#pbLIVE19

[xavierdesousaofficial]

performingborders | LIVE | 2019

Curated by Xavier de Sousa and Alessandra Cianetti for performingborders

Watch full videos of talks, commissions and performances here: https://performingborders.live/pblive2019-programme/

From February until July 2019, performingborders presented its first programme of live events and artist commissions that brought outside of the online realm urgent conversations and extraordinary artistic practices happening within the UK experimental live art sector around notions of cultural, juridical, racial, gendered, class, physical, and everyday borders.

As an attempt to make sense of an ever-developing present that hugely impacts on minority and oppressed communities, performingborders | LIVE brings those discussions into venues in Manchester, Brighton, London (UK) and Nogales (Mexico) to widen the conversation and create a broader inclusive discussion that will also be freely accessible online.

Participants artists and curators: Anti-Cool, Camille Barton, Burong, Season Butler, Critical Interruptions, Tuna Erdem, Tara Fatehi Irani, Istanbul Queer Arts Collective, Bojana Janković, Dr. Anna Marazuela Kim, Annie Jael Kwan, Marikiscrycrycry, Dana Olărescu, osborn&møller, Raju Rage, Nima Séne, Sim Chi Yin, Kai Syng Tan, Helena Walsh.

Presented by performingborders and Foreign Actions Productions in collaboration with:

Live Art Development Agency (London, UK), Contact Theatre (Manchester, UK), Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (Brighton, UK), Artsadmin (London, UK), Deptford Lounge (London, UK), Beyond the Wall/Más Allá del Mur Festival (Nogales, US/Mexico), and the Centre for The Study of Sexual Dissidence (University of Sussex, UK). Supported by the Arts Council England.

PROGRAMME (February – July 2019)

Nima Séne & Tuna Erdem

Sat 9 February 2019 |1.00pm-2.00pm | performingborders | LIVE | Manchester Queer Contact Festival at YES Theatre A conversation between Glasgow/Berlin-based live artist Nima Séne and curator and artist Tuna Erdem from the Istanbul Queer Arts Collective.

Read Xavier de Sousa’s reflections here

Sim Chi Yin, Annie Jael Kwan & Dr Anna Marazuela Kim

Tue 19 March 2019 |7.00pm-9.00pm| performingborders | LIVE | Brighton Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts A performative reading by Nobel Peace Prize photographer and artist Sim Chi Yin, who will be in conversation with curator Annie Jael Kwan from Something Human and Asia-Art-Activism. The Q&A was chaired by academic, thinker and activist Dr. Anna Marazuela Kim.

Embodied Movement for Social Change Workshop dates:

Thu 21 March 2019 | 6.00pm-9.00pm| performingborders | LIVE | Brighton Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (SOLD OUT)

Sat 6 July 2019 | 1.00pm-4.00pm| performingborders | LIVE | London

In the Embodied Social Change workshop by Camille Barton, dance, somatics and mindfulness are used to explore how oppression is rooted in the body and how we can shift its hold on our lives using mindful attention and movement. The work is intended to generate new approaches to activism that focus on the body, as well as the mind. After all, systems of power and oppression are reproduced by our bodies on a daily basis.

Anti-Cool & osborn&møller

Wed 24 April 2019 | 7.00pm-9.00pm | performingborders | LIVE | London Toynbee Studios

A conversation between interdisciplinary artist Anti-Cool and curators osborn&møller (UK/Denmark), presenting the UK premiere of Anti-Cool’s three-screen video installation On Returning, which explores the history of several British families and couples, separated and disrupted by current immigration policies.

Since the financial requirement was introduced in 2012 for those with family members from outside of the EU countries, 20,000 families who cannot meet the threshold have been facing separation from their family members. Many of them can only speak to their children on Skype. Using raw and often blunt interview footage of participants who are in the middle of such disruptions, On Returning investigates their true feelings about borders, human rights and families. Although highly prevalent in today’s political climate, such stories are still unknown by the majority of the people in the UK. While investigating the difficult issues of immigration the work also uses experimental visual elements of the British landscape and physical/performative actions to explore the highly emotive side of the subject matter.

Más Allá del Muro Festival

Sun 5 May 2019 | performingborders | LIVE | US/Mexico border wall Nogales Arizona/Sonora performingborders | LIVE conversations and performance to camera commissions will be presented as part of the second edition of the Más Allá del Muro / Beyond the Wall Festival.

