A new version of Lost in Translation was shown at St. George’s Hall in Liverpool on Monday the 1st of December, from 2pm till 6:30pm, as part of the closing events of the Capital of Culture year. Larger in scale, this ambitious second part of the project was the culmination of Accidental Collective’s commission for Portrait of a Nation (www.portraitofanation.net).
Since the piece was first shown throughout Canterbury in June 2008 it underwent a number of changes. Back then Accidental Collective traipsed around the city centre, all dressed in white, carrying white suitcases, and setting up a number of installations that mapped seven cities onto Canterbury city centre. However, for the Liverpool performance, the company had to find a way of transposing this project into an indoor environment. Since the venue was the beautiful and historic St. George’s Hall there were a number of practical limitations to take into account: no sticking tape onto the walls, no painting the floor, etc, etc, etc. As a creative exercise this was a very interesting process. How does a project transform when the setting changes? How can the structure of a piece alter, whilst its spirit remains the same?
So, in answer to these questions, this is what happened in Liverpool… Accidental Collective placed 17 suitcases, one for each city participating in Portrait of a Nation, around St. George’s Hall as if they were lost property. Each of these suitcases contained a micro installation, or spilling out to its immediate surroundings. Whilst some of them reprised the company’s earlier work for Canterbury, others were completely new creations. The aim of each of these installations was to work as a mini-interpretations of each city (sometimes concrete, sometimes abstract). How do you fit a city into a suitcase? In keeping with Accidental Collective’s audience-centred approach, all suitcases were interactive: people were free to rummage through some, whilst they were able to take something away with them in other cases, or even leave something behind. As performers, the company maintained their personas of lost tourists. White costumes, white suitcases. Walking around the building individually they directly talked to the public, asking them where they are from, what city they have visited…. Like tourists they collected souvenirs. So, they asked people to write down thoughts, impressions and comments about the various cities onto luggage tags. Throughout the four hours the performers covered themselves with these mementoes, pinning them onto clothes and suitcases, and even allowing people to write directly on their clothes. By the end day Accidental Collective became moving, changing, human-installations.
