Block Universe International Performance Art Festival, 2017

*UK premiere

Made possible thanks to the support of Gaia Art Foundation.

Working with choreography as an open source method, the UK premiere of Q&A is a game in which the audience participates by asking questions while Rawls responds. Through this interaction, an event unfolds that weaves together thoughts, desires, prompts and opinions from those present. Through this practice, Rawls employs choreography as a way to question the roots of authorship, embodied labour and the indeterminate interpretation of art.

Image credit: Arron Leppard

*New commission

Co-commissioned by Block Universe and Open Space Contemporary with the support of Gaia Art Foundation.

Block Universe and Open Space Contemporary present the performative dinner Pluto’s Kitchen by Işıl Eğrikavuk. Drawing parallels between Pluto’s demotion from the solar system and the UK’s strategy to exit the European Union, this event will bring audiences and cultures together through the sharing of a conceptual menu.

In 2006, scientists from NASA announced that Pluto was a dwarf planet, and no longer one of nine planets recognized in our Solar System. On 23 June 2016, following a referendum, the United Kingdom declared it no longer wished to be a member of the European Union. These shifting borders and geographies, which currently determine not only the status of countries as well as celestial bodies but also their imagined living conditions, inspired Eğrikavuk to produce the performative dinner Pluto’s Kitchen in collaboration with chef Vidar Begum. Cultural identity is inextricably linked with the politics of food and the sharing of regional cuisines across borders. In this work, Eğrikavuk will examine the alternative, by envisioning what form the kitchen and cuisine of an isolated planet, and thus an isolated nation, could take.

Following this performative dinner,  Art Monthly writer Chris McCormack will be in conversation with Turkish artist Işıl Eğrikavuk reflecting on her performative piece in relation to the current political climate.

Performers:
Ada Burke
Artunç Yavuz
Leto Dietrich
Malina de Carlo
Onur Şafak
Takunda Kramer
Tuba Tırpan

Image credit: Arron Leppard

*UK premiere

Produced by MDT, NorrlandsOperan, Inkonst and Zimmer with support from the Swedish Arts Council, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, the City of Stockholm and Stockholm County Council. This premiere has been made possible thanks to the support of the Embassy of Sweden, London, the City of Stockholm and Gaia Art Foundation.

This UK premiere, Shapes of States, traces the historical and political writing of the body by connecting Swedish public health ideologies from the 1920s with contemporary training ideals. With a starting point in Meyerhold’s biomechanics, the dancers in Shapes of States develop a movement vocabulary far from any idea of natural behaviour. In a series of dances, they tell the broken story of a human belief in the disciplining of the flesh. This performance is visually described by the dancers and suggests interpretations of what is happening on stage, what is happening in the world and what is happening in our fantasy.
Performance and visual interpretation: Sandra Lolax, Sindri Runudde, Andrea Svensson and Stina Nyberg. Set design: Tove Edlund Dreiman. Light design: Josefin Hinders. Costume: Tove Edlund Dreiman and Sandra Leandersson

Image credit: Arron Leppard

*London premiere

Made possible thanks to the support of Gaia Art Foundation.

In the London premiere of Liz Magic Laser’s Political Therapy workshop, Primal Therapy and meditation techniques will be used to elicit connections and conflate personal experiences with political beliefs. Laser has enlisted drama therapist and actress Louise Platt to guide participants through activities that facilitate the expression of frustrations related to Brexit and other current events.

Developed by Arthur Janov in the 1970s, Primal Therapy was a radical approach that involved abreaction, the cathartic re-experiencing of a traumatic event. Laser adapts this palliative method of clarifying emotional expression into effective communication, offering it as a means toward embodied political discourse. Therapeutic props such as pillows and stuffed animals based on political party logos can be hit or embraced in Laser’s version of political Primal Therapy.

