Hamilton Mill Ruins Project

Site-specific, multi-media and collaborative public art project for which Jerry Beck served as Artistic Director, Writer, Curator, Participating Artist and Performer. 2007/2008

Jerry Beck secured permission from the City of Lowell and created a collaborative theatrical public art event at the historic Hamilton Mill Complex.  The project investigated the past, present, and future of this massive decaying architectural site.  Originally, the Pennacook Nation came to this area to celebrate the spring and summer months.  By the mid 1850s, this site was a centerpiece of the American Industrial Revolution with dozens of textile mills offering jobs to millions of Americans and immigrants from all over the world.  In the 1950s, Lowell’s industrial landscape was all but gone and fell into economic decline.  

Beck lead a dramatic three-hour public art performance tour in which various sites within the mill complex were illuminated and activated by film projections, theater and dance pieces, interactive sculptural installations, fire works, music, poetry writing and reading, and scientific experiments involving over 200 local filmmakers, visual artists, musicians, photographers, poets, scientists, urban planners, Revolving Museum Teen Art Group, and the University of Massachusetts faculty members and students.  

The concept was to revitalize, illuminate, and propose this site become a future multi-cultural art, science, and educational center.  It was Beck’s hope to highlight to the public and city officials of Lowell how artists, students, community members, civic, cultural, and educational partnerships can collaborate to generate innovative artworks, excitement, publicity, cultural tourism, and a new creative economy in Lowell’s downtown Cultural and Historic District.