Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival - radio programme transcripts (7)

Programme 7

(Sounds of footsteps through the gallery.)

(Various sounds of the Prayer installation throughout.)

(Alex Simpson)

Well, it’s just a bit of carpet and some speakers. It makes you think about religion and your religion, it’s weird. It’s really good though.

(Robert Hall)

It’s interesting to see how the space is used and you can tell from how people at the moment are using it and interacting with it. And that’s something that you don’t always see in traditional exhibitions. It’s a fascinating experience just to hear all these different voices and the way in which they’ve been brought together.

(Dexter Roberts)

With the speakers being on the floor I think you have to go down on your knees actually, assume the prayer position to hear what they’re saying. I think it’s good because you can hear what people put into their prayer – some of it’s personal, some of it is general – I think it’s a good idea.

(Canon Catherine Ogle, Vicar of St Peter’s, Huddersfield)

Yeah, very challenging because we don’t normally pray together in one place, that’s just something we don’t do. I suppose for fear of offending one another and treading on each other’s toes. And so this artist has just brought us together and I found that very challenging. The voice of someone who is a Christian, or the voice of someone who is a Buddhist, or a Muslim, or a Spiritualist, they are all given equal weight and validity there.

(Anna Douglas)

I think it’s incredibly exciting to walk into a gallery and see so many people sitting on the floor – something visually that you would never see normally in a gallery – having not been told to do that but just intuitively something about this installation makes people want to get close to the origin of the sound. And I think that it’s a really very gentle but moving experience.

And it’s very important that a small town has an experimental music festival like this. The traditional idea of liking something, or not liking something, I think is less important than opening-up to something new. Better to actually open-up and then make a decision that you don’t like something than to stay closed and never experience anything new.

(Voice over)

The voices, music and ambience were recorded in and around James Webb's Prayer installation at Huddersfield Art Gallery. Festival Shorts are produced by Beaumont Street Studios.