We all 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 comforts 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 continues with its series of off-site projects before moving to new premises later this year and presents the second of two events that fall under the umbrella of Through Tomorrow’s Eyes.
Using art as a tool to make people and our surroundings a better place, DISRUPTION2 will take the form of a series of small performances/gestures by our team of ‘POSITIVE DISRUPTORS’ and will take place on the city’s much derided, run down High 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 could take the form of storytelling, random acts of kindness, communication, mass participation, performance, and song, anything that will change the daily routine of that day for the people of Swansea.
DISRUPTION2: Through Tomorrow’s Eyes
Ravaged by war and neglect, Swansea High Street is the ultimate post-apocalyptic playground. Derelict theatres and shops line a dying street; the ghosts of the great and the good that once played here are now all but forgotten. As we look into the empty shop facades we see our own grey and hungry reflections. Each pitiful attempt at a new life here is thwarted by economic downturn and social apathy.
Is this the end?
Or are we about to embark on something new?
Elysium Gallery presents artists who are willing to investigate through performance whether total social decay is just around the corner. On hand will be visual documenters to record and inform us as to whether the worst is now in our past and commentators to join us and send word out that will bring us help.
We need you.
On Saturday 21st July a series of events will start at 2pm which will either damn us all or bring us into the bright lights of a new dawn. These events will be linked with and following on from the previous nights grand launch of BEEP2012: Wales International Painting Prize – Through Tomorrow’s Eyes held at the Volcano space | 229 High Street | Swansea.
Micheál O’Connell :
A performance in which eggs are taken from the first of three children’s potties, then cracked, the contents poured into the second container and the shells placed in the third. A total of 12 dozen eggs are used during the, ideally 24 minute, routine with the first potty being replaced each time a load has depleted. Performed for the first time in September 2006. Direction and creation Mocksim
Money 4 U which was first carried out in September 2008, interestingly just before the world economic crisis we have now become accustomed to began. The artist would like to think his work prophesised the crisis at a time when few were critical of Capitalism. It’s best that this work/activity, given its nature, is not promoted.
Details here: http://www.mocksim.org/Money4U.htm
Barrie J Davies
(b.1977) is a Welsh artist born in Milford Haven Pembrokeshire, Wales. He has graduated from Southampton institute with a fine art degree in 2000 and completed his masters Degree at the University of Wales institute Cardiff in 2004. He has exhibited internationally and nationally for over ten years and has made various playful and surreal works. His work has exists in various forms such as installation, performance, video, text, film, sound, photography, drawing, sculpture, print making, painting and internet projects. Barrie’s work uses a provocative, subversive and humorous style to expose the human condition: notions of success, money, glamour, language, love, death, sexuality, gender and religion are picked at with dry comedic use of tragedy meshed with absurdity. His work is in various private and public collections worldwide. He has recently shown artwork in New York, London, Milan, Alaska and Indonesia. Barrie J Davies is represented independently by Barrie J Davies projects.
Jon Muir
Jon Muir’s work focuses on the use of survivalism and bush craft in more of an imaginative sense. Adaption is the key to this type of living, where inanimate objects become prized possessions. The idea of apocalyptic outfits is that nothing is made from scratch; cloth has been scavenged and created based on the quality of clothing. The emphasis on recycling in a post-apocalyptic world is visible through adapted apparel. The outfits are made from old clothes, a mix between civilian clothing and military surplus, which gives the outfits a strong aesthetic and emphasizes the idea that anything is possible.
Simon Farid
Britain is broken! Continual crisis. I read the news today… Apocalypse is easier to imagine than the complicated truth. Of course. Britain is Broken! will be an interventionist installation on Swansea High Street. It will use the aesthetic of boarded up closed shops to explore the relationship this damaging real has to its representation in print media, placing found press hyperbole alongside the real-life situation it describes. The images and text predicting apocalypse will mirror the street they face. This representation will also act as a backdrop to the performances taking place on the street, mirroring the metaphorical backdrop news-media provides to ones daily life.
Philip Cheater & Rowan Lear
“Archaeo-Logical Word Search”
When the world is laid to waste and culture collapses inwards, who will find the words to unravel the mistakes of the past? Language and literacy have declined, as new generations become increasingly ignorant. We live in a world of instant messaging and pop-up imagery, where writing and reading have lost their gravity and expressiveness, and instead perform a basic informative function. When the end comes, what were the last words written? Did a vital message use the wrong words? Could abbreviated communication cause a cataclysmic event?