Más Allá del Muro / Beyond the Wall, which is run by a coalition of local and international artists, aims to showcase authentic, diverse, local perspectives on life at the US/Mexico border through local artists and youth. We know there is more to life at the border than the wall: our work offers locals a chance to celebrate and reconsider the narratives around local life, and non-locals an invitation to connect to authentic local stories and reconsider their perspective on life at the border. In 2019, we are hosting a binational pen pal program with high school students, and hosting the 2nd annual Beyond the Wall Festival, a binational art and culture festival in Nogales AZ/SON, where the wall bisects the city. The festival centerpiece is a performance of 15-foot tall puppets of children created with local youth; the puppets come together at the wall, reframing it as an object of play.

performingborders | LIVE | Curating Borderless Spaces

Date: 22 June 2019 | 12:00 - 17:00 | Live Art Development Agency, The Garrett Centre, 117 Mansford Street, London, E2 6LX

Tickets: FREE (booking essential)

After a series of pilot events across England and Nogales (US/Mexico border wall), the first performingborders | LIVE concludes with a day of performances, commissioned premieres, talks, food, and provocations at the Live Art Development Agency in London.

Curated by Alessandra Cianetti and Xavier de Sousa, and starting from the cue ‘Curating Borderless Spaces’, the day will focus on highlighting and platforming urgent voices and discourses within the Live Art sector on how we can work together in creating collaborative borderless, anti-racist, non-binary, feminist, non-ableist, post-colonial spaces.

Kicking off the day with a keynote by interdisciplinary artist, educator, and activist Raju Rage, the event will see the premiere of commissioned performances-to-camera by Istanbul Queer Arts Collective and Tara Fatehi Irani, along with new digital conversations on Live Art and borders by Burong and Critical Interruptions. Everyone is invited to participate in a communal live group conversation dotted by the interventions and provocations of guest artists Bojana Janković, Dana Olărescu, Malik Nashad Sharpe, Kai Syng Tan and Helena Walsh.

Writer in Residence Season Butler will respond to the discussions and exchanges of the day through live writing and she will close the event with a performative response to the day’s proceedings.

Curating Borderless Spaces is part of Antiuniveristy 2019

A vegan lunch (with no nuts) will be offered to everyone including a selection of drinks.*

SCHEDULE:

12pm: Keynote by Raju Rage + Presentation of commissions by Istanbul Queer Art Collective & Tara Fatehi Irani followed by Q&A with performingborders | LIVE curators and the audience

1.45pm: Lunch (during this time and throughout the day, the commissioned works by Burong, Critical Interruptions, Tara Fatehi Irani, and Istanbul Queer Art Collective will be accessible to the public)

2.30: Live group conversation and provocations by Bojana Janković, Dana Olărescu, Malik Nashad Sharpe, Kai Syng Tan, Helena Walsh

4pm: Final performance by Season Butler

4.30pm: Drinks and social time

Please note that all tickets are free and access information is below.

ACCESS:

Everyone is welcome!

To make sure as many of you can join us on the day, BSL interpretation will be provided, a T-loop system will be in place for those hard of hearing, the space is wheelchair accessible, your animal friends are welcome, and we can provide childcare for up to 7 children aged 1+**

Please get in touch if you have access requirements and we will be happy to support.

*Ingredients will be written down however if you have allergies we strongly advise to bring your own lunch with you.

**If you require childcare please tell us by writing to performingborderslive@gmail.com by the 7th of June so we make sure we can book it on time. Thank you!

performingborders | LIVE is a programme of events and new commissions focusing on the exploration of artistic practices happening within the UK live art sector around notions of cultural, juridical, racial, gendered, class, physical and everyday borders. Curated by Alessandra Cianetti and Xavier de Sousa.

Presented by performingborders and Foreign Actions Productions in collaboration with Live Art Development Agency (London, UK), Contact Theatre (Manchester, UK), Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (Brighton, UK), Artsadmin (London, UK), Deptford Lounge (London, UK), Beyond the Wall/Más Allá del Mur Festival (Nogales, US/Mexico), and the Centre for The Study of Sexual Dissidence (University of Sussex, UK). Supported by the Arts Council England.

For more information on the programme and the artists involved visit - https://performingborders.live/performingborders-live-2019-programme/

[xavierdesousaofficial]

performingborders | LIVE 2019

documentation and reflections

performingborders | LIVE  2019, curated by Alessandra Cianetti and Xavier de Sousa, was the first edition of a public programme of events, open conversations, artist digital commissions, and workshops focusing on the exploration of experimental and exciting artistic practices happening within the UK Live Art sector around notions and intersectional lived experiences of physical, racial, gendered, class, cultural, juridical, national and everyday borders.

