LONDON S LEADING INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES PARTICIPATING ARTISTS FOR ITS FOURTH EDITION Block Universe, London s leading international performance art festival is set to launch its fourth edition in May with an expanded 10-days programme of new commissions, UK premieres, talks, screenings and workshops. From 26 May to 3 June 2018, Block Universe will present work by some of the most innovative UK-based and international artists working in performance art today, including Maria Hassabi, Hanne Lippard, Giselle Stanborough, Nora Turato and Laura Wilson. The festival features five new commissions by Gery Georgieva, Evan Ifekoya & Victoria Sin, Alex Mirutziu, Last Yearz Interesting Negro / Jamila Johnson-Small and They Are Here, a collaborative practice led by Helen Walker and Harun Morrison. As in previous years, performances will take place in major institutions and unique venues across London, including Somerset House, British Museum, Royal Academy of Arts and Studio Voltaire. Creating extraordinary opportunities for dialogue between London s storied institutions and a selection of exceptional performance artists working at the cross-section of contemporary visual art, dance and music, Block Universe positions London at the forefront of international performance art. This year, the festival will explore themes that act as a counterpoint to current divisiveness created by contemporary politics, focusing on and at the same time questioning utopian ideals of community and collectivity. Addressing the ways that we relate to one another, this edition will respond both to the larger fabric of society that binds us and the politics of sex and love in our personal relationships. Festival Director Louise O Kelly. The expanded public programme will feature talks with key industry professionals, film screenings and participatory workshops. It includes partnerships with Siobhan Davies Dance, Victoria & Albert Museum and Goldsmiths, University of London. The full programme of performances, talks and workshops will be announced shortly. In the run-up to the festival, Block Universe is organising the panel discussion Perform Now! The potentials of a living archive with the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths University on 22 March 2018, looking at the history of performance art in the UK. Visit the festival website here. Follow and tag @blockuniverse on Instagram and Twitter. #blockuniverse2018 For further information and press requests please contact: Camille Regli at Pickles PR E: camille@picklespr.com T: +44 (0)78 352 237 292 1
Notes to editors About Block Universe Block Universe is London s leading international performance art festival that brings together cutting-edge performance art at the cross-section of contemporary visual art, dance and music. Held in major institutions and venues across London, previous partners include the ICA, Sadler s Wells, Royal Academy of Arts, the British Museum and Somerset House, amongst others. The festival has produced over 40 productions, 18 new commissions and brought 8 international premieres to London over the past 3 years with the mission to create a long-term, sustained engagement with performance art in the city. In pioneering this new platform, Block Universe aims to position London at the forefront of the dialogue surrounding performance internationally. In 2018, the festival will return for its fourth edition, which is held from 26 May to 3 June, and features an expanded public programme of talks and workshops. About Louise O Kelly, Festival Director Louise O Kelly is an independent curator. In 2015 she founded Block Universe, London's Leading International Performance Art Festival that takes place annually across major institutions and unique off-site spaces throughout the city. Through Block Universe, O Kelly commissions and curates a programme of performances, by UK-based and international artists, that cross boundaries between visual arts, music and contemporary dance, creating a high-profile platform to raise the visibility of a new generation of artists. She has been nominated for the ICI s Independent Vision Curatorial Award (2016), been nominator for The Arts Foundation s Live Art Award (2017), Jury member for The Celeste Prize - Installation, Sculpture and Performance category (2017), and selector for Delfina Art Foundation s Performance as Process residency (2018). O Kelly holds a MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London. About the artists Gery Georgieva (b. 1986, Varna, Bulgaria) is an artist based in London, whose practice encompasses video, performance, multimedia installations and occasional musical collaborations under her stage name Vera Modena. Creating lo-fi assemblages and film sets in her studio for performative to-camera improvisations, she uses the immediacy of her own body as material to consider the construction of authenticity, taste and belonging. Her DIY glamour and elaborative layering referencing across costume, props and set create an ambiguous cultural vernacular; often rooted in pop music, showbiz and traditional folk heritage. Revealing moments that capture the promise of empowerment, often constructed and filtered through multifarious layers of digital appropriation and mainstream manipulation, Georgieva examines how we configure and reconfigure our cultural identities. Selected solo exhibitions and projects include: Swimming Pool Projects, Sofia, Bulgaria (2017); Hunter / Whitfield, London, UK (2017); (AND/OR), London, UK (2016) and Frieze Film commissioned by Random Acts Channel 4 for Frieze Art Fair (2015). Maria Hassabi (b. 1973, Nicosia, Cyprus) is an artist and choreographer based in New York. Over the years, she has developed a distinct choreographic practice 2
