen. All very fitting for thinking about memory – the way it shifts and changes, the way it permeates everything and then recedes. The quickness and slowness. The durability and fragility. Noting these things, I select the final memory.
A diagnosis begins with knitted fabric textures, dancing swirls and squiggles moving across the screen. A man’s voice is describing the point at which he began to think he was ill, the process of Googling symptoms, initial health consultations.
The music is a steady, rhythmic groove but his voice begins to quake, ever-so-slightly, as he recounts the thoughts he had while he sat waiting to hear test results – “what will I tell my family? Do I tell people? Will I be in for my food shop tomorrow? Will I survive?” It’s compelling, and again, very moving. The small questions set against the big questions, the openness and honesty, the negotiation of all the different thoughts and memories flooding into that moment. I want to be able to hold his hand, and when this memory ends, it’s a surprise to me to remember I’m in a busy place, in a booth on my own, in the middle of town – the scraping of a chair or someone talking bringing me back into the present, like I’ve been away.
The whole experience is very intimate. The headphones block out all other noise and you’re suspended in a different place for a while, like you’ve found a cosy corner somewhere with someone you know well, and now they’re telling you a secret. When I’ve listened to all five of the memories I’m reluctant to open the curtain and step outside of the booth. I want to hear more. But I realise I’ve been hogging the ‘Memory Booth’, and it’s probably time I left. Broken Orchestra tell me they have another seven memories which they’ll add to the choices sometime between now and when the exhibition ends on Sunday 16th April, and I can guarantee I’ll be back to hear more before it disappears.
Fragments was commissioned by Sound and Music in association with Back to Ours and is available to watch and listen in Trinity Market between 10am and 4pm daily until Sunday, April 16