performance

SIDEWALK (2012) is a site-specific performance (30 min.) that uses live and pre-recorded video, devised in collaboration with filmmaker Tom Schön, and performed by dancers Talia Hinojosa, Nora Rodriguez, Lucy Dawson and Jinn Lau.

The piece explores ways of exposing the ‘site’ of the body as the location where different experiences of space/place intersect. After carefully observing and documenting some public locations and their everyday spatial practices in the centre of Limerick, we created a choreographic exercise of spatial appropriation, playfully reconfiguring normative usages of public space through a negotiation of 'presence'. That is, the piece attempts to deconstruct the notion of a ‘real’, unified, location for the presence of bodies – the site of the body depends upon its visibility, upon the audience’s awareness of its presence. Mediating presence through a succession of various (sometimes contradictory) spatio-temporal encounters (conveyed by a dialogue between physical/indoors and digital/outdoors space) was the means chosen to unsettle dominant patterns of spatial perception associated with stability, linearity and consistency, and thus to unfix spatiality.

SIDEWALK was developed through the artist residency program E-MOTIONAL Bodies & Cities/body-data-space, London with the support from University of Limerick/Irish World Academy of Music and Dance; performed at Faber Studios, Limerick, Ireland

Meet the Event (2012) is a performance lecture (12 min.) that explores dramaturgical possibilities that arise from the intersection and juxtaposition of pre-recorded video material with the apparent continuity of a live event, rearranging temporal and spatial relationships.

On screen, the viewer sees a close-up sequence of cars passing against the background of a grey wall, interspersed by hand-held camera footage of a building; then, I appear both on screen and live. Dressed alike, my digitally screened ‘double’ becomes the subject to whom I project (both literally and symbolically) the text that I read out live. The text starts by problematising the idea of beginning, and the idea that events (their stories and narratives) have a clear, single, and unified beginning. The reading outlines different possible meetings with the ‘event’ – anticipated, surprising, and predetermined ways of encountering events, of participating (actively and consciously) in the eventfulness of place. The last sequence of the video portrays the demolishing of a council tower block in Porto, Portugal, in an area intended to give way for future luxury housing development. The event of the building’s demolishing is however played backwards; at the end of the video sequence, the building is standing, and the helicopters surveying and documenting the procedure are flying around it.

Meet the Event was performed at Uferstudios, Berlin, Germany and the University of Roehampton, London, UK

Absent Players (2011) is a live video performance (40 min.) that uses cooking and Skype to explore liveness in the context of the digital space, performed by Áurea Romero and Susana Alves.

In this experimental performance, made for the camera, the audience sits in a dance studio and follows the projection of a choreographed cooking session taking place next door, in a lounge/kitchen space right next to the studio. The sequential chronology of the cooking activity, which appears to be entirely pre-recorded is in fact streamed live via Skype; its sense of proximity progressively increases through the consequent growing intensity of odours that emanate from the kitchen. The performance ends with the tasting of a worm piece of tortilla.

Absent Players was developed as part of a practice-based research project in telematic performance financed by Gulbenkian Foundation, Portugal, and supervised by Julian Maynard Smith (Station House Opera/Artsadmin, UK); performed at Chisenhale Dance Space, London, UK

3 linked spaces (2011) is a performance (25 min.) that explores different temporalities through written and spoken text and the combination of moving and still image.

The piece plays with repetition and anticipation, as well as fragmentation and deferral, based on a simple event: answering a phone call. The camera catches the performer’s movement in the middle of two spaces, the writing space and the speaking space. More importantly, the camera flashes. The flash, which is a response to the ringing, suspends the projection on the wall for a couple of seconds, creating a photographic still image before it carries on filming. The visual leftover is an accumulation of text written on paper on the wall, a scrawly version of a conversation.

3 linked spaces was performed at The Basement, Brighton, UK

Contemplation of the present (2010) is a performance (15 min.) that explores the process of 'writing' a performance.

This experimental piece combines text read out loud in a loop and repeated circle walking; and it exposes concerns with the ways in which the shared time of a live event takes precedence over the time spent preparing it (writing a text), thus creating a chronological layering which both prioritises the present and expands it beyond the common experience, into the past participle of the then present of writing.

Contemplation of the present was performed at Copenhagen Place, London, as part of Burst series, curated by David Berridge and Orion Maxted

Circle Walking (2010) is a performance (10 min.) that explores walking through the embodiment of various 'physicalities' in an attempt to present a compelling, humorous and meditative spectrum of the activity.

In my perambulatory practice, learning my way to approach my interests, coming and going to and from ideas and then leaving my footprints in a pedestrian landscape is an ongoing process of incorporating different possible journeys.

Circle Walking was performed at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

réaltympanica

Together with Ioana Paun and Robert Redmer, I am a co-founder of réaltympanica, a collective that devised and performed site-specific and site-responsive artworks, combining live performance with digital media. Projects include:

Borderland (2013), fieldwork research on alternative channels of communication through a series of public interventions and informal gatherings among different communities along the border of Germany with Poland. Presented in collaboration with Xuka Fon Sztof/Karolina Kazmierska, and developed as part of PAIR - Performing Arts in Residence, Schloss Bröllin, Germany

Get Lost (2011), a site-specific and interactive performance for 1 audience member taking place in a hotel room. The piece was developed through the artist residency Mecklenburg Inspiriert, Kühlungsborn, Germany

Do Not Touch (2011), a site-specific audio performance tackling the stories behind people's leftovers and actively exploring a dramaturgy of objects, stains and marks in public places. The piece was developed through the artist residency Park in Progress, Paris; supported by the Pépinières Européenes, France

Flip the coin - sonic intersections (2011), a site-specific audio journey in response to installation works by Marcin Dudek and Ben Washington. Sound by Michael Picknett. Presented at Waterside Contemporary, London

Audiobook (2011), X Street 2D version, a multi-sensorial and interactive book. Sound by James Bulley. Presented at the Piccadilly Book Art Fair in Manchester, Supper Club/The Basement, in Brighton, UK, and the Biennale of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean (BJCEM), in Thessaloniki, Greece

Then we take Pécs (2010), a live-streaming and site-specific performance. Presented at the Europe Mania Festival in Pécs, Hungary; supported by ICR Budapest and Juliet Gomperts Trust, London

X Street (2010), a minibus and audio-journey through Hackney, London. Sound by James Bulley. Presented as part of London Festival of Architecture; supported by the Romanian Cultural Institute in London

Connection Failed (2009), a live art sound piece for a launderette. Sound by James Bulley. First presented in Peckham, Surge Festival / Goldsmiths, London; UK Young Artists (UKYA), Derby, and Stockholm Fringe Festival, Sweden