You Are Here – Programme

Guillermo Gómez-Peña
In Defence of Performance Art
Wednesday 18 September 8pm Bluecoat
Tickets £4 (conc £3)

In this illustrated lecture Guillermo Gómez-Peña demystifies performance, re-evaluating its critical currency for a new generation of artists.
Also at Bluecoat, Guillermo Gómez-Peña presents Ex-Centris (A Living Diorama of Fetish-ized Others) for the Liverpool Biennial / International Exhibition 2002 on Friday 13 and Saturday 14 September (free admission). A video installation, Los Video-Grafitis, made by Gómez-Peña in collaboration with film makers and performance artists is being shown at Tate Liverpool as part of the International Exhibition, 14 September – 24 November.

Ex-Centris invites you to step into a living museum of experimental ethnography. Addressing the appropriation of hybridity and revolution-as-style by corporate multiculturalism and global media, Ex-Centris asks us to consider why certain Others are demonized, whilst other Others are romanticised and eroticised. In a series of living-dioramas, a remarkable gathering of artists will construct an installation of curios, artefacts, sounds and images and display themselves as inter-cultural fetishes and ethnographic specimens, depicting a fetishisation of charged symbols of cultural difference.
Ex-Centris is an inter-continental collaboration between Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Juan Ybarra and Michelle Ceballos of Pocha Nostra (USA/Mexico), Liverpool Biennial, Bluecoat, Live Art Development Agency, Moti Roti, Kazuko Hohki and Ansuman Biswas. It will also be presented at Tate Modern in March 2003 for the Live Art Development Agency’s Live Culture event.

Kira O’Reilly
BLOOD WALL DRAWING return
18 – 21 September 10am – 5pm
Hanover Galleries, Hanover Street
Free
Kira O’Reilly investigates an ambivalent sense of ‘Irishness’. Making gestures and actions on and with her body, she explores notions of cultural memory, specifically personal, ‘micro’ memories, underpinned by a legacy of being Irish, Catholic, female. For Liverpool she will map out a space with a 5cm grid of white surgical tape. Within its squares small slash marks are drawn with the artist’s blood, collected in a private gesture in Dublin, her birthplace, and brought to Liverpool by ferry across the Irish Sea. For the duration of the work the audience will see the progression of the drawing being ‘performed’ within the space: the repeated blood marks almost entirely filling the walls, evoking geographies, mappings, landscapes and territories, as the interiority of the body is made explicit, dislocated and relocated throughout the space. Finally, the grid is gently pulled away like a skin Journeys, transitions across borders and geographies, cultural, physical and mythical with the accompanying dislocation, relocation, displacement and reconfigurations of a body, arriving and departing in the same gesture.
Bristol based artist Kira O’Reilly makes work that considers the body as a site in which threads of the personal, sexual, social and political knot and unknot. By making interventions into the materiality of the body she investigates the narratives of the ‘self’ and the relationships between bodily interior/exterior spaces. She has shown in the UK and Europe and been featured in Contemporary Visual Arts, Artists Newsletter and Dazed and Confused, and publications Small Acts at the Millennium and Exposures.

You Are Here Triple Performance Bill
George Charavarthi – Great Expectations
Silke Mansholt – Homage to the Heart
Qasim Riza Shaheen – Conversing with Angels
Thursday 19 September 8pm Bluecoat
Tickets £4 (conc £3)

George Chakravarthi Great Expectations
Great Expectations is a new work by the celebrated performance, video and photographic artist whose explorations of the ‘self’ critique ideas of gender, sexuality and identity. Being gay, British and Asian has consequences for an artist whose identity is already complicated, abounding with myths and expectations of the exotic and a demand by audiences to be taken on an unknown experience. Great Expectations sets out to unravel these expectations and assumptions.

Although much of the work is autobiographical, I consider it to be open and accessible. My inspirations, although rooted in the exploration of identities, come from art history, cinema, religion and sexual and gender politics. Through my work, I have been able to address and celebrate the joys and struggles of the personal and the universal.

