Emergency 2018
Lunchtime: 12noon-2.30pm
A lunchtime of new live art presented by Word of Warning, STUN + Z-arts during Emergency 2018. Mainly aimed at adults, we advise that some Lunchtime work may not suitable for under 18s.
Lunchtime Artists in Alphabetical Order (subject to change)
Alexandrina Hemsley | Alicia Jane Turner † | BOXD Theatre † | Camilla Canocchi † | Demelza Toy Toy † | Megan Rudden | Paper People Theatre † | Penelope Harrall | Rachel Gomme † | Peter Jacobs | Proud & Loud Arts
(† limited capacity)
Alexandrina Hemsley | words collect under my soft palate, lips shut, soundless bubbling
A new video work by dance artist + writer Alexandrina Hemsley in which she deals with self-censoring as someone who experiences the silencing inherent in marginalisation and anti-blackness. This work continues the attempts of her artistic practice to retain multiplicity and morph the body’s narratives as a soft resistance to objectification and reductive representations. Alongside this, it is a challenge to herself — as an artist who experiences heightened distress over her appearance — to look in the camera for more than a minute.
Film + text by Alexandrina Hemsley | Sound: Alexandrina Hemsley using samples from Nina Simone’s Feelings (live at Montreux Jazz Festival 1976) | Originally screened at DECORUM X: The Worst of Censorship, V&A Museum
Alexandrina believes in dance & the body as a site for expressing felt and embodied politics. It is a life long project. The forms her artistic work takes frequently morph in order to present her concerns within shifting frames and contexts. She make dances, videos, self-produces and writes. She is interested in liminal spaces, connectivity, fracturing, displacement and emotionality. She collaborates with Jamila Johnson-Small as part of Project O (2011 on…) and with Seke Chimutengwende on new work Black Holes.
alexandrinahemsley.com | @AlexandrinaHem
Alicia Jane Turner | Elegie †
A one-to-one piece that explores the way we experience live music performance. In pitch black, Alicia performs a classical piece for each audience member, an invisible solo violinist performing for an invisible solo audience member. With all theatrical displays of virtuosity removed, this performance aims to destabilise the notions of how we listen, drawing focus onto the intimacy and vulnerability of music performance, the body performing and the body listening, and how we can form connections through sound alone.
Alicia Jane Turner is a composer, performer and sound artist working across live art, theatre and new classical music. Her practice focuses on the visceral affectivity of sound and live music in performance, exploring physicality, identity and intimacy. She has toured her solo and collaborative performances internationally and across the UK, and recently premiered her new classical compositions in America.
aliciajaneturner.co.uk | @aliciajturner
BOXD Theatre | Birdhouse †
The true story of one man’s relationship with his grandfather; stories from his life and how it had been shaped by his family. Birdhouse interrogates our society’s relationship with role models and illness in those we love. This is the story of Patrick + Pop.
Luke McDonnell (Writer + Performer) is a recent graduate from Lancaster University, and recently began his MA studies at Salford University. His practice primarily includes directing contemporary work but extends to theatre making and storytelling. Jake Walton (Dramaturg) is a contemporary theatre maker and performer who primarily works with Powder Keg and Paper People Theatre. His work seeks to explore pushing theatrical comfort zones of its performers and its audience.
Camilla Canocchi | Know your sh*t †
A one-to-one performance, compulsory for all who want to remain in the UK after Brexit. As you may have already heard, everyone must obtain an English language certificate before 29 March 2019. You may think you don’t need one because it’s YOUR language. Or maybe you think you could really do with a refresher… Either way, come and see me in my booth. I will test your English language knowledge and, if you’re lucky, you’ll get a Brexit-proof certificate for FREE! (cup of tea may be included).
Camilla Canocchi is an Italian performer and writer based in London. Her first solo show You say change comes from within (2017) is a cabaret-style comedy about self-improvement, presented in London + Newcastle. She often uses humour as a tool to discuss serious and uncomfortable issues. She regularly collaborates with other artists including Anton Mirto (The Army at the Whitechapel Gallery + Yard Theatre), and contemporary performance group PartSuspended, in London, Athens + Prague. She is also a financial journalist.
camillacanocchi.com | @camillacanocchi
Demelza Toy Toy a.k.a. Demelza Woodbridge | Big Invisible Fridge †
A live performance work that explores relationships between the politicised body and the power dynamics of dominant culture. An investigation into socio-political frameworks and how we might exist within those frameworks. With urgency and a vulnerablity this work reflects upon systems of power and seeks to open up dialogue around our complicity in the systems and structures that maintain and produce systems of dominance.
Demelza Toy Toy a.k.a. Demelza Woodbridge is a London-based multi-disciplinary artist predominantly engaged with performance, sound, and collaborative modes of practice as strategies of resistance to narratives of cultural dominance. She has presented work at the ICA (London) as part of the post-cyber feminist programme, and internationally at the Revolve Performance Art Festival in Sweden.
demelzawoodbridge.com/demelzawoodbridge
Megan Rudden | Scrubber
Precarious working conditions, minimum wage, zero-hour contracts, emotional labour (expected in-kind, of course) and service with a sickly smile; these are the prerequisites of the postmodern working woman.
