Fallen Fruit

For the opening ceremony of the 2005 Canterbury Festival, Strange Cargo destroyed six tonnes of Kentish Apples in protest over EU subsidy cuts. Finding its inspiration in an article of the same name by George Monbiot, Fallen Fruit was a project whose subject focused specifically on the plight of the traditional Kentish apple. The work highlighted the withdrawal of EU subsidies to ancient Kentish orchards, resulting in thousands of fruit trees being dug up because they were not commercially viable.

This very local issue provided Strange Cargo, in partnership with composer Orlando Gough and choirmaster Jeremy Avis, with the foundations for a different model of participation.

The subject demanded a new, politicised approach that moved away from traditional notions of public celebration. 300 local singers and percussionists joined forces with a contemporary choir, The Shout, to perform in Canterbury as a sinister apple crusher, created by sculptor Andrew Baldwin churned through tonnes of the fruit.

Fallen Fruit took place in place in front of a large audience in the city centre, in Iron Bar Lane, where a choir of 300 local singers and percussionists, elevated on staging, joined forces with the contemporary choir, The Shout, to deliver Orlando Gough’s specially composed work, Fallen Fruit. As the event built and more voices joined the stage, the huge flywheels, ratchets, gearings and crankshafts, powered up and the machine began to noisily and indiscriminately pulverise tonnes of apples, continually fed into the massive steel hopper by a team of people. The apples were crushed to a pulp as the toothed wheels of the crusher came together, spewing pulp wastefully onto the ground around the machine.

The event marked an important milestone in the company’s approach to participation.

The event was supported by Brogdale, the Faversham home of the National Fruit Collection, who together with Paul Mansfield, supplied the 6 tonnes of apples for the event. Sculptor Andrew Baldwin designed and built the automata.