UK PREMIERE

How does climate change, a vastly distributed emergency, become personal? What is it about the slow-motion accident that escapes our defense responses?

In This ritual is not an accident, time and scale are recalibrated as personal histories are shredded, recomposed, and the slow-motion accident of climate change becomes intimate. Women undergo surgery, first passive, then actively involved in their own operations.

Created for small audiences, this performance becomes an emergent text, windstorm, and choir; a contemporary ritual to reset nervous systems collectively.

This ritual is not an accident from her skin like summer on Vimeo.

Get tickets for the Friday performance here.

In collaboration with ELAN, supported by Canada Council for the Arts and co-curated with Studio 303 (Montreal).

The Line up for HOTLINE #2 is:

Lucy Suggate
Adam Kinner
Christopher Willes
Gnucci

Information on HOTLINE #1 can be found here.

HOTLINE aims to be a critical space that can facilitate and hold complex conversations that don’t look to agreement as a point of entry or conclusion. The events start from our own intrigue, attractions and research, there are no given themes or topics of conversation. For each event three people are invited to share provocations/presentations/thoughts.

We are interested in why people do what they do, how the particular logics are formed that drive and direct decisions/actions/tastes and art-making. We want to look at the more invisible parts of people’s practices – with their specific interests and intrigues becoming catalysts for group conversations. We work with the understanding that everyone attending is involved in the creation of that space and how the conversation unfolds.

We hope for those conversations to nurture a deeper need for connection, communication and generative live encounters that motivate and mobilise bold creative action.We both work within the arts and presenters are often but not exclusively artists; HOTLINE is not an artist talk or panel discussion.

HOTLINE is a constantly shifting format for a public conversation, a space to share in the love the hate the ambivalence and the complexity of things, hosted by Jamila Johnson-Small and Sara Sassanelli. Each event happens at a different location that we can access at no cost.

We are interested in the growing demand for artists to be present in ways beyond the show/exhibition/text that create spaces and exacerbate systems of unequal exchange, where institutions or curators cash in on the cultural capital of artists but give little in return. We want to move beyond spaces that enable complicity between artists, audiences & curators that serve to perpetuate modes of consumption of artist/s as resource or infallible authority.

HOTLINE at Fierce will feature contributions from artists presenting in the festival.

WORLD PREMIERE
Durational drop-in

Performance Actions
6am: The Wake
6pm: The Processional

They were kings and queens (once upon a time) that is, of course, when they were HUMAN.

They were progenitors and lords of ALL humanity. Until their children betrayed them.

Their flesh branded. Their names erased. Their throne toppled. Their diadem revoked.

They are still kings and queens – if hell and damnation can be considered a coronation. They are now the rulers of death, misery, oppression, pestilence and savagery.

Where once the heartbeats of man responded to the calls of talking drums. The drums have since been silenced and the heartbeats have long faded away.
Replaced by the clangor of shackles.

And where you could once hear GOD whispering peace and freedom in the winds – the air filled with the divine fragrance of frankincense and myrrh (Heaven and Earth).

Now there is only stagnant and stifling winds carrying the rotten miasma of blood, piss, shit and despair.

Where once there were human beings, there is now only the presence of flies…

Fierce Says: We first met Preach in NYC back in 2013. Since then we’ve followed what has turned out to be an incredible body of activist performance works. Through a conversation across continents we’re delighted to be working with him to create a performance especially for Birmingham, in his first UK performance.

Artist Lecture – Thursday 19th October – 5:30pm – Birmingham School of Art

(18+)

In collaboration with SHOUT Festival. Part of Fierce vs The Yard.

Erin Markey has “laser-beam eyes, a hair-raising singing voice, and an intense, almost predatory sexuality” (The New Yorker). She’s a “magnetic diva” (New York Times). She’s one of Brooklyn’s 50 Funniest People (Brooklyn Magazine). And she wants to tell you some stories.

Comprised of her signature story-driven stand-up and scored by sensual homemade pop, Erin Markey’s Boner Killer is an intimate musical conversation between what Markey thinks she can’t have and how she’d have it if she could. Driven by Whitney Houston’s lesbian mythologies, Europe™, and a Pretty Woman accident, Markey and bandmate Emily Bate sacrifice their lives to transform personal humiliations into naked feminist hope.  

Fierce is delighted to be producing Markey’s debut UK tour.

