Output details

Beacons -Performance

This project involved the experimental creation of a touring theatrical performance, which was driven by two main questions. These were:

• How might we bridge: extended voice, complex visual polyrhythms, multi-channel video, spatial dynamics, and notions of architecturality, to deliver performance work that functions on a plane that is metaphorically tactile?

• How might we use the making process necessitated by the preceding question, which combines live semi-improvised performance with fixed time recorded/mediated audio-visual performance, to evoke presence and absence of the corporeal body and use this thematic material in original ways?

Supported by a residency at the Experimental Media and Performing Media and Performing Arts Centre, New York (www.empac.rpi.edu), Bonenfant, a videographer/scenographer, and a sound engineer came together to explore ways of conjugating the visual of flashing lights and the kinds of vocal art these might inspire, when rhythms are perceived as, and interpreted as, tactile media.

Using the presence/absence of light as a thematic starting point, they embarked on an intensive process of experimentation with different approaches in studio, which led to both a spatially complex final performance, and which also underpinned a theoretical exploration of how the different aesthetic ingredients of the project could be understood within both haptic (touch derived) and architectural paradigms.

The outputs of this project included:

• A national performance tour of the work accompanied by methodological workshops, delivered at universities across the UK, and supported by Arts Council England,

• A peer reviewed article in Choreographic Practices,

• A series of conference/symposia presentations and immersive workshops, including at the performance as Research Working Group of the IFTR in 2011.