George Chakravarthi was born in New Delhi, India and lives in London. Brought up as a Catholic, absorbing elements of Hindu and Buddhist philosophies, his childhood was filled with a complex, multi-cultural trinity of deities, icons and belief systems that didn’t impact on him until he arrived in England. This move wasn’t so much a re-location as a dislocation, triggering the ongoing process of personal exploration that underpins his work. He studied performance and visual art at Brighton University and has spent a year at The Royal Academy of Art, London.

Silke Mansholt
Homage To The Heart
Homage to the Heart is an uncompromising exploration of identity and nationality with specific reference to German culture. Through a series of expressionistic movements to iconic music (Wagner, Bach, Schonberg, and Mansholt’s own compositions) the work delves into ideas of duality and re-examines the nature of performance itself. Echoing Pina Bausch and Joseph Beuys, this unsettling, moving and amusing work is a process of self realisation by an artist exploring her roots from the distance of ‘elsewhere’. Reminiscent of a strange ritual, the performance maps Mansholt’s search for an ‘authentic self’ within the collective guilt and grief of German history.

The true reason for Aktionskunst is the element of movement… The necessary renewal of the being is only possible through movement. Joseph Beuys
Brighton based Silke Mansholt studied graphic design, fine art and performance and dance in Germany and UK. Homage to the Heart has been performed in Brighton, London and at the 2002 National Review of Live Art in Glasgow. Her new Dance for Camera work Skylark, a collaboration with film maker Nerea Martinez de Lecea, was shown at the 2002 Brighton Festival. She is a regular cabaret performer at the Voodoo Vaudeville at the Komedia Theatre in Brighton. Her award winning poetry will be released on CD as a Liederzyklus later in 2002.

Qasim Riza Shaheen
Conversing with Angels
Qasim Riza Shaheen presents a new development of Conversing with Angels, including an installation of images at the Bluecoat (19 – 21 September) that expand and recontextualise the ideas within the original performance. It is a visual and poetic portrayal of complex issues around identity and the afterlife. Whilst attempting to explore and transcend the private realms of a silent scream, it reflects the essence of the spirit that is left behind. Conversing With Angels is a ritual in which prayers are breathed within the three states of being: physical, mental and spiritual. The three marks left denote the father the self and the foetus. At its core this dance explores the holy war that takes place between the internal and the external self.

i seek refuge ….
in the love of my creator
in the arms of my father
in the conviction of the man i love
in the innocence of the unborn one

Qasim Riza Shaheen is a Manchester based artist who has been working with live and multi media practices since 1993. His recent performance work includes My Long-Haired Cynical Love and A Man’s Review. He has received numerous awards and participated in a range of conferences in Britain and Europe. He is currently the Resident Method Lab artist at the Green Room, Manchester.
Stacy Makishi
You are here…but where am I?
Friday 20 and Saturday 21 September Sites around the city centre For times and locations where actions will be performed pick up a map from Bluecoat or call 0151 709 5297

You are here…but where am I? is a new work created in response to the mythologies of a Liverpool, both foreign and familiar. Armed with a symbolic suitcase, Makishi will perform a series of playful and poignant actions in charged sites of departure and arrival around the city centre. Part ritual and part intervention, this is a piece about partings and our painful and magnetic yearnings for the exotic isle of ‘elsewhere’.

As I am a transplant from Hawaii, my work is often told from the point of view of the foreigner. The foreigner confronts us with a projection of our own strangeness, our own foreignness. In all of my work there appears to be a tension between here and elsewhere, longing and belonging, desire and repulsion: the body constantly craving what is foreign, all the while homesick for what is familiar. For as long as I can remember, I have been dreaming of exotic places like Liverpool’s Penny Lane from my tiny room in Kahuna Lane. I packed my suitcase and left home in 1993, but I find myself floundering between two shores. On one shore, I long for home. On the other, I long for more…more ocean… for motion.

