Fissure
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Fissure was a site-specific performance in which 80 participants made a journey by train then on foot, covering a twenty-mile route that circumnavigated, descended-beneath, and finally ascended Ingleborough. On this journey they heard poetry by Elizabeth Burns set to music by Jocelyn Pook, and saw dance choreographed by Nigel Stewart.
Fissure was Louise’s response to the illness and death of her sister, aged 29, due to a brain tumour and the grief caused by her loss. The shape of the piece was informed by key moments of her sister’s illness, death and the ensuing grief; oncology and treatment notes, but equally the liturgical structure of the Easter Tridium and narratives drawn from Greco-Roman myth. Accordingly, the work explored the diagnosis of a terminal illness and its consequences, but also transformed this personal experience into an artwork that resonated with others on both individual and universal levels.
In planning the route and the places in the landscape for creative and scientific interventions, Louise chose fissured locations such as limestone pavements, shake-holes, cairns, scars, subterranean rivers, caves, and mountain tops. These choices were underpinned with neuro-scientific knowledge of the brain's structure and its function and dysfunction which the landscape came to symbolise.
Further Reading: Fissure
Wilson, Louise Ann. Sites of Transformation: Applied and Socially Engaged Scenography in Rural Landscapes. Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2022.
Fissure forms the opening case study in Chapter 2, "Walking-Performance – Emplacing a Life-Event: Fissure," where the project is discussed in detail and introduces the creative methodologies that underpin Louise Ann Wilson's later practice.
Wilson, Louise Ann. "A Place that Stands Apart: Emplacing, Re-imaging and Transforming Life-Events through Walking-Performance in Rural Landscapes." In The Performances of Sacred Places: Crossing, Breathing, Resisting, edited by Silvia Battista. Intellect Books, 2021. This chapter reflects on the development of Louise Ann Wilson's walking-performance practice through projects including Fissure, exploring landscape, memory, transformation and lived experience.
Wilson, Louise Ann. Practice-as-Research PhD Thesis. Lancaster University, 2017. Fissure is discussed as the project that laid the foundations for Louise's subsequent practice and research in socially engaged walking-performance and scenography.
The project has also been discussed in publications on walking, mobility and immersive performance.
Created, directed and designed by Louise Ann Wilson
Written by Elizabeth Burns
Choreography Nigel Stewart
Music composed by Jocelyn Pook
Creative collaborators
Neurological collaboration and performance Professor Michael Brada, Mr Andrew McEvoy and Professor Chris Clark
Geological and landscape collaboration and performance Dr Mike Kelly, Colin Newlands and Duncan Morrison
Liturgical and palliative care consultation Professor John Rodwell and Professor Sheila Payne
Performance
Dance Fania Grigoriou, Jennifer Essex, Julia Griffin, Luisa Lazzaro, Noora Kela and Sonja Perreten
Music and singing Alice Grant, Martina Schwarz, Mikhail Karikis, Olivia Chaney, Sally Davies and Vivien Ellis
Choral singing Alisun Pawley, Jeff Wallcock, Cara Curran and Sarah Wallcock
Bell ringing The Kirkby Lonsdale Handbell Ringers and the bell ringers of St James Church, Clapham
Production
Commissioned and produced by ArtEvents as part of The Re-enchantment
Produced with Louise Ann Wilson Company Ltd.
Supported by Yorkshire Dales National Park; Ingleborough Nature Reserve; Natural England; Ingleborough Estates; Ingleborough Cave; Above and Below; and the Settle–Carlisle Railway.
Following its premiere in 2011, Fissure continued to have a life beyond the live performance. Production photographs by Bethany Clarke, together with poems by Elizabeth Burns and texts from the production, were exhibited as part of World Stage Design 2013 at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Cardiff, where Louise Ann Wilson was nominated for a World Stage Design Production Design Award. The project was also exhibited at the On Walking Exhibition and Conference, University of Sunderland, and at the Performing Place Symposium, University of Chichester.
Production Photographs, Poem and Audience Responses
The following photographs document Fissure as it unfolded across the Yorkshire Dales. They trace the twenty-mile journey undertaken by participants, from train journey to mountain ascent, subterranean caves and summit, revealing the installations, performances and creative interventions encountered along the way. Also included is an extract from one of the poems specially written for the performance by Elizabeth Burns, together with a selection of audience responses that reflect on the experience of the work.
Production Photographs, Poem and Audience Responses
The following photographs document Fissure as it unfolded across the Yorkshire Dales. They trace the twenty-mile journey undertaken by participants, from train journey to mountain ascent, subterranean caves and summit, revealing the installations, performances and creative interventions encountered along the way. Also included is an extract from one of the poems specially written for the performance by Elizabeth Burns, together with a selection of audience responses that reflect on the experience of the work.
