‘Most of us go about our daily lives with an assumption how the day’s events will go. We meticulously plot and plan our routines, treading our familiar well worn paths towards the comfort of the familiar. Then all of a sudden there is a DISRUPTION! Everything changes and all that we are used to falls apart. Something unexpected emerges…something new is created’.
Elysium gallery presents two events that fall under the umbrella of Disruption running alongside Elysium Gallery’s 4th Birthday and 50th exhibition celebrations.
On Saturday 5th November the DISRUPTION public performances event will take place.
Using art as a tool to make people and our surroundings a better place, DISRUPTION will take the form of a series of performances/gestures by our team of ‘POSITIVE DISRUPTORS’ and will take place on the city’s main commercial shopping street, DISRUPTION will demonstrate how a series of breaks from the daily routine can have a positive impact and make the environment in that part of Swansea a better place to be. This will take the form of storytelling, random acts of kindness, communication, mass participation, performance, mass audience participation and song, anything that will change the daily routine of that day for the people of Swansea.
D I S R U P T I O N will take place on Oxford Street in the area between Poundland (the old Woolworths opposite Waterstones) leading up through the Union Street (opp Nat West), Portland Street (opp Swansea market) and Oxford Street junctions. Proceedings begin at midday and will run until 2pm before heading back to the gallery for drinks, cake and music by Non-stop Neil to celebrate our 4th birthday.
British Racing Green | Craig Wood | Paul Jeff | Non-Stop Neil |
Mr & Mrs. Clark | Claire Prosser | Katie White | Frances Trace | Nervous Energy |
Alfie Scheinman | Elena Videnova | CL*WNS | Nicolas Hughes | Erin Rickard
Stephen Donnelly | Shellshock Theatre | Alison Hughes | Nathan Thompson |
David Marchant | Donna Males | Louise Bird | Natasha Tresadern-Hill |
Helene Roberts | Tiff Oben | Sean Puleston | Sandra Demar | Philip Cheater
Shellshock Theatre/Stephen Donnelly: Darth Vaders’ Danceathon
12-12.20pm outside POUNDLAND
Ghetto Blaster; check!
Iconic helmet; check!
Couple of pints of Red Bull; damn straight…
Join Darth for some ‘ardcore manic dancing in Oxford Street on the 5th of November. Audience participation is encouraged.
Craig Wood and Paul Jeff: Unrehearsed Stereotypes
1230-130pm outside POUNDLAND
Live discordant sound performance featuring unrehearsed playing of instruments.
Anti-Professionalism, Anti-Specialisation, Pro-Fallibility, Pro-Chance.
Alison Hughes: **HUG**S
12 – 2pm begins at Portland Street junction
Alys** Hug**s presents a bear displaying the words Hug you, Hug me and intends walking around the chosen location letting nature take its course. ‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin’ W. Shakespeare.
Frances Trace: Cleaning Ladies
12-2pm begins at Portland Street junction
Ten people dressed as old fashioned stereo-type cleaning women obsessively clean the street, two people dusting, two with sweeping brushes, two with hoovers, two spraying the benches, another person cleaning the cash point and another picking up rubbish.
‘When I was a little girl visiting my Grandmother she would be in her cleaning’ pinny’, with dusters hanging out her pockets, pegs on her sleeves and rollers in her hair cleaning the house spotless every day. I want to bring together my generation to physically reminisce in the memories of our grandparents generation, focusing on the characteristics of elderly women with all their quirky habits, speech, image and their necessity to clean. The Cleaning ladies will clean our public space as if it is our intimate personal private space of which we care for and take pride in. There is an emphasis on the proud housewife and old fashion values in which there are only women cleaning, even the boys participating will be dressed as females. The group will humorously interact with the space and public in their cleaning activities such as dusting objects and passersby, asking people sitting on benches to raise their feet to ‘hoover’, having little chats in the style of elderly women and bringing together a collection of personal and universal memories in the style of each individual cleaners performance’.
DAVID MARCHANT: “B,-uR,st.?.”
12-2pm, Opposite Waterstones
Description – Firstly performed in the streets of Bristol in 2005 it was recognized that this interactive performance
piece touched on terrorism / apprehension / confusion and the sublime in an attempt to
change the mundane of a regular daily process within our controlled cityscape.
