DIY: 2015 – Agency for Agency ‘BRINGING IN THE DIRECTIONS’

Project Summary

This workshop invites 15 participants to explore how artists make performance based work informed by non-western rituals that are drawn from a range of cultural, social and religious practices.  Mining the extensive history of live art’s relationship to ritual, the workshop will use both practice and discussion to explore themes such as identity and recognition, transformation and transportation.  Through the shared experiences of ‘not being recognised’, the workshop aims to create a collaborative document in response to questions including

-What is the relevance of ritual to daily life and identity? 
-How do the transformative aspects of the ritual reflect or demonstrate identity?  
-What does the ritual say about those who witness or participate within the ritual?  
-Do viewers’ understanding, or non-understanding, shape the notion of the transformative ritual, and how important is it that the ritual is ‘recognised’? 
-How is the aesthetic of ritual affected by its becoming part of a normative discourse of writing or reviewing within live art in the UK.?
 
The day will be led by Barby Asante and Teresa Cisneros and will involve a sharing of practice through exercises and dialogue, animated by interventions from specially invited artists and ritual practitioners to invoke the act of ritual through critical discourses and illustrating connections of ritual to artistic practice.

Application Deadline: Deadline passed.

Dates, times and location
STUN Studio @ Z-arts, 335 Stretford Road, Hulme, M15 5ZA
Saturday 19 September 2015
11am – 7:30pm

The Artists

Agency for Agency are a new collaborative project with artist Barby Asante, curator Teresa Cisneros and producer Jessica Harrington. All three practitioners have worked on a number of personal and collaborative projects with artists working in visual art, social practice, live art and performance. Through the agency we wish to return to asking questions about practice in relation to place, identity, politics and notions of culture, and to support artists who are interested in similar questions and ethics of practice.