Join us for a major one-day event, presented in partnership with performance, possession + automation, in which internationally renowned artists and academics explore ideas of possession and automation and how they make us feel. Catered lunch will be included with the £10 ticket price.
What sort of atmospheres and sensations do possession and automation generate? Can we feel possessed or automated (haunted, taken over, entranced, enchanted) on the dancefloor, over the airwaves? How does it feel when we’re on our own, and how does it feel when we’re possessed or automated with other people? Can it be simply something that happens as we sing, speak or even just breathe? A rhythm of the body that’s not quite the same as the movement of the algorithm.
How Does It Feel? is included in our Bear (AKA Full Week) Pass. Click here for more information about our passes.
About the Artists
Karen Christopher is a collaborative performance maker, performer, and teacher. Her company, Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects, is devoted to collaborative processes, listening for the unnoticed, the almost invisible, and the very quiet, paying attention as an act of social cooperation.
James Goodwin is a poet. Faux Ice (London: Materials, 2022) is his most recent book of poetry. He has read and performed widely.
J Neve Harrington is a London-based artist whose work includes writing, dance & choreography, video, installation, costume and space design. She works mainly in gallery and non-stage spaces where her work prioritises explorations around access, play, agency, confrontation by times/scales beyond the human, neuroqueer experiences of information processing and attention.
Jassem el Hindi is a French Lebanese Palestinian artist working with sound and choreography. His last recent works circle around ruins of folk dances, pre-islamic cults and death poems from West Asia (Etel Adnan, Nazik el Malaika, Leila Malik…).
Dana Michel is a live artist. Her works interact with the expanded fields of improvisation, choreography, sculpture, comedy, hip-hop, cinematography, techno, poetry, psychology, dub and social commentary to create a centrifuge of experience. Last at Fierce in 2019 as part of the ensemble of Make Banana Cry and previously with Yellow Towel, Dana will also be presenting MIKE on Saturday 19 October.
an*dre neely and Melanie Sien Min Lyn will be presenting Pre-Submission, a performance installation.
Martin O’Brien’s practice is concerned with the performance and representation of illness and disability. His professional performance work considers and stems from his existence with a severe chronic illness without our contemporary situation.
Keioui Keijaun Thomas is based in Brooklyn, New York. She earned her MA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BFA with honours from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She was last seen performing at Fierce in 2019 with My Last American Dollar. Here, she will be re-imagining that performance in advance of Come Hell or High Femmes: The Era of the Dolls at Fierce on Friday 18 October.
SERAFINE1369 is a choreographer working with dancing as a philosophical undertaking, a political project with ethical psycho-spiritual ramifications for being-in-the-world; dancing as intimate technology. They work with/in the context of the hostile architectures of the metropolis towards moments and states of transcendence. They were last at Fierce in 2017 with i ride in colour and soft focus, no longer anywhere.
melissandre varin is an undisciplined atmosphere-maker. Intimacy, embodiment, and healing emerge from their work via experimental partnerships contributing to freedom and liberation. melissandre will be collaborating with Za Lahai for their performance.
husbands
In their work as husbands, Yevheniya Kravets and Yann Slattery use queer fiction and game structures with the interest of mocking and tricking power dynamics. Their recent interest lies in working with intimacies of a strip club, switching between stripper, pimp and watcher, and creating a space where performers and audience can meet emotions without judgement.
Curated by Orlagh Woods and Clayton Lee
performance, possession + automation is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and supported by Queen Mary University of London and University of Leeds. Academic project leads are Nicholas Ridout and Dhanveer Singh Brar.
Access
This is a mixed bill event with performances taking place throughout the day in different spaces around the venue. Some of these performances will be on the first floor or basement which are only accessible via stairs. There are various seating options available on the ground floor. All activity will take place in one large room so noise levels will likely be consistent throughout the space; we will provide comfy seating and some ear defenders (this is where our access backpacks will be available).
Food will be provided as part of this event with options for different dietary requirements including vegans and vegetarians.
Fierce Says
This is not a drill: ten of your favourite (or soon-to-be favourite) artists from the UK and around the world making new work for the context of Fierce and performance, possession + automation? We love luxuriating in the art-making process and this day will put all of that front and centre.