We will shortly be posting the draft programme here. In the
meantime we would like to update this blog with confirmation of key-note
speakers. We will be having three joint key-notes:
Deborah Dixon and Carl Lavery
Claire Hind and Gary Winters
Mercè Saumell and Josep-Anton Fernàndez
For those interested in the urban, the term 'topology' has
come to denote a 'stretching' and 'folding' of space that brings points into proximity,
thereby allowing connections to be made between people and things. Yet, what is missing from such accounts, we want to suggest, is an
'ontology of touch' that might account for and simultaneously 'ground' topological
geographies, lest they become one more imaginary spatiality. By its very name, an ontology of touch would
focus on the material connections among mobile bodies. Its topological
counterpoint are the various materials and forces that rub up against each other, interpenetrate and reassemble at various speeds
and intensities, such that diverse proximities and distances, contacts and
connections are made and remade.
Here, we take Hashima, Japan - once the most densely populated site in the world, now a 'ghost island' -- as a site of 'contagion'. That is, as offering an opportunity to speculate on what such an ontology of touch might feel like. The touch that we are interested in exploring is variegated: the touch of matter, the touch of an image, the touch of language - a call, a refrain, a rhapsody. For us, Hashima Island is akin to what Antonin Artaud called the plague, an interstice, a contact zone, a way of becoming monstrous, of dissolving. To go there is to enter a no-man's land, to encounter a past made future, to lose oneself in the toxic effluent of plastic rivulets, broken silicon, discarded children's shoes - the ecological sublime, one might say. Hashima is a synthetic Saturn, a dark star of waste. To actualise the monstrous touch of Hashima - its toxic topography - the good sense of academic language, with its dream of measured communication, break downs, prey to a viral entropy. The only response is to write monstrously, to embrace its molecular abundance. To do this, we write postcards from the island, addressed to performance artists, film-makers and geographers, in the hope of transmitting an 'aesthetics of contagion', a dosage of monstrous affect.
Here, we take Hashima, Japan - once the most densely populated site in the world, now a 'ghost island' -- as a site of 'contagion'. That is, as offering an opportunity to speculate on what such an ontology of touch might feel like. The touch that we are interested in exploring is variegated: the touch of matter, the touch of an image, the touch of language - a call, a refrain, a rhapsody. For us, Hashima Island is akin to what Antonin Artaud called the plague, an interstice, a contact zone, a way of becoming monstrous, of dissolving. To go there is to enter a no-man's land, to encounter a past made future, to lose oneself in the toxic effluent of plastic rivulets, broken silicon, discarded children's shoes - the ecological sublime, one might say. Hashima is a synthetic Saturn, a dark star of waste. To actualise the monstrous touch of Hashima - its toxic topography - the good sense of academic language, with its dream of measured communication, break downs, prey to a viral entropy. The only response is to write monstrously, to embrace its molecular abundance. To do this, we write postcards from the island, addressed to performance artists, film-makers and geographers, in the hope of transmitting an 'aesthetics of contagion', a dosage of monstrous affect.
Claire and Gary will be presenting KONG LEAR
Claire and Gary collaborate as writing artists on live performances for
the city their collaboration encounters the relationship between writing, play
and performance and the possibilities of slippage between the self and
character. Claire Hind is a performer, researcher and lecturer at York St John
University and Gary Winters is the co-artistic director of the internationally
renowned company Lone Twin a company with a 15-year history of performance
making practices.
The artists will offer a talk illustrating their practice and sharing
footage of the 12-minute Super 8mm silent film of Kong Lear that Claire
Hind and Gary Winters made during the Gorilla Mondays tour: Gorilla
Mondays are performance walking tours remapping a city through the merging
of the two stories of King Kong and King Lear where the public can join the
character Kong Lear on her tour of different city sites that playfully
psyche-map the streets of our imagination and call upon our dreams.
Kong Lear as well as
a play on words, is a humorous and touching film referencing King Lear’s
madness upon some mythologised heath. We re-imagine Kong inside Lear’s psyche
wandering the streets of York. Kong Lear is played by a female performer who
comes with her own story - Freud would have a field day! We celebrate
alternative interpretations in art making practices through the use of old
technologies. Kong Lear slips, occasionally, into a narrative about the
material quality and the aesthetic of super 8mm film with silent movie
intertitles revealing a hint of what is hidden inside the character’s and the
performer’s unspoken thoughts and desires.
Mercè Saumell and Josep-Anton Fernàndez:
will be presenting a panel relating to the performance of monstrosity in Catalonia. We will post further details here shortly.
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