Crossovers

We are delighted to announce that five new Crossovers DVDs are now available to buy on Unbound, and will be profiled in a series of public events in London in January 2014.

The Crossovers DVDs are a series of artists’ films, documentaries and dialogues reflecting the potential of marginal artforms and intense ideas within popular media.

The films have developed from Performance Matters (2009-12), a project which brought artists, activists and thinkers together to consider why performance matters through a set of creative research activities and public events curated around the themes of Performing Idea and Trashing Performance.

Crossovers DVDs, available January 2014

Three of the Crossovers films have developed from commissioned dialogues and events for Trashing Performance and look at the multiple histories of performance art as it engages with mainstream TV, appears on the internet, in subculture, in stand-up comedy, and in avant-garde art:

Gavin Butt and Ben Walters’ This Is Not a Dream. Charting a path across four decades of avant-garde experiment and radical escapism.

Mel Brimfield’s This is Performance Art: Parts One and Two. The first two parts of a multi-part fictional television documentary series mark the fragmentary and unreliable nature of performance art’s historical record.

Oreet Ashery’s Party For Freedom. Exploring the potentials and dilemmas of liberation in a culture at odds with itself.

Other films in the series have developed from Performing Idea and take the form of Performance Dialogues that explore ideas of performance in contemporary thought, in original conversations with international thinkers working at the forefront of their disciplines:

Writing Not Yet Thought, Hélène Cixous with Adrian Heathfield.  The acclaimed author discusses the practice of writing alongside its relation to painting, music and philosophy.

Transfigured Night, A Conversation with Alphonso Lingis. An exchange between the celebrated American philosopher and Adrian Heathfield.

No Such Thing As Rest, A Walk with Brian Massumi. Setting thoughts and conversation in constant motion, Adrian Heathfield encounters the philosopher and cultural theorist while walking the streets of Montreal.

A complete set of the five current Crossovers DVDs can be purchased at a special price of only £50 here.

Crossovers Public Events, London, January 2014

Mel Brimfield’s This is Performance Art: Parts One and Two

Camden Arts Centre, London

Wednesday 22 January 2014 at 7pm

Free, no bookings required

The first ever double-bill screening of the first two parts of Mel Brimfield’s critically acclaimed multi-part fictional television documentary series marking the fragmentary and unreliable nature of performance art’s historical record – Part One – Performed Sculpture and Dance and Part Two – Experimental Theatre and Cabaret.

The films will be introduced by raconteur, bon viveur and national treasure Sir Francis Spalding and drinks will be served.

Crossovers – DVD series launch

Hackney Attic, London

Thursday 23 January

7.30pm

Free, no booking required

A special event to launch all the DVDs in the Crossovers series. The evening includes discussions with Adrian Heathfield, Gavin Butt, Mel Brimfield, Oreet Ashery and Ben Walters, and a creative response to the series from Jennifer Doyle, Professor of English at University of California, Riverside and currently Fulbright Distinguished Chair at Chelsea College of Art.

Dialogues: Art, Performance, Film

Rich Mix, London

Thursday 30 January

10.45am – 5pm

£14.50, £9.50 concessions

A day long symposium and screening event on dialogues in art, performance and film with Gareth Evans, Mike Dibb, Deborah Levy, Hugo Glendinning, Alan Read, Irit Rogoff and Adrian Heathfield in conversation.

Conversation makes the world go around. And in recent times creative works of conversation have been a forceful part of contemporary art practices, ‘relational’ and participatory performances, and the rising genre of the essay film in experimental documentary cinema and video.

There will be two panel discussions with leading thinkers, visual artists, film and performance makers discussing a variety of approaches to dialogic practice, and what these explorations of the ethos of relation might tell us about the status of ‘the intellectual’ and intense ideas in the contemporary public sphere.

As well as a screening of Transfigured Night, a conversation with Alphonso Lingis, a new, as yet untitled, dialogue film will also be premiered: Heathfield’s discussion on the value of spirit, shot in the heart of France with the philosopher Bernard Stiegler.

Details of all contribtors will be announced in January 2014.

The Crossovers DVD series is produced and published by Performance Matters, a collaboration between Goldsmiths, University of London, University of Roehampton, and the Live Art Development Agency, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Crossovers is supported by Follow on Funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Performance Matters, 2009-12

Performance Matters was a creative research project bringing together artists, curators and academics to investigate the challenges that contemporary performance presents to ideas of cultural value. The project was a collaboration between the Live Art Development Agency, the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the Department of Drama, Theatre and Performance at University of Roehampton.

Between 2009 and 2012, Performance Matters moved through three themed years of interlinked research activities – Performing Idea, Trashing Performance and Potentials of Performance.

In the first year, Performing Idea (2009/10) investigated the shifting relations between performance practice and discourse, event and writing. In the second year, Trashing Performance (2010/11) explored marginal and degraded performance practices in order to produce critical and cultural innovations through non-institutional manifestations and informal disseminations. The final year, Potentials of Performance (2011/2012), was led by the project’s postgraduate researchers, and featured a series of dialogue projects across the year asking what lies latent within performance and what does performance hold in store in its testing of the limits of the social, the cultural, the vital and the critical?

Full details of all Performance Matters dialogue projects and public events between 2009 and 2012 can be found on the Performance Matters website.