Works Ahead
Radiator
Programme Notes
Updated 23 May 2024, 18:05
A sharing of Live Art on 24 May, presented by Word of Warning + Manchester School of Theatre
Artists
Ash Cox · chris brown · E.M. Parry · Heather Alice · ITZATNA · Jamil Keating · Kelvin Atmadibrata · Lauren Greer
Participating artists subject to change.
Access
Age: 18+
Content Warnings: some works may disturb, please click here.
Features: eight Live Art and contemporary performance works with varied content; six static live works, one video work, one roaming work (chris brown).
Space: on Grosvenor East’s ground floor with step-free access from Cavendish St, GF.11 is a rectangular studio with no daylight, white walls, black drapes, black floor; sited within are seven static works and rest point, each with chairs.
Viewing: the event requires moving around the space to explore the works; each work requires either standing or sitting on chairs/the floor.
Queries: please contact Word of Warning via info@habmcr.org
Programme
Ash Cox · Binsincere
Am I a failure or am I being failed? It’s time to discard the facade.
A relaxed multimedia performance, with captions and integrated audio description. Binsincere interrogates themes from their main body of work Space Chronic-ills, as part of their ongoing R&D, supported by Unlimited and Graeae.
Content Warning: please click here.
Ash (they/she) a.k.a. Commander Ash Tronomy is an artist and access consultant, focusing on work that is reflective of their lived experience being a disabled, queer, working-class, space geek.
ashtronomy.co.uk · Insta @ash_tronomy_ · X @ash_tronomy_
chris brown · you cannot choose the things that bind you
A durational performance that explores the relationship between care and masculinity, inspired by Butoh dance. Uses audience participation.
Content Warning: please click here.
chris is a multidisciplinary artist who works in live performance, film, video, and participatory settings. His work has been described as “Joyful, Communal and Tender” — ilovemanchester.com on LOB
chris & Jordan Skelly have collaborated for many years. Their collaborations have explored how dance and poetry intertwine. At the centre of their work has always been a discussion of masculinity. This most recent work explores the theme with a new context of care, inspired by changes in their lives.
chrisbtheatre.com · Insta @christopher.p.brown · X @ChristopherActB
E.M. Parry · Pricklings
Pricklings stages the artist’s body as trans saint, queer icon, fetish object, witch’s poppet, a luck charm, a ritual, a process, a test, a game. The piece investigates trans embodiment and bodily autonomy, and pokes at the edges between self/other, flesh/costume, performer/spectator, artefact/event: remixing and repurposing religious, historical, artistic, medical, and magical iconography to create intimate spectacles and new rituals of becoming.
Content Warning: please click here.
E.M. is a trans*-disciplinary artist, designer, and performance-maker, working across scenography, drag, Live, and visual art, specialising in work which centres queer bodies and narratives. Flitting between genres and platforms, their work has been staged in the West End, international opera stages, pubs, clubs, cabarets, ships, lecture halls, and leaky basements. They work with, through, and for the queer body, squinting at history, flirting with ghosts and the things that go bump in the margins.
emparry.com · Insta @e_m_parry · X @e_m_parry
Heather Alice · I, The Girl.
(Video Documentation of performance at Emergency 23.)
A personal reclamation of the ‘hysterical’ woman, and a reflection on the paradoxes created when society has gendered madness.
A fragmented journey through lived experience and complex representation: contemporary movement practices and transmedia storytelling offer an insight into how medical misogyny shapes our archetypes, and how these depictions in pop culture influence neurodiverse young women.
Content Warning: please click here.
Thanks to director Joshua Allen. · Videography by Chloe Holford & Joshua Allen.
Heather is a multidisciplinary artist, currently creating immersive transmedia theatre. Her practice is rooted in feminism and she has a background in acting for screen, devising contemporary movement, poetry, and film-making. More recently she has become an aerialist and trained Epic Stages with National Youth Theatre.
Insta @heatheraliceartist · YT heatheraliceartist
ITZATNA · RIO BRAVO (Wet/Ones)
A Live Art ritual reflecting on the post-colonial journeys of Latin American migrants swimming across the US-Mexico border of the Rio Grande river.
SIN FRONTERAS : NO HAY EXILIO — Without borders : there is no exile
Y, si tus aguas hablaran // Cuánto no podrían decir // De los muertos que aparecen // Flotando encima de ti
And, if your waters could speak // How much they could never say // Of the dead that appear // Floating on your surface.
Allergy & Content Warnings: please click here.
ITZATNA Arts is a Midlands-based emerging artist collective, creating cross-cultural collaborations between artists and diaspora communities in Mexico, Latin America, UK. Founded by father-son artist duo Alfredo Hau (visual artist, writer, professional chef) & Sebas Hau (live artist & creative producer), ITZATNA cultivates radical, decolonial, cross-disciplinary approaches to creating cutting-edge projects that combine visual, community, culinary, and Live Art to create unique experiences for all ages.
itzatna.org · Fb itzatna.arts · Insta @itzatna.arts · X @itzatna_arts
Jamil Keating · Shoeshine
A man on his knees offers you a traditional shoeshine… but is it an act of service or something darker as he holds you in his thrall with a story guaranteed to dull the shine of those shoes.
Allergy & Content Warnings: please click here.
Jamil is a theatre-maker, writer, and performer. His first full solo work, 2015’s Affected, was a Works Ahead commission by hÅb. He’s made work for 2020’s Botanic, Emergency, and Hazard (as Tracey Lumpkin). He’s also been an emerging artist in residence at the Whitworth and is generally found causing mischief in the city.
Insta @jamil.k1011
Kelvin Atmadibrata · But nothing happened
A carp climbing up a waterfall to become a dragon.
A work-in-progress performance involving text, movement, and objects as installations.
Content Warning: please click here.
Kelvin recruits superpowers awakened by puberty and adolescent fantasy, personifying power and strength into fanfiction antiheroes to contest the masculine meta and erotica. He works primarily with performance, often accompanied by and translated into drawings, mixed media collages, and objects compiled as installations. Approached as bricolages, Kelvin translates narratives and recreates personifications based on role-playing video game theories and pop mythologies.
kelvinatmadibrata.com · Fb kelvin.atmadibrata · Insta @kelvinatmadibrata
Lauren Greer · PART I: Don’t Take It To The Grave
This place is alive. It’s here, it’s part of us, and we are part of it.
Our healing begins now, we just have to let go.
A durational performance where the audience is integral to the creation of a communal, digital tapestry displaying our deepest, darkest secrets.
By embracing anonymity and vulnerability the audience are liberated as their secrets are unfiltered and unbound by judgement.
Stay for a moment. Stay for an hour. Stay for as long as you need.
Content Warning: please click here.
Lauren is a Northern Irish, working-class artist currently residing in Manchester. She is a theatre-maker, writer, collaborator, and creative learning practitioner; with a deep belief in the transformative power of the arts in being an educational tool, promoting wellbeing, connecting humans, and upskilling young people. Whilst her performance work often evolves from a P/political stimulus, she is currently exploring the convergence of her identity with ritual and taboo.
msha.ke/laurengreerperformanceartist · Insta @_i_am_lauren_g_ · X @_i_am_lauren_g_