Even the title “B,-uR,st.?.” confronts the conditioning of English language as we know it.
The clown like dress represents the hilarious yet tragic situation of our post modern condition.
ShellShock Theatre / Stephen Donnelly: The Perverted Preacher Party
12.50-1.10pm, Union Street Junction
Hear Ye, Hear Ye! The End Is Nigh, The Rapture is imminent and the vast majority of people in Swansea have a one way ticket straight to Hell!
Ah well, we’ll be in good company; people with pierced ears, nymphomaniacs and the majority of the Catholic Church are all on the same bus. Join Pastor Steve of the ‘Perverted Preacher Party’ as he laments his days of good deeds, proudly reminisces about his of days of sin, confesses to you his life of sleaze and invites you to take part.
ShellShock Theatre / Stephen Donnelly: Stimulation / Impulse / Reaction
1.30-2pm, along Oxford Street
A performance experiment…
Performing in public space has the potential to transform areas, especially city centres designed for shopping, into spaces of contemplation, expression and catharsis.
Stimulation / Impulse / Reaction will be an unplanned, improvised happening which will aim to disrupt the street through humour, honesty and participation.
Nicolas Hughes: “I’m not going to leave you alone; I want you to get mad.”
12-2pm begins at Union street junction
An individual protest, Asking people “What Do You Want?” and “When Do You Want It?”, Inviting the public to write down there answer and pin it to a notice board. Also Hughes will be playing the recorded sound of the “Mad As Hell Scene”, from the 1976 film Network through a mega phone,
Claire Prosser: Left, Right, Shoulder to Shoulder
The Walk begins at 1pm start at Union Street junction
The artist would like you to get involved in her walk, ‘Left, Right, Shoulder to Shoulder.’ Just meet at Union Square and look out for the traditional Welsh lady with daffodils!
Look for the Welsh flower.
There you will find me.
The daffodil.
Stand behind me.
Stand in single file.
Arm width apart.
Put one hand on the shoulder of the person in-front of you.
Right leg first, take your first step.
Walk.
Follow me.
Follow the person in-front of you.
Guide the person behind you.
Look around, take everything in.
Close your eyes if you like.
Just walk.
Always be connected to someone.
You may leave when you please.
But always reconnect the line.
We walk as one.
We move as one.
We sway, weave and snake around town.
Follow the daffodil.
British Racing Green (BRG)
12pm start at CARD FACTORY junction
BRG is a non-geo-specific collective who work on various projects that investigate collaborative thinking towards concept and process.
For Elysium Gallery’s disruption event, BRG members will be handing out limited edition artworks in the form of QR-code badges. The QR code on the badge provides a link to a web-based work titled ‘5 good reasons…’ a humorous exploration into the benefits of contemporary art to the general public.
Elena Videnova
1-2pm at tree near Portland Street junction
(My) Transformation into a butterfly is a representation of shedding skins, shedding cultures, and re-birth. It provokes the viewer to think, listen and see the possibilities of transformation.
Donna Males: Escaping for Worse
1pm, outside Natwest Bank
Donna Males will be performing a solo piece for approximately five minutes. it will be audience interactive and is called ‘ Escaping for Worse’ it is a fragment of a larger scale piece she is working on called ‘Identity’ where she is currently exploring alternative ways to pursue a social life without alcohol. She will talk candidly with the audience about how she perceives her current standing in amidst the drinking culture, seeking the answers to sobering questions like Why is sober sex with a stranger so shit and why do I feel like a ‘Square’?
Mr and Mrs Clark’s Street Medicine Show
12-2pm outside H SAMUEL jewellers
An alternative to alternative therapy, this is a performative pill box for the love sick, the aching boned and the snake bitten. This is a show where you, the passerby are in our prescriptive minds. We want to remedy your ailments or scare them clean away. In desperate times we cling to desperate measures.
Tiff Oben & Helene Roberts
12pm start at Portland Street junction
The artists aim to use the Situationist strategy of navigating Swansea town centre using a map of the city’s Polish twin town Bydgoszcz. The artists will stop passersby to ask directions to well known landmarks, offering the map of Bydgoszcz to those willing to direct the way.
By using the wrong map the urban landscape will be made strange, the artists will become lost but also discover new ways around Swansea town.
