The Bells

2021, live performance. Performers: Emma Fielden and Lizzie Thomson. Location: 812B George Street, Sydney, Australia. Photographer: Document Photography.

“For her newest work ‘The Bells’, Fielden and Thomson read the poem of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe aloud and in chorus with neighbouring church bells. They fold together spoken word, the “tintinnabulation that so musically wells”, and slow movements around a quad marked out on the floor. When read by one voice, Poe’s poem traces the stages of an individual life, from tinkling youth to clamorous death. This has been transformed in Fielden’s performance by two voices in canon, where the repetitions and rhymes of the poem form tumbling sound passages that seem to pursue each other across space and time. One performer begins the first stanza as soon as their counterpart begins the second so that, as the stanzas lengthen, their timing seems to stretch and snap back together. Simultaneously, Fielden and Thomson move into quadrants on the floor that correspond with the poem’s four parts, unconsciously swaying their bodies with the bells overhead and weaving around each other like unfamiliar clockwork. In her instructions for the performance, Fielden notes that ‘The sound is loud and fills the space. They will ring for fifteen minutes. As the bells begin, the first performer enters quadrant no. 1 and reads part 1.’ Seeming to conduct even the encircling sound outside of the space, Fielden’s conviction is matched only by the uncertainty of the outcome. Words accidentally echo and syncopate between the two and, every now and then, when one is spoken in unison, the quiet delight of that equivalence seems to spur them on. This prompts us to reflect upon moments of connection and disconnection between two people whose experiences are deeply interwoven.”

Words by Alanna Irwin. Read the full essay here: ‘In and Out of Tune’ by Alanna Irwin.