A work-in-progress performance by Karen Christopher, Tara Fatehi and Jemima Yong exploring the movement of time in the deep sea via conversation, connectedness, durational work and song-like structures
Skywater, Facewater, Underwater Waltz is a new project devised collaboratively and performed by Karen Christopher, Tara Fatehi and Jemima Yong. Karen has a long history with Arnolfini, performing here many times as a member of Chicago-based Goat Island Performance Group. Now based in the UK, Karen has continued her commitment to new approaches to collaboration across a series of different projects.
This project is centred around an interest in deep ocean life and culture. What can we learn from this inaccessible area of the planet? And how can we answer these questions?:
Where is the edge of the sea?
What are we afraid of?
Can thinking take place without words?
By creating an underwater flow, various currents move past each other in different directions the way shoals of fish do. The performers work with blending and combining, dissolving outlines between humans, and between humans and their surroundings. Drawing attention to the indescribable, this project uses sound, word and movement to cultivate attention, listening and connection making.
The project’s research has included the Charlie-Gibbs Fracture Zone, an area of very cold and deep ocean ecosystems, including the very strange Angler fish found in this underwater area. Creatures at this depth possess physical characteristics and ways of sensing and shifting we never experience in our world.
“Species in the deep and cold ocean waters are especially vulnerable to human impact. Many have similar or longer life spans than humans, they grow and mature very slowly and have only few offspring at irregular intervals.”
— from the Charlie-Gibbs Marine Protected area website
Karen Christopher is a collaborative performance maker, performer and teacher. Her company, Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects, is devoted to collaborative processes, listening for the unnoticed, the almost invisible, and the very quiet, paying attention as an act of social cooperation. Recent works engage with interconnectivity: the entanglement between people and of people with their environments, other living beings, and the vibrant matter with which we interact. She was a member of Chicago-based Goat Island performance group for 20 years until they disbanded in 2009. Karen is based in Faversham, Kent.
Tara Fatehi is a performance maker, performer and writer. She creates poetic-political pieces playing with ambiguity, mistranslation, disjunction and unfinishedness. Tara has performed at the V&A Museum, Royal Academy of Arts, Nottdance, Chapter, Julidans, Montpellier Danse, Dansens Hus, Alkantara and Rosendal Teater among others. Her ongoing projects include Mishandled Archive (dispersing a family archive in public space through dance and photography) and From the Lips to the Moon (an unusual music and poetry night). Tara is currently performing in pieces by Hooman Sharifi (Norway) and Teatr O Bando (Portugal). In 2021, Tara was the first ever resident artist at the United Nations Archives at Geneva. Tara is based in London.
Jemima Yong is a performance maker and photographer. She is Sarawakian, born in Singapore, and has developed her artistic practice in London, UK, where she is based. Collaboration and experimentation are central to her work. Recent performances include Something in Your Voice with Emergency Chorus and Marathon with JAMS, which received the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award 2018 and was presented by the Barbican Centre. Jemima’s photography has been featured by the BBC, Time Out, The Guardian, Swazi Observer and The Straits Times. She is an associate artist at Forest Fringe and is one fifth of DARC (Documentation Action Research Collective). Jemima is an alumni of United World Colleges, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and The Curious School of Puppetry.
The project is supported by Queen Mary University Centre for Creative Collaboration (London) and Arnolfini (Bristol), and will be completed in 2025.
