Live Art Weekender
Young guns go for it
In our lonesome quest to find the best emergent performance, Arnolfini offers a glimpse of the possible future of live art. Fancy dress is optional; come dressed as a cowboy/girl on Friday 23 February. Free DJs and drinks promotion for anyone wearing a Stetson.
These Horses
Take It Home
Fri 23 Feb 7.30pm £5.00/£3.00 concs
Back again to whip up a storm, These Horses have borrowed from bandleaders, dance callers and soul legends. Theyve been practising their moves and learning how to lose it. Theyve got music and a drum kit. What follows is an unorthodox dance show, an attempt by three untrained and sweaty bodies to achieve the impossible
Take it Home draws on the imagery and language of popular music culture: MTV, barn dances, rock concerts, Patrick Swayze, nightclubs and dance contests. Its an exploration of the limits of physical ability and the perseverance of hope.
These Horses is a collaborative performance company based in Dartington and Berlin. These Horses are We Live Here Arnolfini Associate Artists. Work developed at Arnolfini and Sophiensaele, Berlin.
Action Hero
A Western
Fri 23 Feb 9.00pm Meet In Café Bar Free
Taking Arnolfini as their landscape, Bristol-based Associate Artists Action Hero re-enact scenes from an imaginary Western. Forced to re-imagine the spaces around them and fulfil the audiences expectations, their Western inevitably fails to live up to the epic grandeur of the real thing but succeeds in revealing beauty in fakery. The re-enactment of iconic scenes engages the audience in a shared experience of recollection and recognition: together artists and audience reclaim this chaotic, half-arsed Western and celebrate the failure of generic heroes, cheap whores and the all-American idol.
Action Hero is the collaboration of artists Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse.
In its early development A Western was funded by the Arts Council England.
Chris Rollen
Cover
Fri 23 Feb 6.00pm – 9.00pm
Sat 24 Feb 12.00pm – 6.00pm Light Studio Free
Chris Rollens Cover is an interactive performance in which audience and artist collaborate to create a lo-fi reconstruction of iconic album covers. The audience are invited to choose from a list of vinyl records from the artists personal collection. The artist will then recreate the cover image, to be captured by Polaroid by an audience member. Cover explores chance and choice in consumer culture. It plays with ideas of fantasy and the reality behind the pose.
Paul Hurley
Becoming Goat
Sat 24 Feb 2.00pm Dark Studio
£5.00/£3.00 concs
Following Becoming Snail presented at China Live and Swallow! at Inbetween Time, Paul Hurley creates another of his Becoming series. Becoming Goat is a re-enactment of the Jewish scapegoat ritual: a gesture of provocation, sacrifice and symbolic cleansing of the community. Taking his cues from a number of texts about love and the scapegoat ritual, Hurley adopts the physical and symbolic characteristics of the scapegoat and in doing so treads a fine line between the profound and the absurd. The audience will be asked to participate and so be cleansed of their sins.
Rosie Dennis
Double Bill: Hitting A Brick Wall Since 1984 + Untitled Improvisation
Sat 24 Feb 4.00pm Dark Studio
£5.00/£3.00 Concs
Sydney-based performer Rosie Dennis returns to Bristol hot on the heels of her performances at National Review of Live Art with two new pieces. Mixing movement and text, Dennis creates deceptively simple and intensely evocative work.
A bizarre and well-executed look at the suppression of self. The Age, Melbourne
Ticket offer for Live Art Weekender – book for all 3 ticketed shows and get in for £10.00/£6.00 Concs.
