Drowning
Still from Jubilee, Derek Jarman, 1977. Bod, Crabs and Mad take the body of man they had seduced and killed to dump in the estuary of the underground river the Neckinger next to Butlers Wharf. The river takes its names from ‘The Devil’s Neck Tie’.
The times the fire brigade came to quench the fire were finite. The docks closed and moved down stream to Tillbury where the water was deeper. Industry left and the wealth drained from the area, leaving empty space for artists. We all know that story.
Anne Bean, Echoing Tower Bridge 1977.
I remember reading an article by Anne Bean. She recounted a performance she made when she was at Butlers Wharf that involved jumping in to the Thames, swimming around, setting off fire works. I’ve stood at this point on the Thames. Sometimes when the tide is out I walk right under Tower bridge were the silt is viscous and unforgiving. But I have never walked into the water. Not yet.
On her web site Anne Bean writes:
When I met Paul Burwell at Butlers Wharf in 1976 I was exploring sound as shadows, using a drum-kit with metal drumsticks wired to a car battery, which I drummed to close different circuits to create changing light patterns so that shadows danced around the room depending on which circuit was closed. I worked with Paul to make the system more complex and then we used it in an event when the kit was strapped onto a boat and rowed under Tower Bridge, with Paul drumming to create both echoes and shadows.
“This duo Paul Burwell and Anne Bean, have performed in many contexts and environments. They just did a recent performance at Tower Bridge in which PB drummed in a rowing boat with drums and cymbals wired up so that they lit up with the contact of his metallised drum sticks. AB swam and vocalised around the boat with two fish attached to her shoulders and red life boat lights attached to her ankles. The whole scene was lit by flashing lights from river boats and spot lights from the balcony of the warehouse/studio they use. ‘Pulp’ is a new venture and their single captures the intensity of their live performance. I was stunned.”
D I Fanzine
From <http://annebeanarchive.com/1977-echoing-tower-bridge/>
The Bow Gamelan Ensemble; Anne Bean, Paul Burwell and Richard Wilson.
I am a poor swimmer. I jump in, get thrown on rocks and cut my knees, swim into jelly fish. I have underwater scars. When I see the tide out in Bermondsey, or further down the river in Deptford or Greenwhich, I see the spoils of industry littering the river bed. Rotten hunks of wood, entropic concrete chutes, sharp oxidized caryatids, corrugated iron, chains and bones. I could never get in. But I imagine it, I imagine jumping into the decommissioned docks at the nadir of industrial decline. It feels cathartic. Romantic. Indulgent. Needed. I imagine what I am wearing. The water is water. It is the Thames, but it is also time. It is the constant flow of needs, duties, nature, culture, dirt and desire. It is people, it is a mass of people that are so many they aren’t people any more. It is nothingness.
