Testing Grounds – 29 August – A Space
7pm Saturday 29th August 2009
Bargate Monument Gallery, High Street, Southamton, UK
Testing Grounds is a Live Art and Music event. Artists are invited to make new work, experimenting with new ideas and projects, rather than reproducing a set performance. Testing Grounds is an experimental meeting place for artists, audiences and ideas and aims to be an environment supportive of artistic risk.
This edition will feature a very eclectic mix of works, yet each occupies its own self defining ‘testing ground’, a space where ideas can be pushed beyond limits, emotions felt and attitudes re-questioned.
Each work has been selected for its capacity to twist meaning and expectation through the process of being performed. We hope that through the 6 new and exciting performances, spanning from ceramicist Keith Harrison to East London band The Coolness, the audience will appreciate the diverse artistic attitudes and approaches to finding a space for exploration, and will take the opportunity to reflect, discuss the works and socialize with each other and with the artists.
Free Event But Booking Is Essential. Contact: info@aspacearts.org.uk / 02380 338 778
The event will begin with Philip Stanier opening speech, occupying a liminal space ‘before’ the performance per se, creating a subtle and complex metaphysical puzzle where none ought to be found. boXd productions use multiple live video feeds, TV monitors and choreography to take us into to multi-perspective realm, exploring how personal identity is shaped by the displaced self image in the myriad perceptions of others, and how multiple personalities might form around an individual.
Matt Fletcher will invite the audience into active participation to explore the history Bargate Monument. This contemporary challenge to the notion of the artist as elite author of the work and audience as mere spectator also therefore eschews a singular and authoritative version of history in favor of history as a creative and participatory process. Taking yet another tack, the duo Parachutes and Puzzles submerge the audience in video goggles, dislocating the space of the body from the space of the mind, depicting an unfamiliar journeys, and getting lost in an alter-egos’ memory.
Ceramicist Keith Harrison will present a new work for the first time in a Live Art context, playing on unexpected associations between performance, music and ceramics. The band The Coolness embodies a current testing ground occupied by youth culture. They describe themselves as ‘club rock disco cock funk electro pop’ … “‘a mix between Kiss and early 90s chart dance music, with added sex.’ They also say they’re anti-cool and anti-fashion, but we think they are cool and sex never goes out of fashion?
This event is organized in partnership with A Space in Southampton, and is the second edition of a series of 6 events to be produced in the South East of England until March 2010.
The Bargate Monument Gallery, High Street, Southampton, SO14 1HF.
www.aspacearts.org.uk
Free Event But Booking Is Essential. Contact: info@aspacearts.org.uk / 02380 338 778