65. Are you black, or are you ‘new black’?
170. What is the long term psychological impact of white supremacy on people of colour?
220. My mum does not talk about race any more. It makes her uncomfortable, tired. Will this happen to me?
307. Why do people assume that racism will just passively die out if we wait long enough?
440. Are you angry?
541. What ever happened to Kony 2012?
660. Who is more problematic – famous racist Nigel Farage, or the liberal journalist politely asking him questions?
720. When does it all end?

Selina Thompson has devised a thousand questions concerning issues of race and identity. You are invited to respond to one of the questions which will feed into her research for this ongoing project. Selina Thompson was a Fierce FWD 14 artist, Fierce FWD is a scheme that supports emerging artists from or based in the West Midlands.

[installation, 1 person at a time, duration variable]

Sleep With A Curator is a public sleepover with a curator in a gallery. For this edition of Sleep With A Curator we have invited Gavin Wade, director of Eastside Projects.

Previous sleepovers have been held at The Showroom London, Kunsthalle Zürich and Flat Time House.

Please arrive at Eastside Projects between 10.30 – 11.30pm and bring your own sleeping bag, air beds or whatever you will need to feel comfortable. The sleepover will end with a breakfast on Saturday morning, with a special curator’s choice of pancakes.

Happiness Forgets | AL13FB – 3 | Karaoke (ART)

Sunday 11 October, 12pm – midnight.

£20 / £15  conc.

This pass offers full access to the Sunday ticketed program which begins at The Drum in Aston and concludes at our festival hub, BOM. The pass includes a new commission by Season Butler, Happiness Forgets, a UK premiere of Fernando Belfiore’s AL13FB-3 and Karaoke (ART) by Davis Freeman. PME-ART’s durational performance The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information will also be taking place by The Drum’s exhibition hall.

Please note Happiness Forgets and AL13FB-3 can only be attended with the Fierce Sunday Pass.

Supernatural | CLUB FIERCE: Anklepants + Chromatouch | All Ears | Free Admission | Culture, Administration & Trembling | CLUB FIERCE ft Gazelle Twin, Miguel Gutierrez DEEP AEROBICS & Sarah Farina (DJ set) | Happiness Forgets | AL13FB – 3 | Karaoke (ART)

£75 / £60 conc

This pass offers full access to the Friday – Sunday ticketed program as well as first priority for Ria Jade Hartley’s one-on-one work, Spit Kit and a guaranteed plot for the public sleepover, Sleep With A Curator, at Eastside Projects instigated by Rosalie Schweiker & Maria Guggenbichler. This ticket saves you at least £15.

Following on from the success of My Stories, Your Emails, Olivier Award-winning performance provocateur Ursula Martinez is back on her dirty soapbox.

In a social media-obsessed climate of self-promotion, Martinez offers up her positive self-deprecation, baring her soul (and possibly more), as she tries to understand the absurdity of modern living, and celebrate the difficulties of being a human, particularly a human with a vagina.

[1 hr]

Human and non-human actants camp for the night together on a hot pink terrain under an unblinking fluorescent sky. With axes, wood, violin, electronics and the bare body, Simone Aughterlony, Antonija Livingstone and Hahn Rowe stage a careful inquiry into some vibrant matters.

Through practicing a meditation and a choreography of reorienting the hierarchy of thinking and sensing, a fluid new rapport with the material and immaterial world is perceived and played with.

The repurposing of recognizable human behaviours engender by-product activities that may seem like dancing, and might sound like music. The vigour of the blade, the skin, the wood, the rope, the gaze, and all in our midst, buzz together lovingly in a hot debate on the political ecology of things.

[1hr 5]

‘Remember the good old days when everyone got along, when life was simple, when our television screens protected us from sex, violence and the discomfort of difference? Remember when politicians were statesmen, mothers were wholesome, the rich worked hard and celebrities were role models? Remember when we knew where we belonged, when no one was gay, no one was black and political correctness was barely a glint in some liberal’s eye? Me neither.

Happiness Forgets is a lecture, an ode and an elegy for our imperfect past, for the people we once were and can never be again, now that we know what we know now. In this piece, Season Butler pins down the past, examines it under a microscope, charges it with electricity to see if she can make it dance. Throwing tradition onto the junk heap of history, Happiness Forgets will try to nudge us into the gaps between rich and poor, comedy and tragedy, celebrities and fans, credibility and doubt, grab the power that these differences generate and grind it into dust. It’s about race, nostalgia and the moment when you see something familiar in a whole new light.’

[1 hr]

‘It never ceases to amaze us how important and resonant music can be in our lives. Often connected with childhood and adolescence, it is difficult to imagine the modern world without the songs that form its continuous soundtrack. In The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information, the Montreal based interdisciplinary group PME-ART have one hundred and twenty records and stories about each one: historical facts about the bands, gossip, anecdotes, things that happened to them and their friends. Each time they perform, they find themselves playing the records in a different order, creating new, on-the-spot connections between the music they love (and even a few songs they hate.) A loose, improvised, but still surprisingly effective, journey through art, politics, love and work; all seen through the lens of every kind of music. A place to come together and listen, think about where songs takes us and what we take from them.

The public is also invited to a special encounter called Bring your own Record/Listening Party (90 min), where anyone can bring his/her own record and tells a story of her/his own in a casual atmosphere, raising every kind of question on Saturday 10 at Cow Vintage at 3.30pm.

[Saturday 10 Oct, 1h 30 / Sunday 11 0ct, 3hrs]