“Idealism took its position on the ground”

I’m working on a new recording / performance piece called “Idealism took its position on the ground”. The title comes from a randomly-selected quote from Jean Paul Sartre, but the piece grew from a found cassette recording of a patient in a hospital refusing to eat their food. This recording, in the context of the quote, got me to thinking about the care of the sick in terms of both the ideals that underpin our healthcare system and the reality of providing those ideals every day. There is a sadness in seeing the noble ideal of free health care for all borne out in waiting lists, inadequate provisions and government cuts, and the political whipping boy that the NHS has always been. I wanted to create a piece that tried to leapfrog the party politics and reconnect the idealism with the ground.