involved with the relation of the body to the image, defined by sculptural physicality and extended duration. Her works draw their strength from the tension between the human subject and the artistic object, the dancer as a performer and as a physical entity. Hassabi s performances and installations are presented worldwide in theatres, festivals, museums, galleries and public-spaces; and has been showcased in venues such as the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, US; Museum of Modern Art, New York, US; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, US; The Kitchen, New York, US; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, US; CCS Bard Galleries at Bard College, Hudson, NY, US; Danspace Project, New York, US; PS122, New York, US; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art TBA Festival, Oregon, US; Ballroom Marfa, Texas, US; Dance Theater Workshop, New York, US; PS1 MoMA, New York, US; and has been included in festivals such as Performa 09 and 13 ; Fi:af s Crossing the Line Festival (2009, 2011, 2016) and LMCC s River to River Festival (2012, 2014, 2017), most recently participating in Documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017). Drawing from close personal encounters of looking and wanting, the work of Evan Ifekoya & Victoria Sin presents heavily constructed fantasy narratives on the often unsettling experience of the physical within the social body. Their long-term project Dream Babes explores science and speculative fiction as a productive strategy of queer resistance, imaging futurity that does not depend on existing historical and social infrastructure. It has included science fiction porn screenings and talks, a three-day programme of performance at Auto Italia South East, a publication, and a regular science fiction reading group for queer people of colour. Most recently, their performative sound work The Tectonic Bassline of Your Love Spread Her Like Peanut Butter was presented at the Fiorucci Art Trust festival and I Polpi in collaboration with Eddie Peake, later released by Vinyl Factory. Evan Ifekoya (b. 1988, Iperu, Nigeria) is an interdisciplinary artist based in London, working with text, sound and video whose current work investigates the possibility of an erotic and poetic occupation using film, performative writing and sound, focused on co-authored, intimate forms of knowledge production and the radical potential of spectacle. Their ongoing project 'A Score, A Groove, A Phantom' explores archives of blackness, sociality and inheritance as they diffract through queer nightlife and trauma in the present moment. Recent work has been presented at: Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh; Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire; New Art Exchange, Nottingham and Spike Island, Bristol (all 2017); Transmission Gallery, Glasgow; London (2016); and Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town (2016). Recent performances have taken place at Serpentine Galleries, London(2016) and Whitstable Biennial, UK (2016). They were awarded an Art Foundation Fellow in Live Art for 2017. Collaborative projects include Collective Creativity: Critical reflections into QTIPOC creative practice and Network11. Victoria Sin (b. 1991, Toronto, Canada) is a artist based in London. Sin uses speculative fiction within performance, moving image, writing, and print to interrupt normative processes of desire, identification, and objectification. This includes drag as a practice of purposeful embodiment questioning the reification and ascription of ideal images within technologies of representation and systems of looking; science fiction as a practice of rewriting patriarchal and colonial narratives naturalized by scientific and historical discourses on states of sexed, 3
gendered and raced bodies and storytelling as a collective practice of centering marginalized experience, creating a multiplicity of social contexts to be immersed in and strive towards. They have performed and screened their work at venues such as: Whitechapel Gallery, London (2018); ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; ICA, London, UK; Gallery of Modern Art ( GoMA), Glasgow, UK; BFI London Film Festival, London, UK; Tate Modern Exchange, London, UK; Volcano Extravaganza, I Polpi, Stromboli, Italy; Firstdraft, Sydney, Australia and South London Gallery, London, UK (all 2017). Jamila Johnson-Small (b. London, UK), aka Last Yearz Interesting Negro, is an artist based in London, who works with in-between spaces; with things that exist in and through cracks in time, memory, attention, syncopation, trance states, internal narratives, electronic music and two-step dances, navigating bodies as object, animal, human, machine, environment, and energy to build atmospheric landscapes created by the live unfolding of the tensions between things that produce meaning. Johnson-Small usually collaborates with other artists including Project O with Alexandrina Hemsley, immigrants and animals with Mira Kautto (2009-2016) and more recently work with Fernanda Munoz-Newsome, HOTLINE with Sara Sassanelli, and GUSH, a semi-regular low-key DIY event. Recent performances have been shown as part of Fierce Festival, Birmingham, UK (2017) and the ICA, London, UK (2018). Upcoming residencies and performances include Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire, UK ; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France and The Showroom, London, UK (all 2018). Hanne Lippard (b. 1984, Milton Keynes, UK) is a British Norwegian artist based in Berlin who focuses on the production of language solely through the use of voice. In performances, installations, videos and audio pieces, she arranges, composes and combines her own wordplays with words by others. Fragments from everyday speech, sourced from various online platforms, are constantly reworked through the use of repetition, pronunciation and rhythm. Phrases and images associated with contemporary topics such as work, success, and lifestyles are evoked. By merging content and form and through a gentle rhyme, her vivid words begin to lose their prescribed value and modify to take on new meanings. With an almost hypnotic, cleansing approach, the vocal sequences sink into the listener's mind and create a free-form, associative pattern of melodic, linguistic formulas. Recent exhibitions and performances have been hosted by KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2017); ars viva, Stockholm, Sweden (2016); Index The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden (2016); *KURATOR, Rapperswil, Switzerland (2016); Kunstverein, Hamburg, Germany (2016); Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, Germany (2016); 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia (2015); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria (2015); Transmediale, Berlin, Germany (2015); Bielefelder Kunstverein, Bielefeld, Germany (2015); Unge Kunstneres Samfund, Oslo, Norway (2014); Berliner Festspiele, Berlin, Germany (2013); Poesía en Voz, Mexico City, Mexico (2012). Alex Mirutziu (b.1981, Sibiu, Romania) is an artist based in Sibiu, whose installation performances and writings question the ways in which the space after something ends is orchestrated. He uses design in its most bureaucratic sense, collecting imprints of personal and historical events, using understanding and sincerity as factors in the materialisation. He made a collective with a hyper-object namely 4
