Stories Continue: Seahenge, flints, and beyond (Xu Zecheng, China, ITP 2024)
Written by Xu Zecheng, Cultural Exchange Officer, Shanghai Museum (China, ITP 2024)
Norwich mornings are crisp, like freshly fried chips. We started our second day with a visit to King’s Lynn, a quiet, historic town in West Norfolk. Once a bustling port, the town now whispers its maritime heyday and tales of sailors and merchants through quaint buildings, where the mineral scent of sun-baked stones mingles with a faint salty hint from the sea. We wandered through the cobbled lanes to explore the Seahenge exhibit at the Lynn Museum, alongside its delightful Frederick Savage collection and West Norfolk displays.
I found myself touching flints – a lot of flints – in Norfolk. From checkerboard buildings to the Lynn Museum’s collection, these stones never speak out loud with their unassuming yet glossy existence. Like the Seahenge timbers, the flints have accidentally witnessed and become part of humanity’s instinctual pursuit of permanence while navigating the material world. I wondered if the Neolithic blade I held could distinguish its creator’s grasp from mine, or if both of us were too fleeting for it to even notice.
Humans are transient, but our stories with objects endure, brought to life by the passion and dedication of those who preserve and share them. I met such people – a lot of people – in a ‘radical’ art center challenging museum conventions, a workhouse with enthusiastic pensioner volunteers and sturdy Suffolk horses on its farm, a quiet guildhall poised for its transformation into a creativity hub, and a narrowly surviving old theatre where Shakespeare’s feet might have trod. Despite challenges of economic constraints, political climates, and geographical limitations, these ‘star throwers’ are creating new chapters in their own ways – whether by innovating future missions, engaging locals and students, documenting a transcription, or collecting Wrigley’s boxes.
A chance encounter with former British Museum director Robert Anderson that day added another layer to the experience. As he walked through his curated King’s Lynn Festival exhibition to greet us, supported by a walking stick, I felt woven into an impalpable fabric of shared stories. Museums, history, art, and culture are our attempts to find meaning amidst the randomness and uncertainty of existence. And this is also what the ITP journey and the placements offer – an enduring impulse to create and connect. Whether ten days, six weeks, or a lifetime, we experience the world, share our stories, and leave our mark. We see, meet, collide, include, depart. Stories happen – then told, forgotten, celebrated, or concealed.
It was – and is and will be – very nice to see you again.
