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Rachel Mars

FORGE

Presentation

A powerful new 3-day durational installation with live metal work & soundtrack, exploring who memorials are for and who decides.

Art form: Performance installation
Age guidance: 16+
Duration: 18 hours over 3 days
Sensitive content: Audience required to walk or move around during the performance, Covid safety measures, contains distressing or potentially triggering themes, welding, distinctive smells, flashing lights, loud/repetitive/high pitched/unexpected or overlapping sound
Space requirements: Minimum 10 metres (width) x 20 metres (depth) x 7 metres (height), level concrete floor

 

Show Description

In 2014 the 100kg iron ‘welcome’ gate was stolen from Dachau concentration camp. A local blacksmith forged a replica. It was exactly like the original. And it wasn’t at all. Over the course of three days artist Rachel Mars invites you to bear witness as she welds together another copy of the ‘welcome’ gate stolen from Dachau concentration camp. A powerful durational installation with live metal work exploring who memorials are for and who decides.

Sound Designer Dinah Mullen creates a live soundtrack to this work, orchestrating an atmospheric sound-world that includes previously recorded metal work, bespoke compositions, and a library of Memorial Silences.

An act of repetition and repair FORGE asks: what does it mean to preserve a site of collective trauma?

 

Artist Information

Rachel Mars is a multi award-winning writer/performer with a background in theatre, live art, and comedy. She grew up as the only gay in a British/Jewish family that attempted to balance English propriety with Yiddish volume.

Her recent shows have included a choral celebration of envy (Our Carnal Hearts) and a Queer history of filthy sex communication (Your Sexts Are Shit: Older Better Letters). She has toured her work at International Theatre Festivals in Europe, the US and Australia. Awards for her stage work in the UK include the Total Theatre Award and The Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award.

Artist website: Rachel Mars

 

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A Jewish woman with dark brown curly hair is welding an iron gate. She is wearing a distressed denim shirt and a brown leather apron as well as protective goggles and gloves. Sparks are flying from her welding tool. On the iron gates stands the word "AFTER" as seen from the back in reverse on the top section. The scene is washed in a traquil pale purple shade juxtaposed against the red hot glow of the welding, which illuminates the woman and the gate.
FORGE by Rachel Mars. Image by JMA Photography.

FORGE by Rachel Mars.

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