Visitors to the historic Willesden Jewish Cemetery in London this winter can immerse themselves in a site-specific, outdoor sound art installation called Invisible City, which uses voices and memories to evoke the lives of the thousands of people buried there.
United Synagogue (owner of the cemetery) commissioned the environmental sound artists FOR NOW to create the soundscape, which fits within the cemetery’s innovative new “House of Life” heritage experience and forms part of the Brent Biennial art in public spaces season. There will also be a session at the UK Limmud devoted to it, where people involved in the project will discuss how it was made. The cemetery web site states:
Susanna Grant and Joey Morris [of FOR NOW] were inspired by Italian novelist Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” to build a sonic city, full of life and stories that wash over the cemetery as the listener wanders its expanses. Invisible City transports you to a land of memory as Arthur, the cemetery foreman, with a chorus of relatives and people from around Willesden, draw you in.
Willesden cemetery opened in 1873 and today includes nearly 30,000 graves. Visitors can download the 24 minute soundscape into their smart phones or use sterilized headsets provided by the cemetery and listen to “layers of stories evoked by the cemetery and the people who come to it” as they walk among the graves.
The idea is similar to that of the audio trails created by the Ripple Theatre collective for a project called Hidden Stories: Hidden Places that focuses on the Jewish heritage of Plymouth and elsewhere in southwest England. The productions use archival and other sources to tell stories and dramatize events and personalities, focusing on the people buried in the cemeteries and/or connected with Jewish history and heritage in these places.
Watch — and hear — a trailer for Invisible City. The organizers point out that as the experience is outdoors, it fits within COVID-19 restrictions on indoor activities.
The cemetery’s first ever artistic commission, Invisible City fits within the cemetery’s new “House of Life” heritage experience, launched in September, which opened the cemetery to the public as a multifaceted place of public heritage: an example of how Jewish cemeteries can be integrated into tourism while respecting the sanctity of the place.
If offers guided tours, lectures, an exhibit in a new visitors’ center, and other public programming.
It respects its sanctity as a burial site but enables visitors to explore Jewish history and heritage, as well as learn about the lives of the many Jewish personalities buried there and engage with issues related to death, funeral traditions, and funerary art.
Read our article about the House of Life heritage experience
Web site of the Willesden Jewish Cemetery