RECONSTRUCTED BICKERSHAW FREE TOWER
"Reconstructed Bickershaw Festival Tower" is a temporary architectural intervention that recreates the iconic scaffold tower and the spirit of collective performance from the 1972 Bickershaw Pop Festival. The reconstruction is a site to reimagine the activities from the original northern England festival, to explore themes of freedom, environmental precarity, and public space.
The tower consists of a scaffold structure topped with illuminated text, sited within a forest clearing. The word "FREE" appears on two sides of the tower's upper section, visible as painted text during the day and illuminated by solar-powered LEDs at night. Each evening, the illuminated text gradually fragments and fades as its stored solar energy depletes, creating a daily cycle of emergence and disappearance.
"Drums in the Night” forms the performance component of the reconstruction, conceived for the tower site but relocated to Ebersberg Kunstverein. Created in collaboration with percussionists Andrea Lesjak, Simon Kummer, Kordian Tetkov, Clemens Kerner, and Mads Lynnerup, the performance drew its impetus from Brecht's play "Trommeln in der Nacht" (1922) while echoing the communal music-making spirit visible in the original Bickershaw archive photographs. The performance featured readings by over 50 artists alongside playlists of anti-war, anti-capitalist, and idealist songs spanning six decades of popular music, to which the drummers responded and improvised. Performed in five acts against a backdrop of posters by 12 international artists, the evening performance mirrored both Brecht's original structure and the collective gathering captured in the 1972 festival documentation.
The work was created in collaboration with Derek Tyman, realised with support from Hubert Maier and Peter Kees, and presented at Forsthaus St. Hubertus, as part of the SCHÖNE NEUE WELT festival (2023).