DIY: 2015 – Adam James ‘Maps of Power’

Constructing a fictional people to remap a forgotten city.

Project Summary
‘… the places are what remain, are what you can possess, are what is immortal.’
Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

This project takes two fictional communities and explores the traces left behind as they pass North to South through an outmoded landscape.

Working together, we will respond to dereliction, brownfield and industrial sites, wastelands and forgotten streets exploring how these spaces might inform our sense of self and community. Through structured play, we will unearth forgotten stories and stage a midnight meeting between two estranged communities.

This project fuses pyschogeography with pervasive Nordic larp (Live Action Role-play) and builds upon my work exploring the creation of fictional outsiders, their worlds, totemic-sculptures, proto-politics, languages, rituals and myths.

For this project I am interested in bring diverse group of people together for a weekend of workshops exploring community creation methods culminating in a midnight Larp which is a reflection of Dublin’s Northern and Southern outskirts and is an attempt to remap dereliction.

This workshop is open to people of any background that are looking to learn about new ways to form communities, tell stories and reclaim spaces. There are no formal requirements needed to participate in the project, other than a positive can do attitude and a willingness to engage in outdoor physical activity alongside people from various backgrounds. The culminating activity itself will involve a walk of approximately 2-3hrs, so participants will need to have at least a modest degree of fitness and sensible walking shoes.

I will be particularly interested in hearing from people with an interest in sharing information, workshops, experiences, methods or artwork relating to: crowd dynamics/group psychology/ survival skills/proto-politics/social cartography/urban archeology/song lines and anything you feel is related.

Central to the workshops is the exploration of group alibi, silence, contact improvisation, blindfold story telling, and intuitive ritual creation and sculptural responses to environmental and architectural stimuli.

As an applicant, you must wish to participate in the creation of a moving image art piece created through the documentation of a midnight larp. Over three days you will, you will take part in something special – the creation of a fictional community, a new moving image work and a city wide pervasive larp.

This workshop is free but participants are expected to bring their own food and drink. If you are coming from anywhere other than the locality and need accommodation, we will provide information on this when your attendance has been confirmed.

Application Deadline: Deadline passed.

Dates, times and location
Thursday 3 – Saturday 5 September, Central Dublin performance studio location tbc.

The Artist

Working across performance, role-play, film and sculpture Adam James brings to life characters, rituals and events, which look at the place of body, ritual and play in contemporary societies. He is influenced by ethnographic and anthropological studies, and produces works portraying fictional peoples evolutionary steps, which in turn generate elaborate artifacts and documentation.

James’ practice has developed from an on-going interest into the social and cultural characteristics of outsiders, and more recently the gestural qualities that define a group or individual as being inside or outside of the whole. Using role-play, Adam creates semi-fictional characters whose purpose is to better understand personal, social and cultural constructs. Central to his methodology is the use of alibi as a tool to engender risk taking, improvisation and experimentation.

Working alongside community groups and dancers, James’ facilitates the co-creation of fictional cultures, which are used in the exploration of site-specific locations, such as brownfield sites. As such, James’ performances often take the form of hidden or pervasive games in which imaginary in-between worlds are temporarily inhabited by micro-communities.

Born in Birmingham (UK), Adam James has been performing, exhibiting and running Larps nationally and internationally since 2007 at programmes such as The Artist and the City (Stoke on Trent), Knutpunkt (Sweden), LUPA (London), V22 Summer Club (London) and at spaces such as the Jerwood Space (London), ICA (London), W139 (Amsterdam), Legion-TV (London), Siobhan Davies Dance (London), Vitrine Gallery (London). He has collaborated with choreographers Hamish MacPherson & Andrew Graham, artist’s boyleANDshaw & Frank Millward and has recently been awarded the Artsadmin Bursary, four successive Arts Council England grants and is currently on a one-year residency with Tate Learning.