Stacy Makishi is a London based performance artist from Hawaii who is currently obsessed with film, video, animation and peanuts. Her recent interdisciplinary work includes Suicide for Beginners, On The Street Where You Live and Eat More Spam. She is co-artistic director of the multimedia company Runt whose latest project, Cinema Bizarre!, is a travelling cinema showing originals films to an audience of two.

Oreet Ashery
Say Cheese Performance
Friday 20 September To book a place on Marcus’ bed call 0151 709 5297. Time and location supplied when you book. Number of places limited.
And at Bluecoat: 7 Acts of Love Photographic images, Wednesday 18 – Saturday 21 September Say Cheese Video Documentation,
Saturday 21 September Both 11am  5pm
Free

Marcus Fisher, Oreet Ashery’s orthodox Jewish male alter ego, has been involved in street interventions, club and stage performances, durational actions and, most recently, the live interaction Say Cheese. Marcus embodies the Other whilst questioning notions of multiculturalism, ritual and masculinity.

Continuing Oreet’s investigations into the politics of the body in relation to culture and location, Say Cheese attempts to de-territorialize geographical, gendered and religious zones. Fuelled by touristic desire to be photographed with the ‘native’ or the ‘celebrity’ and influenced by reality TV shows like Big Brother, Say Cheese explores the relationship between private and public and speculates on the nature of intimacy. One at a time, the audience is invited to enter and share an intimate moment on the bed with Marcus. Their interactions are documented on camera, and shown as short cinematic moments the following day.

Oreet Ashery is a London based Israeli artist interested in the slippage between art and life, the mutations of current art practices and cultural anxiety, particularly in relation to popular culture. Her interdisciplinary practice encourages a dialogue between live and digital artforms and has been presented and distributed nationally and internationally through galleries, cinemas, clubs, domestic settings, the streets, film festivals, the internet, the mass media and word of mouth. Oreet also works as a freelance artist on educational, regeneration and public arts projects. 7 Acts of Love, Marcus Fisher’s overall body of photographic, video and text work, has been shown in Berlin, Ljubljana, New York and at Home, London.

Suki Chan and Dinu Li
Shadow Songs: Princess Jin & The Lady of Atropos
Saturday 21 September 12 noon – 1pm and 4-5pm Bluecoat
Tickets £4 (conc £3)

Shadow Songs is a performance within an installation of photographic and video images, evocative fabrics, objects, sounds and smells. The audience is invited to immerse itself in a serene environment and experience the work as if floating in a transient state. Into this dream-like world the artists introduce firstly Princess Jin and then, in total contrast, The Lady of Atropos: two iconic and strangely displaced figures embodying aspects of Western and Eastern cultures and mythologies. Whilst each character is a schizophrenic amalgamation of real cultures and real times, as a composite, they seem to exist within the realms of fantasy, fairytales and dreams. Utilising classical imagery and cultural cliché, traditional folk culture and modern digitisation, Shadow Songs blurs distinctions between the real and the imaginary to play with concepts of dualities. It questions the received boundaries between the opposites of interior and exterior, light and dark, good and evil, I and The Other, East and West.

Once I, Chang Chou, dreamed that I was a butterfly. I was conscious that I was quite pleased with myself but did not know that I was Chou. Suddenly I awoke and there I was, visibly Chou. I do not know whether it was Chou dreaming that he was a butterfly or the butterfly dreaming that it was Chou. Chuang Tzu 369-286 BC.
(Carl Jung, on the other side of the world, wrote of the same dream, some centuries later).

The Lady of Atropos is a new element of Shadow Songs being developed especially for Liverpool Biennial. Visual effects artist: Andy Hunwick, improvised music: May Ming.

Suki Chan and Dinu Li are two Hong Kong born, Manchester based artists whose work has featured in a number of publications and television documentaries. Suki Chan works with installation, video and performance. Her recent solo shows include Mondays Was Washday, Shadow Time and Seeing: Out of Time. Her work is included in a number of collections. Dinu Li’s solo exhibitions include Treasured Island, Isle of Mull, Diaspora, Contact Theatre, The Long Horn Miao, Bull Gallery and Bohemia, Viewpoint Gallery.

