Diverse Evill Persons: Echoes in the Landscape, Echoes in the Archives

Abstract

This is an account of a process, the working together of cross-disciplinary insights between an artist and a historian, to create a means by which members of the public might encounter the past on their own terms. In the summer of 2009, the historian [MB] and the conceptual artist [PB] decided to collaborate on a project based around events at Cannon Hall, Cawthorne in the West Riding of Yorkshire, 1673-74. The events are located in the B family genealogy but carry in them echoes of deeper social and economic forces in the past, as well as relevance to modern debates about crime, welfare and justice. The aim of the project is to create an exhibition/installation within which members of the public can experience what it means to make sense of the past through the prism of the present. The project is intended to challenge normative approaches in museology and the interpretation of heritage objects, places and documents. The article explores the foundational processes and concepts.

Keywords

• Interdisciplinary
• historian
• artist
• audience
• crime
• Yorkshire