On 14 October 1066 the path of English and European history was irrevocably changed. Two cultures collided – Anglo-Saxon and Norman – with a legacy that echoes through to the present day. To mark the 950th Anniversary of the most famous date in English history Hastings Borough Council commissioned the ROOT 1066 International Festival; a contemporary, multi-art form festival, that took place in September/October 2016.
As part of ROOT 1066 – we created a performance installation at Ladie’s Parlour, next to the Hastings Castle ruins. Our piece was inspired by The Domesday Book of 1086 – The Great Survey of the wealth of England.
Our modern take on The Great Survey explored the present ‘wealth’ of Hastings. We wanted to take the pulse of the community, to gauge the health and creative wealth of the town; capture a snapshot of who is in Hastings now and what they value.
For a limited time only we allowed members of the public special access to visit our archaeological dig site, and meet our professors and doctors who were unearthing the memories of Hastings. Here, we tested objects that were found in our dig pits in the Memory Projector – a device that finds memories buried deep in your DNA and projects them for all to see.
We also managed to unearth 24 audio memories and extract them so that our visitors could listen to our findings whilst looking out across the sea. In these individual digs we also found an object that resonated with a particular memory, all of which you and can see and hear in our Scrapbook or Browser page.
One of the most interesting discoveries we found in Hastings was The Surveyors; local ghosts who have been watching the horizon in search of their deepest longings for forever. They wondered the cliff top slowly and silently, unaware of our presence and providing a physical reality to the past.
Please visit http://www.1066contemporary.com/ for more information about the festival.