When humanity teeters on the edge of destruction and the abyss of ignorance takes away all we know, how do we reconstruct a message from a language that we’ve lost?
The event will take the form of a performative archaeology that takes place in an illiterate future. We will examine written fragments of the pre-apocalyptic world and attempt to decipher their meanings. Through live experimentation, we’ll extrapolate possible messages from semiotic, phonetic and symbolic constructions of language. As individual performers, we’ll demonstrate that a text has no single meaning, the past is not stable and history is constantly reworked ad reinterpreted.
Wanda Zyborska
Wanda Zyborska works within a theoretical context of the body and identity situated in the politics of place, and gender. Wanda intends to make short disruptive interventions from an enclosed space at regular intervals, rather like a cuckoo clock. She will emerge as a living abstract sculpture, with a very physical and bodily presence; do one of a variety of interactive short performances, and then retreat.
The medium is recycled rubber inner tubes from agricultural machines.
Tracy Harris
I’d like to write a response to Bright Lights: New Dawn.
After spending 3 months on Swansea High Street walking up and down seeing the familiar faces of homeless people hide in doorways, bus stops and lurking in street corners. I’d like to write a response to the street I know, every stone, every pasty I use to eat in eynons and the the ongoing flood of people, the ghosts living next to the present. I would like these words to be performed, shouted from the rooftops and told to an intimate circle of passers by or maybe shouted through a megaphone so people stop, stand back and listen.
Alys Hugs
‘The future’s so bright u gotta wear shades…?’. Alys Hugs is proposing to walk around the designated area wearing a T-shirt with the words ‘missing u’ in a cross word fashion on the back while listening to ‘love’ songs on a portable cd player.
Klaus Pinter
[description, performance] The art prints should animate the viewers to try out new dance steps.
The viewers can take the prints away.
[title]
untitled
[technique]
paper (three piles or one pile mixed), music
[size]
21 x 29,7 cm
ca. 50 pieces
[position]
table, ground, wall
[organisation]
> post
< return not necessary
[location]
Theatre
Ben Ross and Tim Kelly
‘Snowball’
Live reading of George Orwell’s animal farm; discusses the nature of corruption, power and the currency of democratic processes ability to strengthen the political system.
“The birds did not understand Snowball’s long words, but they accepted his explanation, and all the humbler animals set to work to learn the new maxim by heart. FOUR LEGS GOOD, TWO LEGS BAD, was inscribed on the end wall of the barn, above the Seven Commandments and in bigger letters.” (G.Orwell, Animal Farm)
Natasha Tresadern-Hill
Keep Calm and Drink Tea.
The artist will question whether the great British tradition of keep calm and drink tea will be sustained in a post-apocalyptic environment, with all these broken dishes, and the harsh realities now facing humanity, the connection to other parts of the world lost and only a few plants remain how can we keep calm and drink tea? Natasha aims to protect that last tea plant in her own unique way as the cups and saucers come crashing down. She invites the audience to represent the future world by attempting to damage the plant within her grasp, who will win this tea battle, Will anyone remain calm?
Sophie Elliott
The public will be invited to create this piece of work responding to this question; how far is ‘home’? A circular red sticker will be stuck on to a shop window acting as a visual representation of ‘home’. The public will place a red sticker as far or close to ‘home’ as they feel. Physical distance is not a consideration. The audience’s participation will eventually create a map, framed by a derelict shop facade, questioning Swansea’s role as a home.
Cerys Thomas
Mirror, Imag(in)e
The artist invites you to see her. Laid out are various items that you are invited to use upon her body. Your contribution makes her who she is.
Sandra Demar
‘Spirit of the Theatre’
A noble Palace now sprouting a tree top house. Internal sumptuousness and gilt now damp dull and dusk. Mortar holds fast to mould, blooded brick clasps cold angels.Fragment flake n’ fall like seagull shit. Your seeded foliage oh grand dame finds root in festoon and gable. Pilasters hold straight and square with strong autonomy in libertythat is yours now kept alone. A chinless mascoon grimaces awaiting new blood to flow, its awhile now since your spectators gestured Langtry, Chaplin. Reel flickering encounters; still as virtual game play in time and space. Your inner life echoes chance encounters, gossip, negotiations, and confrontations. Theatre: shape shifting social space your spooks may enliven our streets rekindling the pleasures of urbanity as Disruption 2 beckons your shadowy presence.
