Snap, Crack, Break, Shake
With Memento! (mori)

In Some Hands to Hold You audience are invited to break individually sealed ampoules fortune cookie style - and then take them home as mementos. Exploring several ideas simultaneously the piece draws attention to the prehensility of hands in relation to the passing of time, the moment and mortality. The piece was commissioned by Clod Ensemble's Performing Medicine Project as an after dinner 'action' for a Wellcome humanities conference at Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry in 2012 and is available to buy as a kit in Sheila's shop.

Each package is hand-made by Sheila and contains an ampoule with contents and small momento packet.

What Happens in the Work?

Audience members are invited to sit at a table, select a box and then break the ampoule it contains as per instructions from Sheila. The audience members then have to 'draw' out its contents using magnets and tweezers and place them in a small memento packet. The ampoule sits in a long black box and contains two small watch hands with red and blue cotton. The small memento packet also sits in the box and says the following text on it:

Keep me close
Always
X

Once made the memento packet can either remain in the box or be carried around in a purse or wallet acting as a reminder of the passing of time, the 'moment' and mortality (for example).

A Clod Ensemble Commission