ART CITIES:London- Block Universe

Block Universe is London’s annual festival of Performance Art celebrating cutting-edge Performance at the cross-section of Contemporary Visual Art, Dance and Music. The week-long festival aims to create an accessible entry point for audiences to experience challenging and creative performance work, celebrating a new generation of artists in the UK Performance Art Scene.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Block Universe Archive

In the context of post-Brexit Britain, the third edition of Block Universe Festival is “Issues of identity politics in a changing political landscape”, exploring ideas surrounding political bodies, both personal and public, addressing identity politics and notions of nationhood set against a changing socio-political landscape. With 4 UK premieres and 5 site-specific commissions across central London, are presented works by: Nicole Bachmann, Eglė Budvytytė, Kim Coleman-Cara Tolmie & Zoë Poluch, Işıl Eğrikavuk, Young In Hong, Liz Magic Laser, Stina Nyberg, Rory Pilgrim, Will Rawls and Zadie Xa. Nicole Bachmann’s new commission “I don’t want your whispers” examines the relationship between language, voice and power. The work is informed by ideas around activism and dominant discourse, of how to find one’s own voice in order to be heard and listened to. Performed by actor Anna Tierney and dancer Patricia Langa, the work is dealing with negotiations of speech and the materiality of gestures. Dance and spoken word become an embodied vocabulary through which the performers are navigating the construct of language and affirmation of their own voice. 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. Kim Coleman, Cara Tolmie and dancer and choreographer Zoë Poluch collaborate together for the first time in the new commission “Aphelion Slip” exploring the use of light, voice and movement within a theatrical setting. The performative dinner “Pluto’s Kitchen” by Işıl Eğrikavuk , draws parallels between Pluto’s demotion from the solar system and the UK’s strategy to exit the European Union, this event brings audiences and cultures together through the sharing of a conceptual menu. The choreographed movements for the UK premiere of “5100: Pentagon” by Young In Hong were inspired by collected archival images relating to the Gwangju uprising on 18/5/80, and are set to an adapted version of the ‘80s 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. In the London premiere of Liz Magic Laser’s “Political Therapy workshop”, Primal Therapy and meditation techniques are 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. “Shapes of States” by Stina Nyberg, traces the historical and political writing of the body by connecting Swedish public health ideologies from the ‘20s with contemporary training ideals. With a starting point in Meyerhold’s biomechanics, the dancers 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. Rory Pilgrim presents “Software Garden”, a new commissioned performance that 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. Working with choreography as an open source method, the UK premiere of “Q&A” by Will Rawl  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. Zadie Xa creates an immersive environment for “Crash, Boom, Hisssssss. Legend of the Liquid Sword” 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 transports the audience into a supernatural narrative inhabited by shamanistic beings, based on Korean tradition.

Info: Block Universe Performance Arts Festival, Duration 29/5-4/6/17, http://blockuniverse.co.uk