Similar workshops have taken place at Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, in advance of the 2016 presidential election and in the UK before Article 50 was initiated at Grand Union, Birmingham. Forthcoming workshops will take place at CAC Brétigny between the first and second round of France’s presidential elections and at Jupiter Artland Foundation, near Edinburgh, where participants will address the debates surrounding Scottish independence.

With thanks to Jupiter Artland.

Image credit: Arron Leppard

Curator Chandra Frank in conversation with Block Universe artist Zadie Xa, moderated by Victor Wang.

Goldsmith lecturer Chandra Frank will be in conversation with Block Universe artist Zadie Xa, discussing her ongoing practice in relation to ideas of nationhood, identity and the displacement within the Asian diaspora. The conversation will be moderated by the London and Shanghai based curator and researcher Victor Wang.

Image credit:  Arron Leppard

A movement workshop by Block Universe artist Florence Peake in collaboration with Chisenhale Dance Space.

Drawing on somatic dance practices including contact improvisation, Skinner Releasing Technique and Florence Peake’s own art and dance background this creative movement workshop relates to sensitivity, connectedness and integration. In an ever changing political landscape, this half-day workshop fosters a sensorial and democratic environment by revealing and releasing conscious and subconscious desires. Incorporating writing, drawing, voice and movement.

This workshop is open to all, no prior movement experience required.

Image credit: Arron Leppard

The Mechanical Body by Swedish artists Stina Nyberg and Andrea Svensson takes as its starting point the physical practice established during the making of the performance Shapes of States, performed at the Tabernacle on May 29th as part of Block Universe 2017. As associative take on the 1920s movement of the Meyerhold’s Biomechanics used by Soviet actors, the workshop will delve into the language of this specific theatre training technique by exploring its highly stylised forms, duets and acrobatics and will essentially create a contemporary adaptation of it. Participants will engage in a warm-up eclectically mixing Qi Gong, conversations, visual interpretation and burpees.

This workshop is open to all, no prior movement experience required.

Image credit:  Stina Nyberg, Shapes of States, 2016. © José Figueroa

Marking the culmination of the third edition of the festival, Block Universe presents an evening programme of film screenings that explore the complexities of communication and representation whilst touching on identity politics and issues of place-making. Hosted by The White Building and organised in partnership with SPACE Art + Technology Programme, the screening draws from this year’s participating Block Universe artists including Liz Magic Laser, Rory Pilgrim, Eglė Budvytytė, Zadie Xa and will feature special invited guests as well as two audio pieces by Hanne Lippard.

For Primal Speech (2016), Liz Magic Laser assembled a pseudo therapy group composed of actors with opposing political convictions about Brexit and other world events. In the cinematic, surrealist fiction film In the Absence of Miracles: the Twilight and the Loop (2016), the Dutch / Lithuanian artist duo Bart Groenendaal and Eglė Budvytytė play with the idea of the city as a post-apocalyptic landscape. American actors employing Brechtian theatricality perform a script that conveys hints at the social disintegration of Europe in a fairytale about a car-borne cornerstone family getting lost on it’s way to a birthday party. British artist Rory Pilgrim contributes with his film The Open Sky (2016), that introduces five women who lived through the radical movements of the 60s and 70s. In Moodrings, Crystals, and Opal-coloured Stones (2016), Zadie Xa undergoes initiation rituals for mudang, or Korean shamen, channeling her interest in magic, witchcraft, and astrology.

Explore the individual nature of imagination, enter a futuristic version of a primal scream room, experience an immersive vocal mantra, venture into Korean Shamen and find yourself in an absurdist road-movie, all in one Sunday Screening.

Image credit:  In the Absence of Miracles: the Twilight and the Loop, 2016. © Bart Groenendaal and  Eglė Budvytytė

*UK premiere

Made possible with the support of Bath Spa University and Gaia Art Foundation.

