Site-responsive performance/installation

ritual. Collaboratively created, directed

by Lesley Ewen. 

 

The piece ‘drew history from the walls’ of

a birthing room in what use to be the 

Annie McCall Maternity Hospital;

the room where Lesley was born.
 

The room, at the time an art studio, was

rigged with materials that the performers worked with ritualistically: honey, bee's wax, eggs, water, a red dress drawn from of a hole in the ceiling and milk poured into a cavity in the floor boards. Occasionally, the performers would interrupt their activities to rewind and restart an old ‘70’s tape recorder that played a comical tune, which undercutting the serious tone of the ritual.

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Audience members were situated as Witness Visitors in the room. Prior to the performance they were asked to document the performers actions with their phone cameras, thus granting them agency to frame their particular view and implicating them in the ritual.

 

The hospital was founded in the late 1800’s by Dr. McCall; one of the first women physicians to be registered. In keeping with her vision, only women were employed and allowed in the hospital. The building was even designed by architect Gertrude Leverkus. It served the community for 100 years and was closed in 1981. In 1988, it was occupied and turned into a number of artists studios. In June 2013, after maintaining the building and serving the community for 25 years, the artists were evicted and the building was renovating into high end apartments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_McCall