2012


Potentials of Performance


(original copy)
Potentials of Performance was the third themed year of Performance Matters... which culminated in P o P, a public programme of hands-on performance research across three venues in Hackney Wick (in cluding ]performance s p a c e [), London, 26-27 October 2012. Potentials of Performance centred around a series of commissioned Dialogue Projects by Associate Researchers, which were then staged during P o P through innovative workshops, chat shows, round-tables, lectures, screenings, installations, performances, and a Materials Room. P o P also included staged responses from respondents working across the creative and critical fields of performance, and an evening programme of events by special guests. Complete video documentation of the event can be viewed at the Live Art Development Agency's Study Room, and at the British Library. Following Performing Idea (2009/2010) and Trashing Performance(2010/2011), Potentials of Performance (2011/12) focused on performance's emergent and unrealised potential: what does performance hold in store in its present-day testing of the limits of the social, the cultural, the vital and the critical? What lies latent within and around performance? What is waiting to be realised, developed, and made legible?”

Plastique Fantastique. Photographer credit pending.


2012


]ps[ summer residency

2011


Ania Jochymek + Noëmi Lakmaier + Sergio Racanati + Marta Frank + Alicia Radage + Arianna Ferrari + Lauren Brown + Season Butler + Barnaby Lambert + Jess Rose + Ian Whitford + Sofia Misma + Karolina Kubik

(original copy)
“]performance s p a c e [’s Summer Residency programme culminates with a day of performance art and time-based work created by the 13 international artists taking part. Throughout August the eclectic group of artists have been living and working together in a warehouse space in Hackney, opposite the Olympic Park. The resulting work is a mix of video, sound, installation, participatory and performance works, covering a range of social, political and aesthetic themes.”

]ps[ Summer Residency Programme Flyer, Season Butler, Ian Whitford, Karolina Kubik and Sebastian Hau-Walker & Alicia Radage. Flyer/Photographer credits pending.


Routing - summer residency performance research - Sebastian Hau-Walker, Alicia Radage & Noëmi Lakmaier. Videographer credit pending.


2012


Alastair MacLennan Workshop

2012


Alastair MacLennan + Andre Braga Verissimo + Charlotte Wendy Law + Robin Bale + Sebastian Hau-Walker & others

(original copy)
“LIFE & ART, HERE & NOW - PERFORMANCE PLATFORM - SUNDAY 23RD SEPT. Following a week long workshop with Alastair MacLennan. Participants will present solo and open group performance”

image credits pending.


2012


Martin O’Brien

Regimes of Hardship: I, II & III
(Illness & the Enduring Body)

2012


(original copy)
“Martin O'Brien was Artist in Residence at ]performance s p a c e [ between January and June 2012. Martin used the residency period to realise the project Regimes of Hardship: Illness & The Enduring Body.

Regimes of Hardship was a practice as research project consisting of three performance installations taking place over a three month period at ]performance s p a c e [. In the year of the London Olympic Games O’Brien uses endurance in order to examine and challenge contemporary ideologies of health and illness and how this relates to the social construction of medicine and the body. The three installation-performances will examine the ways in which self-imposed endurance could act as a personal pathological resistance to illness. Regimes of Hardship attempts to communicate, interrogate and extend discourses around the body and medicine including areas such as pain and discipline within the medical regime, health and illness, the medical and art gaze and issues of embodiment.”


Regimes of Hardship: I


image credits pending.



Regimes of Hardship: II


image credits pending.


video credits pending.



Regimes of Hardship: III (Illness & the Enduring Body)




image & video credits pending.

(original copy)
“To conclude his residency Martin curated a one-day symposium addressing issues surrounding Illness and the enduring body within performance. The Symposium consisted of 3 panels of speakers followed by a final open discussion. Contributors included artists & academics from performance, sociology and medical science. The symposium considered ways in which the body has been conceived and represented within both art and medicine. Offering various perspectives on the ways in which the medicalised body and bio-scientific practices have been appropriated within performance, physical endurance and pain within art and medicine, and ethics and the human body. The speakers addressed the limits of human corporeality and how artists have worked with their own biological matter, placing their bodies under duress, in order to communicate and in doing so have challenged contemporary ideologies around the body. Illness & The Enduring Body payed particular attention to the ways in which artists have engaged with issues around medicine, illness and the enduring body.