The choreographed movements for the UK premiere of 5100: Pentagon were inspired by collected archival images relating to the Gwangju uprising on 18 May 1980, and are set to an adapted version of the 1980s demonstration song, ‘A Song of May’. Each performance is constructed based on a web-tutorial accessed by anonymous groups of participants with no restrictions on age, gender and art experience. This project brings to light an unexplored period in history as an intensive moment, performed repetitively yet differently by voluntary participants in every new iteration.

5100: Pentagon is a project by Young In Hong in collaboration with choreographers Ann So-Hee Mannik Kristiansen and Sarah Louise Kristiansen.

Image credit:  Arron Leppard

*New commission

Commissioned by Block Universe with the support of Somerset House Studios and Gaia Art Foundation. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.

Creating an immersive environment for this performance at the Lancaster Rooms at Somerset House, Zadie Xa’s work interrogates ideas of authentic versus inherited positions and displacement within the Asian diaspora. Through a fantastical overlayering of cultural references, Crash, Boom, Hisssssss. Legend of the Liquid Sword will transport the audience into a supernatural narrative inhabited by shamanistic beings, based on Manshin (Korean shaman) and loosely inspired by Pansori, a Korean genre of musical storytelling performed by a vocalist and a drummer.
A performance by Zadie Xa with Jane Chan, Jihye Kim and Joonhong Min. Written by Taylor Le Melle. Costumes by Benito Mayor Vallejo and Zadie Xa.

Image credit:  Arron Leppard

*New commission

This commission  has been made possible thanks to the support of the Arts Council England, the Embassy of Sweden, London and Gaia Art Foundation.

**Please note this work contains strobe effect lighting.

Artists Kim Coleman (b.1976, Lisburn, Northern Ireland), Cara Tolmie (b. 1984, Glasgow, UK) and dancer and choreographer Zoë Poluch (b. 1979, London, Canada) will collaborate together for the first time in this new commission exploring the use of light, voice and movement within a theatrical setting.

Image credit:  Arron Leppard

*New commission

Made possible with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and Gaia Art Foundation.

Pilgrim will present Software Garden, a new commission for Block Universe 2017. This performance explores connections between technology, disability and care as a way of looking at larger political frameworks. Interweaving poetry, speech, song and choreography, this will be the first performance as part of a larger new body of work built on Pilgrim’s first experimental music album. Unfolding somewhere between Kabuki theatre, a pop concert and a political social space of action, this performance will attempt to bring together a variety of people from different ages, backgrounds, human and robotic, to propose the creation of an embodied system of care and kindness as a software garden.
In collaboration with poet Carol Kalled, singer Robyn Haddon and dancer Casper-Malte Jørgensen.

Image credit:  Arron Leppard

*UK premiere

In Eglė Budvytytė’s mobile performance Choreography for the Running Male, a group of men jog a route through the city. As they trace a path in unison, they carry out choreographed gestures relating to emotions ranging from shame to seduction, along with sequences referencing militaristic action. Coming from a country with a history of Soviet occupation, Budvytytė’s piece, with its uniform choreography and sound of marching feet, inevitably speaks to mechanisms of social control. Using the idea of overt emotion, Budvytytė explores the flow-on effect when gendered bodies begin to act beyond expectation. This work investigates notions of socialized behaviour that infiltrate public consciousness and, as an extension, public space.

Made possible with the support of the Lithuanian Culture Institute, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and Gaia Art Foundation.

Image credit:  Arron Leppard

*New commission

Commissioned by Block Universe with the support of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia and Gaia Art Foundation.

Bachmann’s new commission I don’t want your whispers examines the relationship between language, voice and power. This work is informed by ideas surrounding activism and dominant discourse, and how to find one’s own voice in order to be heard and listened to. Performed by actor Anna Tierney and dancer Patricia Langa, this piece deals with negotiations of speech and the materiality of the voice and gestures. In I don’t want your whispers dance and spoken word together form an embodied vocabulary through which the performers navigate the construct of language and affirmation.

Image credit:  Arron Leppard