himself at 29 and often operates within this structure. The collectives' modus operandi is retroactive irony. The artist frequently lectures on performance alongside his current theoretical practice (Royal College of Arts, London, Von Kraal Theatre, Estonia, Konstfack, Stockholm, Bezalel University of Art and Design, Tel Aviv) and collaborated with artists, writers, musicians, designers and philosophers among which include, Grit Hachmeister (DE), Paul Devens (NL), Elias Merino (ES), Graham Foust (US) and Graham Harman (US). Recent projects have been hosted by The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania (2017); Delfina Foundation, London, UK (2016); Venice Biennial (2015); National Museum, Warsaw, Poland (2014); Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland (2014); Mucsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest, Hungary (2012); ZDB, Lisbon, Portugal (2011); Power Plant, Toronto, Canada (2011); The Glass Factory Lab, Boda, Sweden (2011). Giselle Stanborough (b.1986, Waratah, NSW, Australia) is an intermedia artist based in Sydney. Her works combine online and offline elements to address how user generated media encourage us to identify and perform notions of self, and the relationship between connectivity and isolation. Motivated by a curiosity in the increasing indeterminacy between the private and public spheres, Stanborough's work often addresses contemporary interpersonal experiences in relation to technology, feminism and consumer capitalism. Her work has featured in the Washington Post s Pictures of the Day and has been shown at major venues in the Asia-Pacific region such as Australian Center for Contemporary Art (ACCA) (2018); Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Sydney, Australia (2017); Houngcheol Choi, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) (2017); Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, Australia (2015) and Next Wave Festival 2014, Melbourne, Australia (2014). Founded in 2006 in London, They Are Here is a collaborative practice steered by artists Helen Walker and Harun Morrison. They Are Here s works can be read as a series of context specific games. The entry, invitation or participation can be as significant as the game's conditions and structure. Through these games they seek to create ephemeral systems and temporary, micro-communities that offer an alternate means of engaging with a situation, history or ideology. Each They Are Here project has its own unique collaborative structure and hierarchies that emerge through the contributions of various invitees. They continuously explore group dynamics, divisions of authorship and the effects of temporary engagements with practitioners of other disciplines. Institutions they have developed or presented work at include: Konsthall C, Stockholm, Sweden (2017); Furtherfield, London, UK (2017); Grand Union, Birmingham, UK (2016); Tate Modern, London, UK (2009, 2010, 2017); South London Gallery, London, UK (2006, 2015); STUK, Leuven, Belgium (2013); National Theatre Studio, London, UK (2012); Tate Britain, London, UK (2010); Camden Arts Centre, London, UK and CCA, Glasgow, UK (both 2009). They are currently the inaugural artists for In Residence, a new strand of the Participation Programme at Studio Voltaire. Nora Turato (b. 1991, Zagreb, Croatia) is a performance artist based in Amsterdam. As part of her practice she harnesses the versatility of language as an instrument in her absorbing spoken word displays that blur the line between contemporary music and performance art. She is a graphic design graduate of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and Werkplaats Typografie, and is currently in 5
residence at the prestigious Rijksakademie. Additionally recording as Turato91, she released her debut Girls Gotta Look Out For Each Other Thats All in 2016. Turato has performed internationally, at venues such as: Museion Bozen, Bolzano, Italy (2017); Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany (2017); Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany (2017); Kunstverein Cologne, Cologne, Germany (2017); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2017) and the Lithuanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennial (2016). Forthcoming projects include a performance at LISTE Art Fair, Basel, Switzerland; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria and Manifesta, Palermo, Italy (all 2018). Laura Wilson (b.1983, Belfast, N. Ireland) is an artist based in London. Wilson investigates the forces of representation that determine our understanding of the material world. Her practice is wide-ranging, working across performance, sculpture, video and lectures. Negotiation is a necessary strategy in the production of her work, which often involves collaborations or exchanges with specialists, enacting the creation or displacement of materials and ideas. Wilson has developed a specific interest in how methods for hand-making bread are passed from generation to generation, and how this process provides a counterpoint to the increasing pace of mechanical production and technologies used today. Whilst at Delfina Foundation, Wilson developed Trained on Veda, an exploration of Veda Bread, a dark brown malt loaf produced in Northern Ireland, UK. Selected exhibitions and performances include: SPACE, London (2016); Site Gallery, Sheffield (2016); Workshop East, London (2016); Whitstable Biennale 2014, Whitstable, UK (2014); Camden Arts Centre, London, UK (2013); RIBA, London (2016); Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2013); OUTPOST, Norwich, UK (2012); W139, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2012); De Warande, Turnhout, Belgium (2012); Clonlea Studios, Dublin, Ireland (2011); Vitrine Gallery, London, UK (2011); Siobhan Davies Studios, London, UK (2010). 6