Panel 1: Dr Gianna Bouchard (Principal lecturer in performance at Anglia Ruskin), Dr Sarah Wilson, Dani Ploeger (studio artist at ]performance s p a c e[ & Lecturer in Theatre and Digital Arts at Brunel University London)

Panel 2 (video recording above): Lois Keidan (Director Live Art Development Agency), Sheree Rose, Ron Athey, Franko B

Panel 3Martin O'Brien & Dr. Karen Lowton (Medical sociologist senior lecturer King's College London), Rita Marcalo & Georgia Testa (Bio-Ethicist, University of Leeds), Michael Mayhew & Tuheen Huda”

2012


Aliens In New York 

2012


Benjamin Sebastian + Bean + Poppy Jackson + Martin O’Brien

(original copy from Labour)
“Alien(s) In New York : A 3-Day Mini Festival

Guest Curators, Bean & Benjamin Sebastian of ]performance s p a c e [ - London, will launch the 2012 Fall program of Grace Exhibition Space with a three day performance event taking place across the 7th(Fri.), 8th(Sat.) & 9th(Sun.) of September. This three day mini performance festival; Alien(s) in New York, will platform some of the most dynamic contemporary time-based and performance art practitioners from around the world.

Confirmed artists included: Bean (UK), Benjamin Sebastian (UK/AUS), Martin O’Brien (UK), Poppy Jackson (UK/IRE), & Jordan Wayne Long (USA). The event will platform both durational performance practice and Group Action work from invited artists; interrogating time, space & the body through contemporary visual performance.

Friday September 7th: 8pm-11pm - Group Action - Bean, Poppy Jackson and Benjamin Sebastian

Saturday September 8th: 6pm-11pm - Durational Performances by: Jordan Wayne Long, Benjamin Sebastian & Poppy Jackson

Sunday September 9th: 12pm onward - Showcasing durational work by Martin O'Brien and Bean.”

Poppy Jackson - WIN as part of Aliens in New York at Grace Exhibition Space. 2012.
Photographer credit pending.


“As I entered, I was forced to move through a narrow passage, between wall and counter. I instantly felt controlled and manipulated. The layout of the room channeled me towards you – naked, cornered, inverted. Supporting your body weight through your neck and shoulders, your arms flowing out across the floor. You looked to have been thrown there. Your thighs where I expected to view your shoulders, feet in place of head. Legs splayed wide apart, a tatty homemade sign was inserted into your vagina (it read WIN – a digital copy taken from documentation of the target you had worn on your chest). In one hand you held a small blade and in the other, a handful of gold leaf, spilling, floating out with air currents in the room....”

Excerpt from “a letter to Poppy (Miracle) Jackson (on the occasion of Aliens in New York)” - Benjamin Sebastian

︎︎︎ read the full essay HERE



(Excerpt) Aliens In New York - Group Performance: Benjamin Sebastian. Videographer credit pending.



2012


Labour

2012


Anne Quail + Elvira Santamaria Torres + Amanda Coogan + Pauline Cummins + Ann Maria Healy + Chrissie Cadman + Frances Mezzeti + Áine O’Dwyer + Áine Phillips + Helena Walsh + Michelle Browne

(original copy from Labour)
“LABOUR is a touring exhibition of Live Art, featuring eleven leading female artists who are resident within, or native to, Northern and Southern Ireland. LABOUR offers audiences unprecedented access to a huge body of live performance work by some of the most radical and exciting women artists emerging from an Irish cultural context. LABOUR will launch in London, on the 9th and 10th of February, then tour to Derry/Londonderry (Feb 24th and 25th). The final exhibition and surrounding events will take place in Dublin on March 9th and 10th to coincide with International Women’s Day 2012.

LABOUR interrogates the gendered representational frameworks prevalent within an Irish cultural context, that produce, limit and devalue, various forms of female labour. In each durational exhibition participating artists will perform simultaneously for eight consecutive hours, reflecting the duration of an average working day. Set within the shadows of Ireland’s notorious Magdalene Laundries, LABOUR explores current shifts in the political and economic climate within an Irish cultural context. LABOUR was curated by Chrissie Cadman, Amanda Coogan & Helena Walsh and produced by Benjamin Sebastian of ]performance s p a c e [.”

Photography by Manuel Vason & Marco Berardi.




2012


REWOLTA/REBELIA

2011


Participating artist names pending

(original copy) 
“REWOLTA/REBELIA at ]performance s p a c e [ A night of performance, live and video art from emerging artists based in Warsaw, Poland and London, UK. 1st March 6pm till Late [performance s p a c e [ 6 Hamlet Industrial Estate, White Post Lane, London E9 5EN Transport: Overground: Hackney Wick Bus:26.30.276.388.488.UL1 E: info@performancespace.org T: 020 353 82 474”

image credit pending.

Karolina Kubik photographed by Marco Berardi.


Theodoulos Polyviou photographed by Marco Berardi.


Sikarnt Skoolisariyaporn photographed by Marco Berardi.


Sebastian Hau-Walker photographed by Marco Berardi.



image credit pending.


Kimberley Emeny photographed by Marco Berardi.


image credit pending.