113 - 117 Trongate, Glasgow, G1 5HD
18 - 27 October 2007
Four interventions - pianola karaoke, facade fruit machine, shoebox archive and real estate? - interleaved layers of the Britannia Panopticon building’s histories with its present fragile existence, and uncertain future, in Glasgow’s regenerating Merchant City district
Eleven participants chose the song they would like to sing in the crumbling music hall - inspired by their personal responses to the building: its location, its histories and its present condition. Specially-commissioned piano accompaniments to these songs were converted into paper piano rolls for the Britannia Panopticon’s pianola. The songs were performed live at an opening event on 18 October 2007, with recorded versions played in the building throughout the following week, accompanied by projections of scrolling lyrics.
An animated sequence was projected onto the windows of the first floor of the building, making reference to signage on the facade from the past 150 years of the building’s existence and to its current role as an amusement arcade. Letters spun like the drum of a coin-operated fruit machine, sometimes resolving into words that pointed to the building’s former functions as music hall, tailors’ workshop, waxworks and cinema.
600 shoe boxes were installed in the auditorium, some holding artefacts found in the building. Visitors were invited to leave something of their own in the empty boxes. shoebox archive was intended as an interactive counterpoint to the existing exhibits of artefacts, which are mounted behind glass or arranged in display cases.
Photographic transparencies of details of the building’s inaccessible interior were mounted on translucent acrylic, displayed in the shop front window of the amusement arcade. Mimicking the displays in estate agents’ windows, the intervention was intended to invite spectators to consider the role of the Britannia Panopticon building in the regenerating Merchant City district of Glasgow.