Travelling Icons – Music – “O Virtus Sapiente” by Hildegard von Bingen and played by the Kronos Quartet

Travelling Icons is a reference to the miniature hinged icons that were carried whilst on a pilgrimage in the middle ages. This durational (8 hour) performance, was conceived by Ursula Mawson-Raffalt, and performed over three days by Ursula Mawson-Raffalt and Anthony J F Mawson in the under croft of Torquay Abbey as part of the First International Agatha Christie Festival

To make the performance structures and timings, Ursula used the daily schedule of the lay-monks who would gather in the undercroft to eat their meals. We were there for a week and the first days were spent laying the floor and organising the light. We were very lucky to have had the support of Jo and Neil Carpenter’s “Future Technical Solutions”. They told me that we had enough light in that small space to illuminate a whole football stadium but that level of light intensity was absolutely necessary to make the colours really work – and work they certainly did.

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