Since its inception in 1998, Breathing Space has enabled Arnolfini to commission 20 extraordinary works. Along this path, our way has been peppered by amazing conversations, inexplicable challenges and unexpected diversions. One thing we do know now is the real meaning of Breathing Space: a spirit for discovery and a certain indefinable chemistry. For Inbetween Time steel yourself as we premiere eight new works by the next wave of Australian and UK artists.
Most of the Breathing Space events are free and open to everyone. However, because Festival Pass holders get priority booking, some event tickets will only be on sale from Weds 1 February from 9.30am (phone) or 10am (in person).
Breathing Space Australia
Ranging from screen based installation works, to solo dance with spoken text and live sound, to durational performance, these works represent a small selection of the artistic and cultural diversity in contemporary arts practice in Australia.
The Shadowers is “an overwhelming experience... a dream logic worthy of Kafka on an absinthe binge.” Darren Tofts, RealTime.
This is an installation that portrays a chain of abstract and surreal interactions between a trio of characters, as games and exchanges are played out within the realm of video. The physical and emotional create a coded language describing pain, desire and the fragility of existence. The action is set in a lush, outdoor environment and dark, flip side spaces, feeling claustrophobic, dreamlike and minimal.
Martin del Amo’s UNDER ATTACK is a solo dance work with spoken text investigating the body as a battleground. It addresses the fragility of the human body under constant threat by aggressive forces – from digitalization to decomposition. The second solo in a trilogy, UNDER ATTACK was devised and performed by Martin del Amo with sound design by Gail Priest. Originally commissioned by One Extra & co-produced with Performance Space/
“Martin del Amo achieves a balancing act between words and movement. A fine athlete and an engrossing mover, he could comfortably focus entirely on action. But once he gets talking, his storytelling becomes another revealing layer.”Jill Sykes, Sydney Morning Herald
John Gillies’ digital film & installation Divide, features four men, 35 sheep, a Chinese opera singer and a horse, in a landscape with texts from the Old Testament. Historical consciousness of Australia’s British and European inheritance is at the heart of this visually stunning black and white film that re-views the influence of Christian rhetoric in discourses and images of colonial settler culture. With performances by Denis Beaubois, Ari Ehrlich, Xu Feng Shan, Matt Millay, Dalisa Pigram and Lee Wilson, this work is the latest development in a cinematic project deeply connected to the physical tradition of Sydney performance culture.
Deborah Pollard’s Shapes of Sleep is both a sculptural installation and an eight-hour durational performance based on video footage of sleeping. The conscious and unconscious movements of the recorded sleepers are presented in miniature, whilst five live performers, each with their own set of instructions, move between various sleeping postures. The performers follow a script, their actions are conscious and contrived. The duration of the work creates the possibility for the performers to fall asleep, blurring the boundaries between fiction and authenticity – choreographed and everyday slumber.
Breathing Space UK is a year long project that enables four artists to develop new experiments with audiences at Arnolfini and partner venues in Manchester, Glasgow and Cambridge. bear witness as we unveil their existing works here Inbetween Time ansd return in 2007 to see where they have got to in their artistic travels across the UK.
Treating the personal stereo as petri-dish, and the headphones as microscope, Duncan Speakman breaks down the links between place and the transient nature of sound. For this initial investigation he looks at how site-specific sound work can become a commodity, and how sound allows to us position ourselves both spatially and socially in an environment. A mixture of fictional and documentary sound recordings help the listener navigate the hidden spaces of Bristol's floating harbour. Duration 20 minutes
Avoiding dark Ali's is a projected video work depicting the documentation of a live performance far removed from its original context. Playing with language and culture using personally written jokes, the work highlights tensions around religious and racial identity. Jokes and puns are used to explore stereotype within the context of personal experience.
Droppin’(v) To demonstrate wisdom or skill. "I'm droppin' science" - (Coolin' in Cali) [1988]
Droppin’ Shoppin’ isolates the richest qualities of two non-theatre source materials – Hip Hop and Channel Shopping, and strips them to their barest performative components. Hip Hop becomes a drum-kit and a microphone, channel shopping becomes a sofa and a smile. Strategies of sampling, looping and editing are used as a model to compose a performance that gives a reflection and distorted impression of specific styles made redundant of their roots….two middle class white boys telling the fake why they can’t create.
“Me and this chick I know… we want to do something. We wrote a play about it. We want to speak up. It’s not really a play, It’s more of a scene about the war. Makes fun of the television news, how we’re all being lied to. We built a screen out of, you know, a sheet” Carla Kirkwood ‘Critical Condition - women on the edge of violence’
This is the first in a series of diptychs from Grace Surman. In placing herself next to women of different ages to engage in physical and choreographic-based tasks, the work can be seen as two solos which are constantly interrupting each other.
