Rory: When I started art my first question was okay, who needs this? Whatever you make, where is that going?
I'm an artist who works writing music. I love image-making and I love working with people and bringing in all of those things together. To me water is such an emotional thing to be by the sea. It is always changing, it reflects what we are feeling emotionally. Portland is a very special place to have a ground in which I can then connect with other people.
How we create spaces in which we listen and if I can do anything I just hope that I can create a space where people feel free to speak and also to be heard. To listen and learn and think how that combines and to create a practice in which there are not just my own voice but the voice of many. And so from that side myself, I then I suppose try and create a ground in which I can reach out to others and that can take place often through finding an anchor like a raft or a word or even it can be a feeling.
It was that symbol of a raft which felt so clear and visceral as an anchor, especially where we are now in the world.
Declan Rowe John:
[singing]
Safe
Only safe I feel
When free
Free to truly be
When rain falls slow
Around
Rory: A raft is a most fragile form of transport in times of escape.
RAFTS is a work that I developed with eight people from Green Shoes Arts and we started in the winter of 2019 and over two and a half years we created a whole body of work thinking about what this symbol of a raft means to us in our lives and what we arrived nearly three years later was with this over an hour long film, which I structured around a seven song oratorio. It also had a live iteration at Cadogan Hall in November 2022, in which we brought it to a live audience
Rory: [speaking on a video call] I’m just going to ask and you can, at home or wherever you're watching this just think about what listening means to you.
Rory: I started off a series of workshops and already by then I had started to kind of sketch out or begin a few songs with Robyn Haddon. They were almost like these little seeds which I can then bring to people. But beyond that I suppose questions are really important to me. How you ask a question or start a dialogue in which people can ask their own questions but bring themselves in a way in which they feel completely able to be themselves and how they most creatively respond.
Green Shoes Member 1: If I was to leave anything off of my raft which would slow it down I would say perfectionism.
Green Shoes Member 2: So yeah I would probably take my new found belief in myself and confidence with me that wasn't there before.
Green Shoes Member 3: So a question I guess is is there something that you needed that you could let go of now?
Green Shoes Member 4: Yeah so if I had any question for anyone watching this maybe it would be. How do you feel about authenticity? How do you feel about honesty?
Rory: I feel always so grateful to have these things also in my life that we've made together.
Green Shoes Member 5: Yeah, I don't know maybe I’d, is it. Could I have a whole person?
Green Shoes Member 6: The words in the song was courage.
Rory: It's a very dialogical process between just reflecting myself what I'm experiencing in my own life what others are experiencing in their lives and the songs and those creative contributions from each person somehow kind of weave together to create a bit like a tapestry
Rory: [speaking on a video call] I’m going to press record
Automated Voice: Recording in progress
Carol R. Kallend: [speaking on video call] Got it. Going for the take now.
[reciting a poem]
A little compassion makes many friends.
Have compassion for your raft
Green Shoes Member 3:
[reciting a poem]
Connection is important
online every day.
Not seeing to one another,
not seeing others.
Declan Rowe John:
[singing]
If you can't fall.
Can't fall asleep to all I know.
Then call out to all I know and roar
For it’s now
Rory: I think we underestimate emotions and I think within activism itself there's so many emotional layers to it and there are times where we need to shout and give places for that to be as loud as possible. But also the emotions of when it happens in the minutiae, when maybe someone feels too shy. And I suppose in my work I'm trying to rethink how we understand activism.
That activism can be, come from a space of joy, it can be a space in which people are dancing
or moving with one another. And I think with art we have the great privilege or possibility to imagine essentially, to dream to create spaces in which what we deem not possible to be possible.
Well I think one of the most precious things we can do is also think about dreaming or the imagination as a support structure. It is something that is so rudimental to our existence.
The singer Declan, she sings:
If you can't fall.
Can't fall asleep to all I know.
Then call out to all I know and roar.
For it’s now.
For it’s now to figure out,
what we need to stay around.
So we can dream and dream aloud
For me maybe speaking isn't my natural operandi so discovering music and being able to play music, it was that first experience in which I could see something transform how I was feeling and that I was able to externalise that.
My main hope, that when people watch RAFTS is that they feel that there are support structures there. So I hope that the audience is able to take time with those eight incredible people that I worked with and that they find resonance. In every person, whoever they are, you can learn something.
What keeps us afloat in uncertain times? In this film, artist and composer Rory Pilgrim meets with the eight members of Green Shoes Arts who collaborated on RAFTS, a film and later live performance created over three years during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Exploring the process of connection across multiple mediums, from digital to embodied, Rory's practice is underpinned by a concern as to how we might collectively contribute to social change.
Rory Pilgrim is nominated for the 2023 Turner Prize, hosted by Towner Eastbourne. The winner will be announced on 5 December 2023.
