DIY: 2019 – Adam Patterson: Green Screen Charivari

Parading for the right to be unfixed, letting surfaces slip and slide, transgressing horizons, bodies, identities and worlds

Deadline for applications: 2pm, Thursday 27 June
This DIY is supported by Live Art Bistro

Project summary

So many stories have been told – so many images constructed – of who we are, what we look like, where we come from and what we’re doing here. These stories and images told against ourselves have constantly been reshaped, their margins redrawn and functions revised, by way of categorical, ordered, normative and possessive procedures, frames, measurements and systems of value. What new stories, then, may be disclosed, identified and dis-identified beyond these frames and fixations? In reading vulnerably, in reading porously, what will find us in being misled from expectation and beyond the horizon of what is allegedly known of ourselves?

Guided by mask-making, costuming, dance and collective reading, this workshop is a proposal for the right to be unfixed. Eventually leading to a procession of green costumes and masks moving through the streets, participants’ surfaces may reveal glimpses of other realities and worlds, drifting from reality’s green to virtual ‘elsewheres’. Using green-screen and keying effects to conjure magical portals across surfaces and horizons, this workshop treats digital keying as a tool that defies boundaries and limits, while accommodating more unfixed, migratory, fugitive and itinerant ways of living and working. How may we change our bodies and realities by means of post-production? How can we edit the world to accommodate us more comfortably? What images of ourselves do we want to bring to surface?

How to apply

Although open to everyone, those bodies which have been made to feel defined, reduced, fixed or pigeonholed by categories, frames and expectations around origin, race, gender, sexuality, creed, ability, and/or class, will be prioritised. You are encouraged to share your desires, curiosities, passions and interests in challenging society’s expectations around you.

Dates, times and location

Dates: 10 – 14 July 2019
Location: Live Art Bistro, Leeds

The artist

Adam Patterson is a visual artist and writer based between Barbados, London & Rotterdam. Concerned with how stories, images and the gaze may affect, condition or re-imagine selfhood, Patterson likes telling new stories or rethinking old stories in new recuperative ways, working across a variety of media including masquerade, video, critical writing, poetry and performance. Patterson’s works have been exhibited at the Live Art Development Agency and Jerwood Space, London; the Barbados Museum & Historical Society and Fresh Milk Arts Platform, Barbados; Roodkapje, Rotterdam; Ateliers ’89, Aruba and Alice Yard, Trinidad & Tobago. Workshops have been facilitated at Tate Exchange, London and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam. Patterson has written for Fresh Milk Arts Platform, ARC Magazine and Sugarcane Magazine. Patterson is a 2019 resident of the Hamburger Community of Art, Rotterdam.

For questions about this DIY, please contact Adam.