Block Universe International Performance Art Festival, 2015 

Through a series of quick-fire conversations and presentations, this public seminar held by curatorial research group The Consonants explored a series of approaches to curating durational, context-specific and performative artwork that reflects the broad range of institutional, medium and geographic contexts of the participants, within the context of Block Universe.

Initiated by Fatos Üstek and comprised of curators Charles Aubin, Maaike Gouwenberg, Rose Lejeune, Margarida Mendes, Margit Neuhold, Louise O’Kelly, Ben Roberts and Nadine Zeidler. The Consonants is an international curatorial research group that explore their various curatorial practices as a framework for dialogue and a site of research.

The Consonants is part of Vision Forum’s network, founded by Per Hüttner and supported by the Universitet Linköpings, Sweden. Vision Forum is an organisation that carries out research in contemporary art and organises events that transgresses the boundaries between performance, exhibition, workshops and education.

Artist and composer Lapelytė presents The Circus – an expanded version of Candy Shop for seven female voices, including acoustic and electronic instruments and video. The Circus will present a local choir, drummer and a marching band to make a full length celebration reworking the games of power that are embedded in the rap songs into lullabies, narrating a story about beauty, gender and the mundane. Originally commissioned by Borealis Festival, Norway.

Performed by Nouria Bah, Anat Ben David, Angharad Davies, Sharon Gal, Heidi Heidelberg, Maria Sideri, Greta Eacott and Lina Lapelytė herself.

An hour-long performance incorporating a series of impersonations; dance and speech acts depicting objects, people, phenomena, and philosophical concepts. Lord of Beef goes back to the primal mimetic act that lies at the very basis of theatre and comedy, exploring theatrical artifice, ritual and a space of compromised logic where dance and language meet. The last impersonation of the show is based on the Butoh tongue dance technique, where the performer’s body gradually surrenders to the movement itself.

Lord of Beef co-directed and Butoh training by Vangeline.

A spoken-sung historical-future of the Art Worker’s Guild weaving through myth, fact and speculation. With hit songs like Sorry to break it to you this way and new compositions like Feed the animals, Moore presents a new score for five voices, accompanied by bike pumps, weather balloons, emergency blankets, and paintings.

Florence Peake’s performance practice places drawing, painting and sculptural elements in relationship to the moving body. In this new commission, Voicings, Peake is working with the phenomenon of ‘channeling’ where a person embodies a spirit, entity or personality from another space-time. Referring to a vast open space that has all the answers, an infinite archive, or a storehouse of everything, this performative demonstration explores the boundaries of theatricality and physicality in the process of becoming a ‘channel’.

The Fortunetellers is a narrative-based performance that combines memories with a vast array of archival documents such as photographs, videos, annotated sketches, maps, and a travel log. Ga superimposes live storytelling, recorded sound, still and moving images, to conjure up the terms and rituals of daily life in the Arctic night. This piece was originally shown at The Kitchen, New York, and represents the first artist exchange in an ongoing partnership with Block Universe.

A choreographic work that explores the inherent physicality between image and word in Louise Bourgeois and Gary Indiana’s collaborative book ‘To Whom It May Concern’. In this newly commissioned work, Bailey inserts her body into this conversation, becoming a presence that articulates the visceral and sensual nature of the work. Alternating between complex sequences of movement and moments of reflection, Bailey and LeMieux dissect the performance space with an evershifting dialogue between body and spoken word.

Sculptor Eva Rothschild and choreographer Joe Moran take the first step in a fresh new collaboration for Block Universe performance art festival in partnership with fig-2, an independent project resident at the ICA. Navigating the meeting points and tensions between their sculptural and choreographic concerns, Rothschild and Moran explore the shared and conflicting materiality of the body and the sculptural object. Presented in both the Studio and Theatre at the ICA, A Setup brings existing film and performance works into relationship with new sculptural interventions.

A Setup merges two practices by bringing existing film and performance works into relationship with new sculpture taking place at ICA Studio and ICA Theatre: while Rothschild’s film Boys and Sculpture (2012) and Moran’s In Land (2008) are shown in the ICA Studio with benches by Rothschild, Moran’s durational performance installation, Singular (2011) is performed in the ICA Theatre with sculptures made for the space by Rothschild.

In Do-Re-Me two figures, wrapped around each other and within swathes of tarpaulin, roll across the RA courtyard. Creating a mass that appears both familiar and strange, the performers’ fragmented limbs flail and reach for movement, continually destabilising and transforming the integrity of each body’s form. At once compelling and playful, Do-Re-Me mines the relationship between people, space and matter, and through these qualities converses with Conrad Shawcross’ sculptural installation The Dappled Light of the Sun.