Please note that this event has already occured.
Key information
Date: Thursday 22 September 2022
Time: 5:30pm to 7:30pm
Venue: Canterbury Square, Brixton, London, SW9 7DD, GB
History is not set in stone, so why should statues be?
Award winning public arts company Aswarm led by artist Thor McIntyre-Burnie are tackling this question head on, by launching the first in a series of Augmented Reality Statues that breathe and speak the voice of living subjects. The Project’s been developed in Partnership with 81 Acts of Exuberant Defiance (1981-2021). Supported by Lambeth Council, the Met and Arts Council England.
AR-Statues: designed to challenge and inspire through interventions in public spaces.
Holding the Flame, a prominent Augmented Reality Statue of living civil rights campaigner Marcia Rigg, was specifically created to be in dialogue with its site - a small square outside Brixton Police station. A place significant both for its role in the Brixton uprisings of 1981 and for Marcia’s brother Sean Rigg, who died in Police custody here in 2008, in circumstances resonant with George Floyd. She stands in a gesture of love and resilience for her brother and as a challenge to the role and equity of the public monuments in our city.
This event takes the form of a gathering from 4.30pm to view the work, followed by an introductory talk with Q&A at 6.30pm by the artist Thor McIntyre-Burnie & subject Marcia Rigg held at 3Space, (International House, SW9 7QD, 2mins walk away). At 7.20 pm there will be a Round-Table and panel discussion looking at questions arising from this project and themed around, "Free Public Space", exploring how communities can regain a sense of agency and ownership through creative interventions in public spaces. The panel will be chaired by Binki Taylor (director of The Brixton Project) with 5 of Brixton's Cultural Organisations and Artists who are leading innovative interventions & initiatives to rethink how our public space serves us all.
"Hearing the sound of my breath is important. I’m here, I’m alive, I’m not going anywhere. For this is a living statue and I’m telling our story"
Marcia Rigg
The statue
Marcia’s statue addresses Brixton Police Station, one hand holds flowers out toward the memorial tree an act she does every year, the other holds a candle clenched in a black power fist.
As the AR- statue appears, so does the sound of Marcia’s breath – “for this is not a statue of someone who can no-longer breathe”.- It features an inspirational living person, a Black woman standing tall and commanding change, who is asking questions and can be questioned. The App also invites users to hear Marcia speak to the emotions and intentions embodied in her statue. Audiences activate the statue by downloading an app and pointing their mobile phone at a trigger sign sited in a barrel planter in the Square. The sign reflects the vibrant pattern of Marcia’s skirt -a curved non-phallic emblem of an African print fabric.
Holding The Flame will mark the culmination of a year-long programme of events commissioned by 81 Acts of Exuberant Defiance, an initiative designed to raise questions and stimulate discussion about the state of race relations 40 years on from the 1981 Brixton Uprisings.