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In May, in the poignant promenade piece Fissure, the audience literally climbed a windswept peak, as well as wandering through subterranean caves. Devised by Louise Ann Wilson, in memory of her late sister, this hike in the Yorkshire Dales became a pilgrimage through death and bereavement, haunting figures emerging and vanishing through rock crevices and mournful songs by composer Jocelyn Pook echoing from the crags.
Kate Bassett, The Independent, 2011. Read the full review here.
In May, in the poignant promenade piece Fissure, the audience literally climbed a windswept peak, as well as wandering through subterranean caves. Devised by Louise Ann Wilson, in memory of her late sister, this hike in the Yorkshire Dales became a pilgrimage through death and bereavement, haunting figures emerging and vanishing through rock crevices and mournful songs by composer Jocelyn Pook echoing from the crags.
Kate Bassett, The Independent, 2011. Read the full review here.
Poems by Elizabeth Burns
Elizabeth Burns wrote a sequence of poems for Fissure that became integral to the dramaturgy of the performance. The following extracts accompanied different stages of the journey and formed part of the work's exploration of illness, grief and transformation.
Poems by Elizabeth Burns
Elizabeth Burns wrote a sequence of poems for Fissure that became integral to the dramaturgy of the performance. The following extracts accompanied different stages of the journey and formed part of the work's exploration of illness, grief and transformation.
Take this thread
This thread will lead you
through the darkness
to a place where there is only rock and water
no grass no sky
no trees no stars
no moon no sun
only rock and water
This thread will disappear
inside the earth
the way a river disappears in limestone
This thread will travel
where you cannot follow
only rock and water
no grass no sky
no trees no stars
no moon no sun
only rock and water
Take this thread
This thread will lead you
through the darkness
to a place where there is only rock and water
no grass no sky
no trees no stars
no moon no sun
only rock and water
This thread will disappear
inside the earth
the way a river disappears in limestone
This thread will travel
where you cannot follow
only rock and water
no grass no sky
no trees no stars
no moon no sun
only rock and water
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Audience / Participant Responses
[..] the piece tested my body's limits and on that climb on day three I could not help wondering what it must be like to be so ill that your body is tested to the limit and to the end.
Fissure has haunted me. As we walked across this place, I found myself shaken by its vastness and velocity [...]. My sense of scale [...] shifted when I began to learn more about the mapping and […] dysfunction of the brain. This was punctuated by bells, song, wind, cries, conversation, exchange, memories [...]. And loss. How loss can seep into every part of you and the landscape. [...] How walking through this ‘place’ can lead you somewhere you never thought possible.
[..] the space provided by the music, the pauses and the walking across the three days was an invaluable part of the experience and allowed me to reflect on, and digest it. The beauty was nurturing, […] the music and dance powerful, the use of the landscape and architecture fascinating – and beyond words. I'm a person who usually expresses myself in a strictly factual style, I feel the event helped unleash in me different ways of expressing my experience.
The integration of geological features and the body, made real through the intervention of the experts.
Audience / Participant Responses
[..] the piece tested my body's limits and on that climb on day three I could not help wondering what it must be like to be so ill that your body is tested to the limit and to the end.
Fissure has haunted me. As we walked across this place, I found myself shaken by its vastness and velocity [...]. My sense of scale [...] shifted when I began to learn more about the mapping and […] dysfunction of the brain. This was punctuated by bells, song, wind, cries, conversation, exchange, memories [...]. And loss. How loss can seep into every part of you and the landscape. [...] How walking through this ‘place’ can lead you somewhere you never thought possible.
[..] the space provided by the music, the pauses and the walking across the three days was an invaluable part of the experience and allowed me to reflect on, and digest it. The beauty was nurturing, […] the music and dance powerful, the use of the landscape and architecture fascinating – and beyond words. I'm a person who usually expresses myself in a strictly factual style, I feel the event helped unleash in me different ways of expressing my experience.
The integration of geological features and the body, made real through the intervention of the experts.
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Production Photographs by Bethany Clarke. Copyright: Art Events.
This was not performance art for the timid [...].Clinging to boulders, I asked myself whether a theatre critic being literally blown away by a show could be considered an artistic triumph. Unforgettable.
Kate Bassett, The Independent, 2011
This was not performance art for the timid [...].Clinging to boulders, I asked myself whether a theatre critic being literally blown away by a show could be considered an artistic triumph. Unforgettable.
Kate Bassett, The Independent, 2011
Research
Research Process
The following photographs document the research and development of Fissure over a two-year period. They record the landscapes, collaborations and creative investigations that informed the performance, bringing together neurological, geological and palliative care research with extended periods of walking, observation and making in the Yorkshire Dales. These images reveal how the project evolved through sustained dialogue between landscape, science, poetry and lived experience.
Research Process
The following photographs document the research and development of Fissure over a two-year period. They record the landscapes, collaborations and creative investigations that informed the performance, bringing together neurological, geological and palliative care research with extended periods of walking, observation and making in the Yorkshire Dales. These images reveal how the project evolved through sustained dialogue between landscape, science, poetry and lived experience.
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