Folkestone Triennial

 I went on a visit to the wonderful Folkestone Triennial last weekend. I wrote before about how culture and the arts had regenerated this seaside town, which happens to be my place of birth. It was fantastic to see the town so busy and lively: music, people, energy.

I only managed to catch three pieces. I liked the clock on the Leas, part of Ruth Ewans’s We Could Have Been Anything That We Wanted To Be, which tells Revolutionary time. As the organisers explain:

“On 5 October 1793 the recently formed Republic of France abandoned the Gregorian calendar in favour of an entirely new model, the French Republican Calendar, which became the official calendar of France for 13 years. Each day of the Republican Calendar was made up of 10 hours. Each hour was divided into 100 minutes and each minute into 100 seconds.”

From this particular clock, on the day I visited, France was visible on the horizon.

I also experienced a ride on the Leas Lift, a wonderful survival from 1885, now rescued from closure by a community interest company and conserved and run by volunteers. The Lift contains a sound installation by Martin Creed. I confess: so thrilled was I by the ride, I failed to notice the sounds.

While queuing for the Lift, I also noticed in the distance AK Dolven’s Out of Tune. This is:

“a 16th-century tenor bell from Scraptoft Church in Leicestershire, which had been removed for not being in tune with the others... The bell can be rung by visitors using a traditional rope bell-pull.”

AK Duven, Out of Tune. Photo: David Cowell

It reminded the Observer reviewer of ‘a death knell, or a warning’. But like the rest of the Triennial, it is about finding new uses for previously abandoned things.