What Went Up in the Blaze // Что мы потеряли во время пожара
What Went Up in the Blaze (Что мы потеряли во время пожара) was a performance inside Kreenholm Manufacture, Narva, Estonia.
11th May 2024
Duration: 15 mins
The Kreenholm Manufacture is a dilapidated factory on the Russian-Estonian border city of Narva. Over a period of six weeks, our group – made up of seven women from Narva, Zimbabwean artist Zacharaha Magasa, and I – worked on this live-cinematic performance. Together, we built a model city made from miniature buildings of our desires, dreams and losses. Whilst sculpting our city, we discussed the ruins of Narva: partially bombed severely in the Second World War and partially deserted after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The performance was a live-camera 'walk-through' and projection of our model city, set to a recorded text piece written by the group members and a musical composition by Magasa. More information on this work process can be found on the Artistic Workshops page, under 'Performing Sculpture'.
For the performance event, we got special access to the Kreenholm Factory. Usually, it is surrounded by barbed wire and patrolled by border police. The performance was followed by an on-site, all-night brick-firing by artist Pavel Rotts.
Supported by NART
Documentation Jelizaveta Gross
Peep Show
Peep Show was a performance inside an underground dilapidated casino in Berlin, shortly before its final redevelopment, as part of the exhibition 'Casino Real', curated by Adrenaline, 7th July 2023
Duration: unending loop (circa. 3 hours)
The piece took place inside a small nook, decorated with the old casino’s murals and small installed sculptures. The performance was hidden, whilst being live streamed and projected on the front of the curtain. This invites a specific audience – those curious enough to come closer, stay longer, or find a way through the barrier in order to catch a glimpse.
Behind the curtain, a live-camera roamed the walls of a miniature labyrinth, decorated with small objects and images. This sculpture simulated the winding architecture of the casino; the location of the evening. Drawing influence from peep shows and stereoscopic entertainment of the 19th century (in which images were viewed through the medium of a curtain hole, kaiser-panorama or stereoscope), the sculpture could only be accessed through the invitation of performance.
I use the live camera to similarly displace both time and space; to archive it before it has even ended. Is the video a past recording, or is it happening now? Are the objects in the video present in this space, or somewhere else? How big are they in reality?
Documentation Studio Replica
[video documentation here]
Hot Wheel
Hot Wheel, performance as part of '48h Neukölln' festival, KINDL Gelände, Berlin
23rd June 2023
Duration: 40 minutes
A performative lecture on the miniature cars created in 1960s California by toy company Mattel. The lecture goes down tangents of migration, childhood memory, and obsessive fetishism. Using recordings from a long-lost family telephone-reunion, we recount our own nostalgias of capitalism.
"When we started thinking about Hot Wheels; it was on the broader, societal level - about cars, speed, carbon emissions, gender. But like all public topics, there must be the private examples that support them. And so the research actually became about our memories, our families, our childhoods. About the bright colours of plastic imprinting on to our minds. The sound of wheels on the accelerator; the blue suitcase from 'America'; the tattered torn-up wallpaper; and the colour of glossy, scorching orange"
–– 'Hot Wheel' script
Made in collaboration with Julian Willming.
Documentation Richard Berger & Mike Seely
[video documentation here]
Cartoon Ghosts // Hologram Head
'Cartoon Ghosts, or, Hologram Head ', Pumpwerk Berlin, 9th May 2021
Duration: 10 minutes
Performance lecture presented in the medium of a 'Pepper's Ghost' hologram, installed inside a chapel in Berlin as part of the research programme 'I Want to Believe' with University of the Underground.
The performance presented my research into the material properties of the typical ‘Disneyfied’ ghost, such as translucency, luminosity and weightlessness. Going down the paths of the history of animation, Phantasmagoria shows of the 18th century, and spiritualism in late capitalism, I looked at the origins of these physical properties that we have come to recognise as ghostly or otherworldly. I interviewed thinkers and makers such as Rupert Sheldrake, Ed Verreaux (production designer for Spielberg’s Casper the Friendly Ghost), independent video game makers, and a variety of psychic mediums and spiritualists.
[research presentation here]
Battleships
Battleships, hARTslane Gallery London, 18th March 2023
Duration: 7 minutes
Battleships is a performance that zooms in on the textures and viceralities of objects. In a board-game format, the stone is rolled, signalling which board piece will be moved to its next position. This continues, with the board pieces – or ‘rats’ – moving along their path or changing directions. A glass-turreted castle stands in the centre; its purpose unclear.
The game has no end nor beginning; it continues in absurd loops until it stops. The piece explores instructions and rules that have unclear purposes. Why are we playing this?
A close-up camera is connected to a monitor and projection of the live-streamed game. The objects appear enormous and grotesque so close-up; their textures and shapes make an other-worldly landscape.
[video documentation here]
Skyscrapers
Skyscrapers, performance as part of the exhibition 'Big City Baby' at Zentrum für Aktuelle Kunst, Zitadelle Spandau, 9th Oct. 2022
Duration: 8 minutes
The performance was installed inside a small lookout hut on the grounds of Spandau Citadel. Audience members were encouraged to come inside the narrow space for a one-to-one reading on childhood memories of growing up in a metropolis: skyscrapers, financial districts, dystopian fantasies and the crappy CGI in early Harry Potter films.
[video documentation here]
The Elephant and The Castle
Performance and Video // 'The Elephant and the Castle', Peak Gallery London, 14th-16th July 2020 (shortly before the building's demolition)
Duration: 4 minutes
A project researching the history, impending demolishment, redevelopment, and differing perspectives of the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre in London.
The abstract surfaces of the Shopping Centre reflected the building’s fate. The pigeon poop and painted-over graffiti were not as random as they appear – on closer observation, the graffiti reads of direct insults to the redevelopers of the area. The red curtains in various knots hang above the boarded up pub. The shiny tiles reflect the new blocks of flats shooting up and closing in on the Shopping Centre. This project was an exercise in reading the unintended ornamentations on a building’s façade, and interpreting what they reflect of the socio-political circumstances of a place.
The research was shown in two formats; the first was a film created in the 2020 lockdown, and the second was a live performance in the Shopping Centre itself, as part of the exhibition 'Distant Peak' in Peak Gallery London.
[video documentation here]
ORPHEUS
'ORPHEUS', Berlin, 1st Sep. 2019
Duration: 120 minutes
Performed on top of a fountain that was once on the façade of the Universität der Künste Berlin, but was then severed from the building when it was bombed during WWII. Now, 'Orpheus' remains hidden in an over-grown area 5 kilometres from its original location on the university. There is no knowledge as to how or why he was transported there. I performed an original aural poem that interweaved the Greek myth of Orpheus with the mystery, trauma and abandonment of this stone Orpheus'.
Audience members were instructed to come to the meeting point, where they were given a map to find Orpheus amongst the tall shrubbery. Once they found him, the aural poem was performed, followed by an evening of Greek wine-drinking and colouring Orpheus in chalk.