Anthem

14 November - 9 December 2009

A project by Beth Derbyshire
With collaboration from Ulrike Haage
In the Eden Project's Mediterranean Biome

Opening the Winter Season of the Cape Farewell | Eden collaboration

"Our relationship to landscape and nature has always been explored through the Arts. Today, as many systems change around us, be those physical, social or political, we need more than ever to understand our connection to each other and to the environment. This work continues the long, borderless human tradition of setting voice in landscape, whilst using the media of its time."
Beth Derbyshire

Première

Saturday 14 November from 6.30pm

Free to Eden visitors (Eden entry fee still applies)

The Eden Project and Cape Farewell present the premiere of Beth Derbyshire's live performance and film work, Anthem, with music by acclaimed composer Ulrike Haage. Presented in the Mediterranean Biome at the Eden Project, Anthem is a trilogy of films with a powerful choral component. The work explores notions of land, place and nation.

Anthem assembles ideas around nationality, identity and language using the symbols of landscape and song to explore our cultural relationship to landscape. Song and landscape have long been associated with expressions on nation. Anthem borrows from sources such as national Anthems, ancient land names and etymology. Anthem captures strata's from wide ranging cultural and natural settings, to explore the connections between people and landscape through balancing components of voice, music, word and image.

Performances - 6.30 and 8.30pm

Featuring early music ensemble, Stile Antico

In Conversation – 7.30 to 8.15pm

Beth Derbyshire in conversation with Ulrike Haage and Dr. James Ryan, Associate Professor of Historical and Cultural Geography, Exeter University - all welcome.

Drinks in the Mediterranean Biome will follow the 8.30pm performance.

Exhibition Continues

15 November – 9 December 2009

Free to Eden visitors (Eden entry fee still applies)

Anthem will continue to be screened with music, but without live performance, from Sunday 15 November to Wednesday 9 December. Please check Eden's website for details of future screenings. Information on how to reach Eden Project and where to find accommodation can also be found on the Eden website. Anthem is a free event to Eden visitors. Eden Project entry fee still applies.

About Anthem

A project by Beth Derbyshire with collaboration from Ulrike Haage

Filmed and edited by Beth Derbyshire
Music by Ulrike Haage
Libretto by Derbyshire/Haage
Produced by Beth Derbyshire, Cape Farewell, Eden Project and Eric Franck

Anthem is a project that has been made possible by a number of partners. Beth Derbyshire would like to thank the following major partners: Eric Franck, Arts Council England, Eden Project and Cape Farewell. Also, Tate Britain & AHRC, Lichfield Festival, The Rooms, Alexandra and Hope Thompson, FACT and the University of Central England.

Anthem was shot in the Arctic, Newfoundland and the UK. Beth captured footage in the Arctic during the Cape Farewell research expedition of 2007. Sailing with a crew of 20 from the west coast of Spitsbergen across the Greenland Sea towards the east coast of Greenland, Beth met force nine storms and icy seas. Under difficult circumstances and without missing a single sailing shift, Beth captured footage of extraordinary beauty: the ice locked mouth to Scoresby Sund; shelves of polar ice and fields of glacial ice.

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