Project Creators
Alan Eglinton
Born in 1980 in the town of Maldon (Essex, England).
Master’s degree in cinema studies, Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier (France).
French National School Of Photography diploma, Arles.
Has shown his series Steps Of A Go-between in several show spaces across France (Arles, Montpellier, Limoges, Paris).
Currently based in Paris as a freelance photographer and filmmaker.
www.alaneglinton.com (under construction)
Andrew Eglinton
Born in 1977 in the town of Watford (Hertfordshire, England).
BA Drama & Theatre Studies, Royal Holloway, Uni of London (UK)
MA Writing for Performance, Goldsmiths College, London (UK)
Involved in various theatre projects as writer and performer, including most recently work with Freefall.
Currently undertaking a PhD in Theatre, focusing on UK Documentary Drama.
www.londontheatreblog.co.uk
Project Background
As two boys growing up in the 80’s and 90’s at the peak of the television age, for better or for worse, we were immersed in the deluge of North American pop-culture that poured through our living room screen. From cinema to soap opera and not forgetting the ubiquitous music videos, we spent uncountable hours rapt in awe at actors and musicians; sometimes watching the same film repeatedly until the characters had stepped through the screen and had begun inhabiting our bodies. We were American children by proxy.
American without ever having been to the United States. American without ever having met an American person face to face. More intimate with America than perhaps with our own native England. But soon came the New Millennium, and with it a great shock. We had reached maturity and had begun to think for ourselves. And in analyzing our youth, we had grown critical of America: it was all a construct, a decadent Hollywood movie set, a lie greater than the myth of Santa Claus! – And indeed the source of our malaise. We had built the foundations of our youth on an imaginary land and the cracks were beginning to show.
In 2004 I was fortunate to travel to the US for the first time. It was all too brief a visit that took me to a few cities along the North-East coast: New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC. But in the space of that week and as writer and friend, Patrick Judd, aptly described it, ‘all the clichés were at once confirmed and rejected’.
The trip opened up another dimension of America to me, more fragile and complex than before. For the first time I was able to interact with the land of my childhood dreams; it was palpable, powerful, and I could probe at the seams. But a week was far too short. In the end it became an exercise in titillation that only served to deepen the schism between fantasy and reality in me - was this East-Coast séjour any more real than the American vision of my youth? I’m still not sure, how can I be sure …
… like Ginsberg, ‘I’m trying to come to the point’ - America is a fault line in my mind, a tectonic plate heaped with fantasy, grinding at the desire for raw, live experience, fueling the need to explore the relationship further.
Alan and I had long talked about a project on America, a journey of some form that would call our individual artistic agencies into play. Alan with his photographic eye and interwoven textual fragments, and me through the language of theatre, drawing on people, their stories, voices and movements. But rather than reciprocate the illusions we had consumed as children, this project would require a degree of objectivity, a ‘documentary’ angle, sharp enough to carve into the viscera of American culture, to hear what the ‘voice’ on the inside says. How differently does it speak to the outer voice that we’ve listened to for so long?
And so it is that this project, ‘Calling America’, came to be. A project that considers the possibility of ‘real’ voices from across North America, a project about people, places and stories. It is the first leg of our journey into the complexity of America and it marks the start of some very exciting work to come. Funding permitting, our aim is to make the transition from the ‘virtual’ to the ‘physical’ experience of America and continue this exploration in person.
Thank you for visiting.
Project Aims
- To create a tapestry of stories from real people in real places across the USA.
- To offer a counterpoint to the mainstream media portrayal of US culture.
- To question internal and external perceptions of people and places.
- To nurture an understanding of the dissemination of cultural matter in the ‘Internet Age’.
- — and subsequently to contribute to the exploration of culture through new media.
- To build a ‘virtual’ repository of artefacts that can then be used for the ‘second stage’ of the project.
- To listen and to learn.
Further information
If you would like more detailed information on our project plans, including a project outline and information on the second part of the project then please don’t hesitate to get in touch via our contact form. Thank you.