Cai Yuan and JJ Xi Mad For Real
Soya Sauce and Ketchup Fight
Saturday 21 September From 2pm Bluecoat Front Courtyard Free

Inside a glass cube in front of Bluecoat, two artists, Cai Yuan and JJ Xi, stage a soya sauce and ketchup fight. With gestures evoking Tai Chi and Qi Gong, they create calligraphic splurges of colour in a gradual process of immersion – of the space around them and their own bodies. In a concoction of East and West stereotypes, the artists perform ironic actions and posturings and use the seemingly banal subject of food sauces to make a witty and absurd commentary on globalisation and marginalisation. In Mad For Real, although popular products of global consumerism are instantly accessible and recognisable, the gradual erosion of clarity through the splashing of the coloured liquids in a war-like physical feud, causes chaos and confusion, and eventual obscurity.

Cai Yuan and JJ Xi are renown for their controversial Two artists Jump on Tracey’s Bed at the Turner Prize exhibition in 1999. Born in the People’s Republic of China, they have lived and worked in London since the 1980s and trained at the Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths’ College. Their recent work has explored contemporary art in the public sphere and included performances at London landmarks like Westminster Bridge, the Millennium Bridge, Tate Modern and Trafalgar Square. Recent exhibitions include Cities on the Move (Hayward Gallery, 1999), Shanghai Biennial 2000, Venice Biennale 2001, Touring London (inIVA, 2001). Their performance Two Artists Piss on Duchamp’s Urinal was shown at the 9th Biennial of Moving Images, Leeds International Film Festival and the 13th International Film Festival of Wales, in a film commissioned by Dazed & Confused and FilmFour.

Live Art Now: A Sampler
Thursday 19, Friday 20 September 11am-5pm Bluecoat
Free

A chance to see an eclectic range of recent British based Live Art compiled from the Live Art Development Agency’s extensive video archive. The sampler includes extracts of performance documentation and works made for camera by artists who are testing the nature and limits of contemporary performance practice. Featuring work by the You Are Here artists and La Ribot, Forced Entertainment, Blast Theory, Kazuko Hohki, Moti Roti, Bobby Baker, Roney Fraser-Munroe . With thanks to the artists for permission to show these extracts.

LIVE ART BLUECOAT:
REGIONAL PLATFORM
Sunday 22 September 11am – 4pm
Bluecoat recently received funding from North West Arts Board through the Regional Arts Lottery Programme (RALP) to develop live art. As well as the inclusion of three North West artists in the You Are Here programme, Bluecoat will be supporting emergent work from the region over the next two years through an attached artists’ scheme, workshops and events. As part of this process, North West artists, working in live art, performance and time based media are being selected from an open submission, to present their work in different spaces around the building. The event will also be a regional selection platform for the 2003 National Review of Live Art. Further details from Cathy Butterworth.

Tel: 0151 709 5297
Email:[email protected]

BLUECOAT ARTS CENTRE
School Lane,
Liverpool L1 3BX
Tel: 0151 709 5297
Fax: 0151 707 0048
Minicom: 0151 702 5323
Email: [email protected]
www.bluecoatartscentre.com

TICKETS
Individual event tickets and You Are Here Special Ticket (admits to all paying events, priced £10 / concessions £8) from Bluecoat.
Box Office, 0151 707 9393, Monday – Friday 11am – 4pm. Email [email protected]

Concessionary Tickets Concessions are indicated in brackets and are available to students, jobseekers, under 16s, people with disabilities and senior citizens. Proof of eligibility must be provided  one discount per ticket. Payment Cash, credit/debit card or cheque (payable to Bluecoat Arts Centre Ltd).

ACCESS
Whilst the ground floor gallery spaces are ramped, the upstairs performance space (where Ex-Centris, Triple Bill and Shadow Play will take place) is regrettably not yet accessible to wheelchair users.