Curators’ reflections on the programme: (click here)

“…how we strategise and how we survive…”

(Season Butler, Curating Borderless Spaces, LADA, 22nd June 2019)

pbLIVE19 draws from the three-year ongoing research curatorial platform performingborders that has been gathering over seventy national and international original interviews, guest posts, writings and experimental responses from live artists, thinkers, activists, academics and art professionals on physical and conceptual borders within an increasingly shared feeling of uncertainty. As an attempt to make sense of oppressive systems that hugely impacts on minorities and oppressed communities, pbLIVE19 aimed at bringing those discussions into national and international venues to meet both art audiences and general public. The transition from online to a live setting allowed us to widen the conversation, create a broader inclusive discussion, and commission new artworks that were also internationally broadcasted and accessible online.

Furthermore pbLIVE19 gave us the opportunity to open art spaces to conversations that are not yet mainstream (i.e. How do different cultural backgrounds influence our thinking/standing on notions of and lived experiences of borders? How are artists with different cultural upbringings exploring identities within different contexts?). It also allowed us to provoke artists and curators to play with the live interview format either according to their artistic aesthetics or to their intentions, and give space for them to think critically about their work and experiences. pbLIVE19 created the space for us to think of the contexts we were playing in (for instance in Manchester, we reflected on the history of the city as a historically migrant LGBTQ+ inclusive city, and how different cultural backgrounds can influence perspectives on our own identities) and how they could influence the events’ contents and the conversation around borders as a whole. The direct influence of the live audience included voices in the conversation that the online format didn’t: direct, unedited provocations and reflections.

Live Artists & Curators Talks

Invited guest curators Annie Jael Kwan, Tuna Erdem, and osborn&møller nominated artists Sim Chi Yin, Nima Séne, and Anti-Cool, respectively, and to delve into what ‘borders’ means to them. Together they looked at different perspective of borders from war, memory and trauma, to queer identities and race, migrant stories and juridical obstacles with the presentation of these issues though the use of public open discussions, performative lecture and film.

Watch them all here: Manchester, Brighton , London.

Commissioned art works include (click on links):

-       Borderline Dialogue by Tara Fatehi Irani. A coming together of seven actions for public space, different understandings and experiences of borders and embracing the border as a site where different bodies, concepts and perspectives bleed into one another. Performed in Australia, Hong Kong, Iran, Ukraine, USA, Chile and Mexico; *

-       Moebius Stripping by Istanbul Queer Art Collective, cuts documents they submitted for their ‘leave to remain’ status to the UK Home Office, into pieces. Carried with a tongue in cheek manner, in line with the collectives’ firm belief in the “queer art of failure” *.

*both premiered at Beyond the Wall/Más Allá del Mur Festival (Nogales, US/ Mexico)

-       Patrolling by Critical Interruptions, a critical multi--platform conversation for the digital page about border patrols of unrecognised states by the Serbo-Romanian critical cooperative comprised by Bojana Janković and Diana Damian Martin.

-       All the Tea in China by Burong (曾不容), a multi-perspective and coral narrative around Belgrade’s Performance Hub with contributions by Franko B (UK/Italy), Alejandro Chellet (Mexico), Richard Dedomenici (UK), Miao Jiaxin (China/US), and VestAndPage (German/Italy). 

Workshops

In her Embodied Movement for Social Change workshop, Camille Barton used ‘somatic exercises and dance to explore how oppression is rooted in the body and how we can shift its hold on our lives using mindful attention and movement’.

Workshops were taken up at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts & Depford Lounge

Final Event

Curating Borderless Spaces, the programme’s finale was generously hosted by the Live Art Development Agency featuring a day of participatory key note on decolonial practices by Raju Rage, exhibition of the commissioned works, talks, food, and an open conversation peppered with provocations by Bojana Janković, Dana Olărescu, Kai Syng Tan, Helena Walsh. The day’s writer in residence was Season Butler who responded to the stimuli of the day through a durational live writing (here her original text) and a final performance that closed the day.

MORNING

Inc key note, introductions, premiere and panel discussions on commissioned works

AFTERNOON

Including open conversation with Bojana Janković, Dana Olărescu, Kai Syng Tan, Helena Walsh

FINAL PERFORMANCE by Season Butler

All documentation, reflections and artworks created during performingborders | LIVE 2019 are accessible online for free here (https://performingborders.live/2019/08/14/alessandra-cianetti-xavier-de-sousa-on-performingborders-live-2019/)

performingborders | LIVE 2019 was funded by Arts Council England. Produced by performingborders and Foreign Actions Productions in collaboration with Live Art Development Agency (London, UK), Contact Theatre (Manchester, UK), Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (Brighton, UK), Artsadmin (London, UK), Deptford Lounge (London, UK), Beyond the Wall/Más Allá del Mur Festival (Nogales, US/ Mexico), and the Centre for The Study of Sexual Dissidence (University of Sussex, Brighton)