Carys Shannon
I’m Listening (A Case for Empathy)
We are told that the world is less tolerant, faster moving, more impersonal – empathy is out of fashion and the reign of the individual is king. Technology means more connectedness but less real emotion. In the days of post-apocalypse when we are left reeling by our own capabilities, empathy will live again, people want to be heard, to tell their stories – but who will be capable of listening? The empath is sought after, valued, needed and offers her service -to really listen to the stories people want to tell.
Alessio Rutligliano
Apocalyptic themes were common during the crisis of the 30s – about two hundreds of silent movies realized in less than ten years after the financial outbreak. A century later, “Happy centenary, apocalypse”, short experimental film, reclaims old cinematographic techniques to describe contemporary eschatological deliria. Strongly influenced by the pioneering essay The End of the World by Ernesto De Martino, comparative analysis between psychopathological apocalypses and cultural apocalypses, Rutigliano develops a cinematographic technique lying in creating successive sliding of meaning through the use of violent fades and visual ambivalences.
Tiff Oben and Helene Roberts
Using Situationist inspired disruptions to the urban flow, Helene Roberts and Tiff Oben will trace invisible and lost routes through Swansea’s city centre, mapping out what once was there, plotting what might one day become. Documenting their journey using photography and text the artists will re-construct virtual, psycho-geographic pockets of Swansea, Swansea in the prime of its glorious past, Swansea as futurescape, Swansea as ruin. Each state will act as a friction, unsettling the viewer from their everyday inhabitation of, and familiarity with, the city; torn from the comfort of being and hurled headlong into the uncertainty of becoming…
Victoria Malcolm
I will be part of the post apocalyptic cleansing of the debris, the fallout, the ash, strange dusts and powders.
I will be an artist who must now use whatever remains, a painter working on the streets and pavements, in the gutters, sweeping together what can be mustered to resemble adornment in the grey and shattered setting of the city.
Nothing will last, all must be washed away; I have seen it happen and now can only make vain gestures, in the knowledge that it cannot resist what will come after and that soon all trace will be gone.
The urge to find and master the recreation of redemptive beauty in the humblest of materials in the prerogative of artists-it may be that survivors will look to artists for a way out of a disrupted world.
AE101 Collective
(Emily Baines, Beccie Evans, Jessica Carey, Amy Edwards, Elliot Mudd, Joel Williams and Jason & Becky)
‘Phonebox Disco’
PhoneBox Disco is part of a series of socially engaging works performed in various standard BT
phoneboxes in the city centre of Swansea.
Lasting for the duration of one hour, and by encouraging audience participation, AE101 Collective address issues surrounding our culture’s lack of community and constant battle with technology, resulting in poor
communication. PhoneBox Disco also aims to bring people together physically, and to appreciate this physical connection whilst questioning the idea of ‘progress’ in our modern world.
Kapspike & Goebbels
The apocalypse shall render the gullible and the desperate at the mercy of the charismatic
Kapspike and Goebbels wish to take this opportunity to rehearse
Tracy Harris
I’d like to write a response to Bright Lights: New Dawn.
After spending 3 months on Swansea High Street walking up and down seeing the familiar faces of homeless people hide in doorways, bus stops and lurking in street corners. I’d like to write a response to the street I know, every stone, every pasty I use to eat in eynons and the the ongoing flood of people, the ghosts living next to the present. I would like these words to be performed, shouted from the rooftops and told to an intimate circle of passers by or maybe shouted through a megaphone so people stop, stand back and listen.
Elena Videnova
Flying motion activated by a static body.
Emergent Behaviour
An emergent behaviour emerges when a number of simple entities operate in an environment forming more complex behaviours as a collective.
Sylvie Evans
Using pictures, photographs, magazine and newspaper cuttings, as well as other collage materials, passers-by will have the opportunity to deconstruct and reconstruct the traditional image of Swansea.
Susie Wild
Just what do you call a collective of poets poeting anyway?
Kirsty Morgans
Songs to animate an audience to try out a new mood to their day.
Jennifer Foster
Are you stuck in your illusion? How do you know if you are? 2 hour performance workshop using presentations and sculpture to show you how to bust out of your own illusion into your reality and so see your truth.
The deification of utility by Jason and Becky
In a post-apocalyptic world the insignificant rise to claim the status of the great. The overlooked will step forward and the meek shall truly inherit the earth. As all previous systems of order crumble under the weight of our devastated society, true value is found only in the beauty of the utilitarian. In the harsh and real fight for survival, the few utensils remaining are guarded and worshipped with a devotion offered previously only to our Gods. Have you seen our tin opener?
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