DIY: 2015 – Zierle & Carter Christina Georgiou ‘Eyes wide open: Unearthing Fragments of the Future’

A remote secret location – a group of explorers investigating the myriad of layers that linger and surface – moving between the boundaries of the imagined and reality – infused strongly by their curiosity for the unknown.

Project Summary

Unknown and unidentifiable to all (including the facilitators) Eyes wide open : Unearthing Fragments of the Future will be based at a secret remote location in the north of England for 5 days. Meeting in a car park in Lancaster, participants/facilitators will hand over their mobiles as they wait for a mini van to pick them up, the driver will blindfold everyone and drive them to the secret location – a site absent of historical, geographical and contextual signifiers or signposting, with only traces and eroding remains of human interventions in the landscape. In a nearby field, a base camp will have been prepared and tents for sleeping will be erected upon arrival.

Throughout the 5 days Zierle & Carter and Christina Georgiou will facilitate the group to explore, intuit, listen to, unearth, trace, translate, and reimagine the sites meaning, not to piece together or locate its actual past, but instead to open a new dialogue of possibilities, exploring the myriad of layers that linger and surface, feeling the sites’ distinct ‘texture’, all from a fresh perspective – raw, stripped back, and bare. Guided through various body centred data collection exercises and material/process led performance approaches, the group will arrive at site specific performances that offer to re-enliven the site, adding further layers/textures to its history.

This workshop opens up dialogues around quantum physics/field theory, sensory ethnography, mytho-geography, psycho-geography, and philosophical theories on perception and what shapes our reality. Through having an intimate dialogue with the site, the group will unavoidably stretch comfort zones, raise questions, and explore/develop their personal relationship to nature and sense of place. This 5-day intensive workshop is a step sideways, a shift from a growing reliance on mediated ‘finger tip’ technology, to an embodied knowing, where we find, locate, orient, explore and unearth the ‘fabric’ of a place through the body, infused strongly by our curiosity for the unknown.

The group will explore the site at various times of day and night. Due to the concept of the project, please note all participants will need to commit to stay at the site/basecamp throughout the 5 days of the workshop.

Applications are welcome from practitioners working within contemporary performance/cross interdisciplinary art forms from all levels of experience.  There are 10 places available.

Application deadline: Deadline passed.

Dates, times, location

Saturday 8 August – Wednesday 13 August. Secret Location (North England).

The Artists

Zierle & Carter’s collaborative work has been exhibited widely throughout Europe, Canada, United States, South America, Australia, Asia and Africa. Their work is interdisciplinary, multi-sensory and site/context responsive, spanning performance, sound, video, photography and installation. Through their practice, they critically examine different modes of communication and what it means to be human, addressing notions of belonging, and the transformation of limitations. Their work sites an embodied investigation into human interactions and encounters, acting as an invitation to venture into the spaces in-between the external and internal, permanent and transient, spoken and unheard. Visiting Lecturers at Falmouth University, they have taught and led numerous workshops, from the UK, US, Australia, Lithuania, Romania to Sweden (Germany and Greece among others forthcoming).

Christina Georgiou’s has presented her work widely through live performances, solo and group exhibitions, conferences and public talks, and has conducted workshops and courses at international biennials, exhibitions, galleries, museums, institutions and festivals in Europe, Latin America and Asia. Her work is characterized by repetitive behaviour, durational actions, public interactions and site-specific interventions. She explores site-specificity through psycho-geography while using live art as a site-responsive means. Her performance work is research-based and process-led and it focuses on notions of transformation, repetition, embodiment, interactivity, fluidity, fragility, liminality, intercorporeality, memory and perception. She is the founder, director and curator of the Cyprus International Performance Art Festival (CIPAF) and founder and director of Cyprus International Performance Art Society (CIPAS).

Since meeting in Lithuania and Cyprus last year Zierle & Carter and Christina Georgiou’s practices both revolve around site-specificity and are anchored within body-based enquiries.

For further info see the Zierle & Carter and Christina Georgiou websites.