Fierce Says: We saw this show in NYC at 12.30am, straight from an eight hour flight and no sleep – yet we didn’t blink once. Devastatingly funny with Markey’s huge stage presence. Think standup, meets cabaret – and who hasn’t thought about becoming a Craigslist whore? We can’t believe she hasn’t performed in the UK before.

Words and Music by Erin Markey
Directed by Ellie Heyman
Featuring Erin Markey with Emily Bate

Music Arranged by Erin Markey and Emily Bate
Sound Design by Jeff Aaron Bryant
Costume Design by Enver Chakartash & Carter Kidd
Makeup Design by Naomi Raddatz
Tour Produced by Caleb Hammons

Obsidian is a new performance drawing upon Rochat’s recent travels in China and the extreme landscapes of the Qinghai Province, the performance is a delicate balance between text, body and substance.

Anne Rochat immersively subjects her body to the matter of ice whilst nearby research materials and a collection of videos related to the travel experiences in China will be exhibited.

Obsidian is an ongoing project associated with a residency program of Pro Helvetia.

Fierce Says: We first came across Anne’s work on Vimeo and were gripped by the risk and intensity to her various performances which include hanging as a human chandelier adorned with glassware and scaling a precarious pyramid made of sheets of rusting metal.

WORLD PREMIERE

Blurring the lines between live art, dance, theatre and fine art, The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein explores representations of women, looking at ways in which social media and consumerism have redefined how we relate to the female body, one’s ‘true self’ and public shaming.

In this irreverent phenomenon of music, dance and ‘witch-bitch’ ritual, The Famous plunges into the ghostly underworld of popular culture, seeking, as she puts it, ‘the real me, the pure me, behind this soiled shroud of promiscuity.’

Pulling from the myth of Medusa, Nicki Minaj and her own legendary self(ie), The Famous examines pop culture’s take on the ‘female monster’. Expect visual overload and risk-taking from this raw, timely and uncomfortably hilarious interdisciplinary performance.

Fierce Says: We heart The Famous. We’ve wanted to bring her back to Brum ever since her infamous dozen eggs performance back in 2011, so we’re thrilled to be commissioning this major new performance. Think American Idol vs Marina Abramovic and you’re not far off…

Commissioned by Fierce and Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts. Supported using public funds by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, and by PACT Zollverein, Kone Foundation and the Barbican.

Notorious is included in the Fierce Weekend Pass which can be purchased here.

Created by The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein

Associate Artist Krista Vuori

Collaborators Krista Vuori and Brogan Davison

Design by David Curtis-Ring

Produced by Sally Rose

Lighting design by Martin Langthorne

Production Manager Hannah Moore

Company Stage Manager Chloe Dorato

Marketing and Producing Assistant Molly Giles

Company Production Assistant Lóa Björk

Dramaturg Eirini Kartsaki

Development by In Company Collective

Make up by Thom Shaw

Press by Mobius

Commissioned by Fierce and Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts

Presented with DanceXchange.

PILGRIM is a physical journey through the mystical sound scores created by Electronic Musician James Holden. It is a reminder of the ancient and enduring kinship between Dance and Music and the deeply transformative qualities of both. The work is haunted by remnants of English folk heritage and pagan sensibilities shifting between hypnotic and euphoric states. Lucy’s physical vocabulary is irreverent and eclectic; she guides us through minimal sophistication towards Acid House and arduous repetition, resulting in a variety of perceptual and physical shifts. Coaxed along by Holden’s beguiling and epic rhythms she is constantly questioning and reminding us of why we Dance?

Choreography and Performance: Lucy Suggate
Music: “The Inheritors” by James Holden

Concept devised during Modul Dance residency between Lucy Suggate and Sonia Gomez at GRANER in Barcelona.

Produced by Arts Council England and British Council Artists International Development Fund. Festival TNT Terrasa, Marta Oliveres, Modul Dance, Mercat De les Flors, Graner, Bora Bora and Dansehallerne. Special Thanks to James Holden and Gemma Sheppard, Bush Hartshorn and Dance4.

Lucy also leads a Professional Class – Thursday 19 October – 10am

The acclaimed Mexican performance artist Rocio Boliver will give an illustrated talk about her life and art. Rocio’s story is particularly compelling: once a teenage model Rocio became one of Mexico’s leading News Readers before having to leave the job when news of her pornographic feminist texts spread. Rocio then dedicated her life to Performance Art. Come listen to this brilliant and often hilarious story ahead of Rocio’s performance closing the festival on Sunday 22^nd.

Sweet 60th – Sunday 22nd October – 7pm – Location TBC