Referring back to cold war surveillance strategies of Soviet Poland Oben & Roberts aim to document their journey using covert spy equipment concealed upon their persons.
Louise Bird
12-2pm middle of road between THOMAS COOK and STARBUCKS
Bird will be taking traditional craftwork out onto the streets of Swansea to share.
‘I hope to find moments in some peoples days that need a little something. People bored at bus stops, or alone in a café. It may be something to do on a journey- at the train station. Any moment that can be improved by the addition of something to fill a little time.
Buy disrupting their plans for just a couple of minutes , I will be showing passing members of the public, how to use a Knitting Nancy, leaving them with a cardboard model complete with knitting ready started. Just a little passive disruption, on a Saturday afternoon. Something either to make a person think, or take their mind off their troubles. Something else to do on a journey’.
Nathan Thompson: Poetry Performance
1.30pm Opposite Waterstones
Nathan presses and folds fresh ideas into neat piles called poems’
Alfie Scheinman
12-2pm, Along Oxford Street
Alfie Scheinman was sentenced to 110 years imprisonment in 1926 for stealing the worlds’ first Otter but has been released early because the new warden was made out of horse-thoughts and antique Beano comics and so was easily swayed.
The conditions of his bail are to provide musical ‘treatlings’ around the streets old Swansea town and to produce free fragmented portraits to anyone who asks for one. Do not hesitate to approach Alfie who you will recognise by the fact that he won’t be wearing his famous 24 foot top hat as it was stolen by a snowman last June. Presumably to use as some kind of disguise. Unless you’re an Otter, then please don’t approach him.
Nervous Energy/Chris Bird-Jones, Ann Jordan, Brenda Oakes, Anne Price Owen: 4 Queens
12-2pm, Near La Senza
Nervous Energy presents ‘4 Queens’ an artwork that invites the general public to participate and interact with their own personal feelings, ideas, desires and self regard about body image within a society obsessed by celebrity and the media and a culture that seeks perfection and eternal youth.
Both male and female viewers will be invited to record their views by writing with a felt tip pen onto strips of torn sheeting. These will then be attached with safety pins to the ‘body’ of a giant corset, to create a statement and archive reflecting current attitudes to the female form.
The structure of the corset allows it to become a self supporting round sculpture 7 metres in circumference and 2 metres high.
Natasha Tresadern-Hill: To Disrupt with Calm
12-2pm, Opposite Poundland
Pull up a comfy chair for free tea and a sit down/ chat.
Pull in the ‘keep calm and have a cup of tea’ ethics of a vintage generation. Tea and Art. Is tea a social interstice?
Cl*wns
Intervention and reaction to disruptors and audience throughout whole DISRUPTION zone
12-2pm
Sean Puleston & Erin Rickard: Big enough for the Both of Us
12-2pm, Oxford Street
Big enough for the Both of Us is a public performance confronting an ever increasing shared concern. In a growing community where opportunities are becoming fewer and further between, are two heads really better than one? Can you even get ‘two foots’ in the door? This performance will inform future innovative artworks addressing this issue.
Katie White: Don’t Walk. Skip
12pm-2pm between CROUCH and CARPHONE WAREHOUSE
Every one of all ages will be encouraged to interact with the positive and light hearted momentum of skipping. A ‘disruption’ which will hopefully create some smiles amongst the high street wanderers of Swansea.
Sandra Demar: I wish
12-2pm, Oxford Street
The ‘fool’ is the Jester playful and subversive in interactive creature of many disguises and will be playing on the streets of Swansea offering participates a wish for their desires.
Philip Cheater: What are Words Worth?
12-2pm outside Waterstones
On November the 11th we honour the men and women that have been lost due to conflict. This Saturday let us honour literature and the art of writing, that is sadly losing the battle with celebrity culture. Let us have the last word. A selection of books will be handed out to the public to help us remember that stories can invigorate the soul and imbue us with the desire to become more than what we are.
Our DISRUPTION documentors are
Babak Jani | Melvyn Williams | Susie Wild | Louise Johnson | Charlotte Matthews | Owen Martin | Jackie Baker | Karolina Slawska | Rose Davies
VIDEO 1
VIDEO 2
Sorry, nothing found.