The Garden of Cyrus was an afternoon of performance interventions outside Dragon Hall Norwich, based on the writing of Sir Thomas Browne. It was an interactive afternoon featuring seven artists from across the country. The artists used performance, sound-work, text and sculpture to bring imagery and ideas from 'The Garden of Cyrus' and 'Urne Burial' by Browne onto the street outside Dragon Hall in Norwich. Passers-by experienced chance encounters with an elegantly gloved lady, mysterious invitations to hear a stranger's heart, floral chess, a perambulating tree and writing raked onto the ground.
A commissioned text by Krzysztof Fijalkowski was distributed at this event.
Sir Thomas Browne
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was a poetic writer living in Norfolk in the seventeenth century who was interested in eclectic ideas including mortality,paradise and the fragility of life. Browne’s ‘The Garden of Cyrus’ examines the regular occurrence of the figure five, four points around a central point that are often joined to form a lattice, in history, nature and mythology. 'Urne Burial' is a discourse on differing death rites and the choice between burial and cremation. Browne also wrote Musaeum Clausum, a book detailing an imaginary cabinet of curiosities or museum and he features in ‘The Rings of Saturn” by W.G Sebald.