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Daughters of Decayed Tradesmen

Daughters of Decayed Tradesmen http://vimeo.com/73130726, is the first manifestation of a collaboration with artist Brody Condon, USA (their ongoing project, ‘Circles of Focus’ was funded through a Creative Scotland Vital Spark Award 2011, £93294). This large-scale sculpture was sited in a semi-derelict watchtower, a three-storey structure built in 1820, to deter the grave robbers who supplied bodies to the fledgling schools of anatomy. The Edinburgh Festival Commission (additionally supported by Edinburgh World Heritage, £15000) rendered the whole area new to public access.

Engaging with narratives around decay and preservation of the body, of physical structures, and of memory, the artists worked with 2 elderly ladies, who were among the last surviving alumnae of Edinburgh’s Trades Maiden Hospital, a charitable institution founded in 1704. Their personal narratives were translated into binary computer code which provided a pattern for laser-cutting thousands of punch cards, which were looped throughout the watchtower, echoing those of a 19th century Jacquard loom installed in the National Museum of Scotland.

The work evolved from Borland & Condon’s research methods which include critical dialogue with the actors and educators in anatomy dissection laboratories. The artists organised the international symposium ‘Death Animations’ (BALTIC, 19/20 October, 2012, and to be reconfigured for the Anyang Public Art Project, Seoul, Korea, in March, 2014) to engage publicly with societal and artistic attitudes to death and the preservation of the body. They subsequently developed a performative, role-playing methodology, involving key players in the Anatomy Laboratory, University of Glasgow (Extracurricular Anatomy # 1, 23 October, 2012). As a result, in collaboration with the University’s Body Donation Programme, Borland is collating donor narratives, and exploring the donated cadaver’s potential for ambiguity and artistic expression as well as scientific research.