Franko B Because of Love Headoffoxheldaloft Hugo Glendinning
Joshua Light Show2 Martin Genz
Fierce brings together some of the world’s best performers and artists in a series of innovative events, performances and interventions which will take place in galleries, theatres, clubs, warehouses and streets across Birmingham.
The weekend’s events will kick off with an opening night feast from radical food designers Blanch & Shock. The food being served was ceremoniously planted in the spring, and the feast has been custom-designed to compliment interventions from international performance artist collective A Wolf in Winter. Other highlights from the visual programme incredible looping balsa wood structure, created by French artist Denis Tricot, which will loop around Birmingham Town Hall. There will also be an exhibition of teenagers’ creative responses to undergoing cancer treatment, Fun With Cancer Patients. Devised by Brian Lobel (who suffered from cancer himself as a teenager), this project will challenge the myths and taboos of living with cancer.
Highlights from the music/performance programme include live music from rising electronica star Nicolas Jarr, accompanied by hallucinatory visuals from New York’s legendary Joshua Light Show (who have worked with the likes of Jimi Hendrix, The Doors and Janis Joplin). New York gay rapper Cakes da Killa will also be performing, challenging the homophobia inherent in hip-hop, spitting rhymes about fellatio and shopping sprees. There will be also dance and movement based performances from Franko B, Atlanta Eke and contortionist Iona Kewney. In addition, there will be a literally ‘hypnotic’ immersive theatre piece from the critically acclaimed Lundahl and Seitl, who will be collaborating with hypnotist Sue Fox to explore how conversation is affected by the audience’s different mental states.
Heather Cassils – LA-based body builder and artist – will also be performing her piece, Becoming an Image, in which the only components are the performer, a photographer, the audience and a 2000 pound block of clay. Taking place in a blacked out room, Heather will use her skills as a boxer/ MMA fighter to unleash an assault in which she will literally beat the material, ‘sculpting’ the form. For the duration of the performance, Heather is blind – as is the audience, as is the photographer. The only light source emitted comes from the flash mounted on the photographer’s camera. This burst of temporary light allows the audience to glimpse at suspended moments of the performance, much like a “live” photograph, burning this image into their retina. The act of photographing is the only way in which the performance is made visible.
www.wearefierce.org
