Traces London

Traces is a site-specific, immersive and theatrical experience company, which reinvents old and often disused buildings, bringing them back to life with the smells, tastes, touches, sounds and appearance of a time gone by. ‘To live is to leave traces…’ Walter Benjamin Every story, however hidden, leaves a trace… The objects we leave behind, speak fragile broken sentences to those who come across them later. Have you ever stood in a museum and longed to make contact with those stories, by touching the objects so tantalisingly close behind the glass? Or wandered through a dilapidated and empty house, wishing you could see it as the last inhabitants left it? Traces aims to allow you to do just this. Traces is a site-specific, immersive and theatrical experience company, which reinvents old and often disused buildings, bringing them back to life with the smells, tastes, touches, sounds and appearance of a time gone by. Traces is about narrative. More specifically, Traces is the practice of using buildings to tell their history through the stories of those who lived and worked in them. We base each show on a particular eventful period in the buildings history and create scenes of ‘moments left in time’ which reveal hidden narratives, combining historical facts with fictitious objects and stories that interweave to produce the exhibition. We work with a plethora of specially selected and commissioned artists and designers who create original artwork for the production, and all of this is available to purchase during the show. The function is not historical recreation nor simple pastiche, but of bringing a former life of a building into the contemporary design arena through an immersive interactive experience. The audience is invited to explore the building, discover these histories for themselves; wandering through the rooms left as if only a moment before, and to unpick their secrets.