The first act employs the body as intruder, as activator of the permeable boundary between an expanding and contracting tidal body of water and an empty pool. The on-site performance centres around what it means to be both a ‘container’ and a ‘carrier’, viewing our form as a body of water, enveloped by a skin barrier, a membrane which separates our internal mass of water from the external bodies of water that LIDO finds itself a part. This in turn asserts the body as a container; an object for holding and transporting, whilst simultaneously acting as a carrier, one that not only transports but conveys the very definition of the Lido, physically filling the empty synthetic space with the liquid fabric of its neighbouring natural body of water. The body in turn, holds great significance, alluding to the essential role collecting and carrying have in our evolutionary and cultural development, one which often overlooks the importance of vessels in favour of the tools of hunting and protection.

‘Sounding Space’ is achieved by re-staging the on-site performance sonically in a gallery setting, recreating the in-between through floating screens and two perspex containers, holding site-specific, bodily activated water as apparatus for live hydrophonic performance.

The second act takes the gesture of the onsite performance, mimicking the original carrying of the water between the lido and the ocean, the action of granting definition, the water forever changed by the movements that have passed between, contained again and decanted into two vessels representative of the two bodies of water; over both acts, LIDO watches two bodies — physical human bodies — activate two bodies — physical sites, the lido and the ocean — via the liminal space between the two.

The sonic performance captures the intermixing of that which emanates from bodies and architectural surrounds, the ‘architectural surround forms an architectural body’ (Gins/Arakawa, Pg 50, 2002) one that changes form depending on the positions one assumes, but one that is faithful to occurrent tentativeness throughout.

LIDO brings the flattened and compressed sounds of the water shared between itself and the Llandudno Sea back to life, existing somewhere between translation and transition, retaining and reviving traces of the material properties of space.

Below: Install and PV, October 2022, CBS Gallery Liverpool

LIDO (2022) is a collaboration with performance artist Abbie Bradshaw, which takes Llandudno Lido as a site for the exploration of the sonic and performative components of the act of carrying and containing, through use of both physical and conceptual vessels as tools of activation of a space-between. A Lido by definition is a public open-air swimming or paddling pool, located near or adjacent to a natural body of water, therefore LIDO specifically explores the validity of place through its relation to that of another, dissecting the instability of meaning via the sonic as it shifts through the space between two known things, when void of the water that grants it meaning the lido becomes an ephemeral non-place, a sphere of enquiry, a site for activation. LIDO exists as a performance of two acts, in which two bodies carry vessels of water from the ocean to an empty Lido, in turn granting it the secondary site definition. The work was presented at CBS Gallery Liverpool, (as two parallel floating screens, representative of the ocean and the lido, the distance between them reflected that of the actual physical space connecting the two.

LIDO (2022)

Film, Installation, Performance

Floating Screens, Effects Pedals, Perspex Vessels, Hydrophone