Graeme Miller began work on BEHELD in 2003.
BEHELD involves detailed research into sites around the world where people have fallen from the wheelbays of aircraft while attempting to migrate.
After researching and travelling to each site, Graeme records the ambient sound there, and takes an 180º photographic image of the sky. Since 2003, he has recorded 16 sites in this way.
BEHELD has become an installation work; photographs are projected into glass bowls and the sound recorded at each site is activated within the bowl when an audience member lifts it.
In this moment the person holding it becomes both physically and poetically connected to the individual who has fallen, who remains anonymous, and to the colliding resonances of place, geopolitics and history in the global landscape.
BEHELD focuses on one aspect of the largely hidden narrative of the thousands who routinely die in migration.
Through evocation of place and in the gesture of holding, it connects to the few who physically fall from the sky into the peripheries of international airports, mostly in economically fortified countries.
BEHELD was originally produced by Mark Godber at Artsadmin and created with financial support from Arts Council England and the Henry Moore Foundation.
Presented at Performing Mobilities RMIT Gallery Melbourne Australia (2015); Belluard Bollwerk Festival Fribourg, Switzerland (2015); University of Jena, Germany (2013); On Taking Care Symposium, Queen Mary University of London (2012); Hellerau – European Centre for the Arts, Dresden (2010), Teatro Laboral, Gijón, Spain (2010), Stephen Lawrence Gallery London (2009; The National Review of Live Art, The Arches, Glasgow (2008), Tarsaskor Gallery, Budapest Hungary (2008), Le Quai, Angers, France (2007); Theatre Workshop, Edinburgh (2007), Rotterdamse Schouwburg Netherlands (2006). Dilston Grove (now Southwark Park Galleries), London (2006). All produced by Artsadmin.
By connecting you so resonantly with the subject matter, Miller offers a poetic interlude for reflection.
Martin Coomer, Big Issue
An exquisite, desperately moving piece of work.
Lyn Gardner, Guardian
Graeme Miller is an artist, composer and performance-maker working internationally across a wide range of media and is known for his sited, performative social works. His practice emerged from UK performance of the 1980s as co-founder of the influential theatre company Impact Theatre Co-operative. While continuing to make his own stage works that include A Girl Skipping (1990), he evolved a wide-ranging practice as an artist. He makes work that often responds to ideas about place and time, creating situational pieces that invite a shift of attention in audiences. He also composes music and designs sound for theatre, dance, TV and film, for and with artists including Tim Etchells, Shobana Jeyasingh, Forced Entertainment, and Cornelia Parker.
BEHELD at Dilston Grove (2006)