The Time-Travelling Circus: The Dossier Concerning Pablo Fanque and the Electrolier revised to include the Electrolier’s Accession and other variations.

Situated as a site-specific intervention on the recently returned shelf at the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, Only one example of this book was produced, accessible as a reference book, September 2017 (ongoing). New illustrations and revised texts with additional perspectives are included to expand the narrative introduced in the Henry Moore Institute Journal, Essays on Sculpture no.78 Summer 2017. The book text evokes an active reader, who having discovered the book, is located within the context of story, where they are charged with evoking the memory of its central characters through their relationship to the specifics of the Library and its objects.

'The Time-Travelling Circus' project is realised across a variety of media and locations. This work explores the production of imagined material situations, alongside the gathering of historical and circumstantial detail through a story that features William Darby (1810 – 1871). Also known as Pablo Fanque, this celebrated equestrian became the UK’s first black circus proprietor. Pablo’s first wife, Susannah Darby, died in 1848 when the circus collapsed, during a performance. Both are buried in St George’s Field, a small cemetery next to the Brotherton Library, at the centre of the University of Leeds. In Palmer’s project, the revolving acts and temporary edifices of the 'Time-Travelling Circus', are a refuge for dead or displaced performers who, ‘out of time and space’, remain suspended in the benign purgatory of their routines. When Pablo travels through time to find an alternative version of reality in which Susannah survives her accident, she re-materialises as the Electrolier (the chandelier) at the centre of the domed ceiling in the Brotherton Library, to where the narrative repeatedly returns.

Readers and listeners are invited to draw an analogy between the Library dome and a circus ‘big top’. Provided with a set of instructions, they undertake a sculptural reading process, constructing objects in their minds. The subversive circus context is exploited as an opportunity to experiment with different tempos and colliding voices. Attentive to the itinerant but recurring nature of circus edifices and performances, the project includes themes of memorialisation, re-enactment and the evocation of objects through storytelling.

Events associated with the Brotherton Library book intervention include:

'The Time-Travelling Circus: Edit. A live reading at Absurdity: Colouring In The Void' conference with Ed Atkins and Sally O’Reilly, Royal College of Art, London 25th May 2018. Here the story is retold from the perspective of the writer who is attempting to understand how the ideas materialised and the means by which the objects transmogrified, questioning what is made present in language, and drawing parallels between the process of editing the work for its reiterations, and Pablo and Susannah’s repeated attempts to find the right version of reality. http://thisistomorrow.info/broadcasts/view/absurdity-colouring-in-the-void-with-ed-atkins-katrina-palmer-sally-oreilly

'The Time-Travelling Circus: Leeds Light Night'. Performance at Brotherton Library, University of Leeds 5th October, 2018

This work was purchased by The Contemporary Arts Society for the permanent collection at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery Special Collection at University of Leeds.

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