FreeFall Guest Curator
FreeFall was an experimental performance series at the Oxford Art Factory glass cube - a glass cube that seperates the two stage spaces. Between June - July 2016 I curated a two-month-long performance series as the guest curator.
Caroline Garcia and Lauren Eiko | The Vitrine of Dancing Cultures
24 - 25 June 2016Garcia and Eiko met in a dance class. Both their practices involve an investigation of movement, but also align conceptually in the inquiry of anthropological matters - more so, the problematic ones, especially the legacy of colonialism in anthropological practice.
Drawing inspiration from Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco’s ‘The Couple in the Cage’ performances during 1992-93, Garcia & Eiko will similarly interrogate the anthropological practice of human beings being exhibited, which has occurred throughout history, placing people from Africa, Asia and Latin America on display in Europe and the United States in museums, zoos and theatres. Due to the architecture of the Free Fall glass cube in the Oxford Arts Factory, it is inevitable that these two coloured, cis-female bodies will confront degrees of politicisation, as their ethnicity is put on display.
‘The Vitrine of Dancing Cultures’ is a museographic dance installation, in which Garcia and Eiko present auto-ethnographic portraits of themselves, bringing forth their Filipino and Japanese/Aboriginal heritages respectively. They engage in a durational dance ritual, where the neocolonisation of popular culture performed through ‘Just Dance’ games by Nintendo Wii is translated into their bodies, that are inherently marked with their cultural ancestry. Through repetition, this performance intends to bring into question an individual's stamina when facing the expectations of cultural competence and visibility.
Atlanta Eke | Fuck You Buddy
1 - 2 July 2016Experimenting with criteria for existence beyond ideological preference Atlanta embraces the spatial separation of the cube in a practice for the capacities of deterrence
Atlanta Eke is a dancer and choreographer working internationally. Atlanta was a DanceWEB Europe scholarship recipient 2010 in Vienna, and received Next Wave Kickstart 2011, Dancehouse Housemate residency 2012 in Melbourne, and ArtStart Grant recipient. She performed for Sidney Leoni in Undertones at Tamz in August Berlin and Marten Spangberg's Page 74, ImPulsTanz Festival Vienna. Atlanta performed in Jan Ritsema's Oedipus My Foot throughout Europe as well as in Allianz-The Agora Project (Performing Arts Forum). Her solo MONSTER BODY has been presented at the 2012 Next Wave Festival, SEXES Festival Performance Space Sydney, 2013 Dance Massive Festival at Dancehouse, MONA FOMA Festival Hobart, MDT Stockholm, BACKFLIP Feminism and Humour in Contemporary Art, Margaret Lawrence Gallery and the Fierce Festival in Birmingham. Atlanta presented her work Untitled at the NVG for the Melbourne Now exhibition; she performed the work of Marina Abramovic and Joan Jonas at the Kaldor Public Art Project #27: 13 Rooms in Sydney and was part of Maria Hassabi's work Intermission for the Melbourne Festival. Atlanta premiered her works Fountain at Chunky Move, and Organ, made in collaboration with composer Daniel Jenatsch, at Liquid Architecture Festival. She is an Arts House Culture Lab resident for her work I CON and is the recipient of the 2014 inaugural Keir Choreographic Award for her latest work Body Of Work which has since toured to Dance Massiv/Dancehouse Melbourne, Adelaide Festival, Dark Mofo Festival MONA Hobart and Les Plateaux de la Briqueterie Paris. More recently, Atlanta premiered her work MISS UNIVERSAL at Gertrude Contemporary and Chunky Move Next Move program.
Beth Dillon | Poncho’s Progress
8 - 9 July 2016Poncho is a squat snacker knackered from a long day's wander in wooded elsewheres. A performance with no words only tongue.
Angela Goh | 1161
15 - 16 July 20161161 is what GC 161 * and T 1000 ** adds up, or melts down to. A puddle of naivety and violence, somewhere between teenage girl and calculated villain. Neither good nor evil, it assumes all forms in order to become formless.
*the name of the mysterious chemical substance that Alex Mack gets doused in, resulting in her developing powers which include melting into a puddle
**the name of the melting, liquid nitrogen villain in Terminator 2
1161 proposes dance as the ultimate metaphor for the contemporary world. Just as Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ is as outdated as the eighties, perhaps the ultimate contemporary figure would be more like ‘immaterial girl’. The world exists more and more in a state of fluidity or stream rather than solidity – soundcloud music streaming rather than buying cds/records, streamable netflix rather than tv programming, air bnb rather than property, amazon rather than shops, snapchat rather than photo albums, bitcoin rather than cash, and art events rather than art objects. Reality is not fixed but rather flows. The world is coming to resemble the immaterialness of dance more and more.
1161 approaches dance as an entity which is formless and flows through the world with or without us, but that achieves ‘form’ by using a body (of a dancer, or otherwise). Perhaps like a ghost that occupies or possesses a person’s body in order to achieve some task or action in the material world, or like a radio frequency that is always available but only audible when the radio is tuned in. 1161 proposes form as a way into formlessness – and so follows the philosophy of Bruce Lee, mastering all forms in order to become formless, “like water, my friend”; being able to flow around an opponent, through form, and alongside time and space.
1161 deals with the horror of formlessness, something that is always lurking, that can be felt but not seen, and something that cannot be controlled, but also gives itself up to the pleasure of transformation.
Kieran Bryant | Techno Chicken
22 - 23 July 2016What came first - the techno chicken or the egg?
Techno chicken always comes first.
Techno chicken is important to itself. Enjoying itself, and its eggs.
It has eggs. It want eggs.
You can look at techno chicken but techno chicken won’t be looking at you.
Not while there are eggs. And itself.