Scrubber is a durational performance questioning ideas of visibility, class and gender in relation to the current nature of work and labour.
Megan Rudden is an Edinburgh-born visual artist who recently graduated Glasgow School of Art, and is currently living and working in Glasgow.
meganrudden.co.uk
Paper People Theatre | These Walls (working title) †
What is a memory? How many things do you pick up in your life that hold a memory for you? Is this your story or is it someone else’s? Does this seem familiar? Step into the room, put your headphones on and listen closely.
These Walls is an interactive story for a single audience member, where memories and objects intertwine to create a unique narrative for everyone who visits. Written, devised, created + performed by Paper People Theatre.
Paper People Theatre is a company working out of Manchester, making contemporary performance work that explores the relationship between performers and the performance space. They create work around political and social themes that allow for playful, engaging and fun work that strikes a chord with its audience. Current work Ouroboros is in R&D ahead of touring in 2019. Paper People Theatre is made up of 3 core members: Jake Walton, Hannah Mook + Lowri Jones.
paperpeopletheatre.co.uk | @paperpeoplethea
Penelope Harrall | You name it, we’ve dumped it
We are killing the ocean and everything in it with our over consumption of plastics. Plastic bottles, plastic bags, plastic toothbrushes, plastic beer rings — you name it, we’ve dumped it.
A durational performance: the contradiction of a beautifully made dress and what it is made out of signifies the beauty of our ocean and what the humans are doing to it.
Penelope Harrall primarily uses performance and video art as a platform to communicate views on social and political issues. Never using traditional material as means of creating her artwork — tampons, sanitary pads, plastic bags, sweets — by dislocating these objects the pieces become a playful take on sculpture, intertwining with performance. Harrall endeavours to bring art to everyone, it is her belief that art is an essential way of bringing people and communities together. With a desire to allure and disrupt the audience simultaneously, Harrall uses and emphasises her own body, a reoccurring motif throughout, whether it be obviously present or not, her body acts like a signature for her work.
penelope-harrall.com
Peter Jacobs | AMASS
AMASS is a gathering: a place of convergence, collaboration, negotiation and survival that seeks to playfully interrogate men’s interdependencies and dissociation. AMASS seeks to connect and reconnect; to find and maintain elusive equilibrium and cohesion.
Peter Jacobs is a mature performer and performance-maker based in the north west, with a wide experience of different types of performance including photographic, situational and gallery installations, and art and theatrical performances in the UK + Europe.
peter-jacobs.weebly.com | @PeterTJacobs
Proud & Loud Arts | Affirmations
An interactive live art installation created by artists living with disability labels, the work offers a perspective on the impact of social stigma and personal identity from the uniqueness of each artist’s own life experiences. Affirmations is an addition to 2016’s Cells, a body of work, developed in direct response to a Manchester Evening News article describing a 140% rise in reported hate crimes against people with disabilities.
Audiences are encouraged to move around the room and observe the performance as it changes and perspectives shift.
Proud & Loud Arts, established in 2000, is a user-led performing arts charity for people living with a disability label in Salford + Manchester. It creates work which expresses the views of people with disabilities, and raises awareness of disability through innovative and thought-provoking performance.
proudandloudarts.com | @proudandloudart
Rachel Gomme | Talking Matter †
Talk with me, let’s make conversation. What do we put together, sharing what we know through our hands, our bodies, our words?
This one-to-one interaction focuses on conversation as a process of collaborative creation. Inviting participants into a dialogue conducted through both words and clay, it explores themes of body knowing and body memory, celebrating the unique unwritten knowledge we each hold in our bodies, and exchanging experience through the listening and speaking of words and hands.
Rachel Gomme is an interdisciplinary artist working in performance + installation. With a background in dance, her work explores how we live, move, feel, speak and remember through our bodies. She is interested in states that are seen in terms of absence (e.g. silence, stillness) and details of everyday being that are overlooked. She has presented work, performed, and taught throughout the UK + internationally since 1998.
rachelgomme.webeden.co.uk | @rachelgomme
Venue + Booking Details, for Lunchtime
Date: Saturday 6 October 2018, 12noon-2.30pm; Emergency 2018 runs 12noon-10pm (last show ends about 10.30pm)
Venue: Z-arts (incl. STUN Studio), 335 Stretford Road, Manchester, M15 5ZA
Tickets: no booking required, Pay What You Decide in person on the day, come and go as you please. NB some works have a limited capacity (marked †) with either sign-up sheets on the day or operating on a first-come, first-served basis. Individual shows from 5.30pm typically have a no-latecomer policy.
Tel: 0161 232 6089 (Z-arts)
Access Information
Age advisory: mainly aimed at adults, from 12noon to 2.30pm we advise that some work (clearly signposted 18) may not suitable for under 18s; from 2.30pm to 10pm we advise that no work is suitable for under 18s.
The works in Emergency 2018 take place in a number of different spaces and formats — some seated, some standing, some spoken word, some visual, some limited capacity (marked †), some participatory. We apologise but some work may not be wheelchair accessible due to the nature of the Z-arts building. For specific age and access information please email info@habmcr.org or call 0161 232 6086.
Credits
Emergency 2018 is produced by hÅb; supported using public funding by Arts Council England. | Image: Lise Boucon by Manuel Vason.