In summer 2021, supported by the Creative Scotland Open Project Fund: Sustaining Creative Development, I undertook a period of R&D on this project. I worked with with Emma Brierley, Fergus Dunnet and Dylan Read.
At the end of the R&D there was a zoom work-in-progress sharing. It can be watched below:
“The Land of Cockaigne” was the medieval folk vision of utopia and paradise on earth; a mythical land of milk and honey. Inspired by the aesthetics and surrealism of medieval art I am investigating how to translate stories of dull, repetitive, sometimes absurd but always taxing 21st century labour and work into engaging visual storytelling using puppetry and masked performance.
A few years ago I worked in the complaints department of a call centre for a major supermarket chain, speaking to countless upset strangers over the phone about their grocery delivery orders. The work was stressful, repetitive and increasingly absurd but during this time I became fascinated with surreal depictions of life in medieval art. The paintings contained scenes of peasant life and work which for me seemed grim, fascinatingly magical and personally relevant. One in particular which stood out for me was a painting by Pieter Brugel of “Cockaigne”: the medieval folk vision of heaven on earth. I will explore the ways in which puppetry and masks can be created and used in performance to relate personal stories of working in a call centre, its challenges, tensions and the effect it has on the worker.
Can we imagine utopia today? What does utopia look like politically, in our relationship to work and each other?