Mrs Tsk *

Momus
Life in a Scotch Sitting Room, addenda
Audio file, 2012

This is an extract from an audio artwork by Momus currently being exhibited as part of What we have done, what we are about to do, an exhibition at the CCA on Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street.

Born in Paisley in 1960, Momus is a singer, writer and performance artist. Since he’s currently based in Japan, access to the CCA Archives was a physical impossibility for him. Commissioned to make a piece related to the history of the CCA, Momus recalled that cult poet, singer and raconteur Ivor Cutler had released a spoken word album in 1978, Life in a Scotch Sitting Room, Vol. 2, based on recordings of performances made at the Third Eye Centre (the CCA’s former incarnation) between the 7th and 9th of July, 1977. Cutler’s tales construct a factitious autobiographical narrative based on the life of a wretchedly poor and stereotypically Scottish family during the Great Depression. Momus, in turn, makes factitious versions of Cutler’s tales: false memories of false memories, as it were. The episodes range from half-baked vocal impersonations of Cutler to Aesop’s Fables-type animal stories told over digitally re-assembled tracks of Cutler himself playing the harmonium.

Direct link to file.