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Participating Artists: Sidney Pink (US), Fu LE (France), Dejan Mrdja (UK/Serbia), Kimvi Nguyen (UK/Vietnam), Jazz Moreton (UK), Xelís De Toro (UK/Spain), Ram Samocha (UK/Israel) & Mark Browne (UK), Liesje van den Berk (NL), Liliana Robins & Micky Bimble (UK), Molly Macleod (Portugal/UK), Isabel The Phantomat (UK), Carli Jefferson (UK), Jenny Arran (UK), Lisa Munnelly, Oli Blair (New Zealand) & Gus Garside (UK).

DRAWin festival 2018 – Three Day International Festival of Live Drawing Performance – Drawing – Sound – Movement

The Sound of Drawing – Tuesday 27 March 2018 9:30-14:30, Tuesday & Wednesday, 3-4 April 2018, 12-8pm. Fabrica – Brighton’s Centre for Contemporary Art.

DRAWin 2018; the fifth annual symposium held by Draw to Perform, was a three-day international festival for live drawing performance organized by Draw to Perform and hosted by Fabrica Gallery. Including live performances by leading local and international artists, a discussion panel, and workshops, the festival aimed to promote public awareness of drawing as participatory and innovative practice and provide the general public an opportunity to explore and engage with it. With the theme for DRAWin 2018 focused on drawing in relation to sound and movement, the symposium presented a cross-disciplinary event that explored the connection between mark making, music, dance, theatre and performance art.

Day 1 (Tuesday 27 March 2018 9:30-14:30) was a workshop day for local school: Dorothy Stringer High School, and The Chailey Heritage Foundation.

Day 2 (Tuesday 3 April 2018, 12:00-20:00) included 13 new live interactive performances commissioned by leading local and international artists.

Day 3 (Wednesday 4 April 2018, 12:00-20:00) was made up of 5 bookable workshops for children and the general public provided by participating artists, allowing art enthusiasts of every age and ability the chance to work with and explore this innovative form of art.

 

Schedule:
DRAWin festival 2018 by Draw to Perform. Curated by Ram Samocha.

Day 2 – Live Drawing Performances

Tuesday 3 April 2018, 12-8pm. Fabrica – Brighton’s Centre for Contemporary Art

12:00-13:00

Sidney Pink (US) – www.sidneypink.com    Disembodied. Sidney Pink creates an improvised soundscape using the live amplified sound of his drawing process. Using a contact microphone, loop pedal, and mixer, Pink creates a layered and atmospheric space for reflection, meditation, and listening. After a period of drawing, Pink will dance to his soundscape, embodying his mark making though movement. Audience will be welcomed to join Pink in the movement section and offered simple movement prompts.

Fu LE (France) – www.schwww.sitew.com    The choreographer Fu LE initiated in 2014 in China a series of performances called Anthropographies that revisit the practice of drawing through the sensory experience of the dancing body and aerial dance in particular. It aims to replace the body movement at the centre of the creative process. Fu LE will present at the Fabrica Gallery an adaptation of the work Labours, created in Taiwan in 2016 hanging himself while painting foot-prints on the flow of water.

13:00-14:00

Dejan Mrdja (UK/Serbia) –www.studiosyn.co.uk     Chasing Synchrony is a series of events that create a link between drawing, installation and performance and are immersive experiences for participants and audience alike. Each event explores anew the temporary linkages of people and bodies, examining how this functions under capitalism while creating a space free from commodification for people to relate on an internal, instinctual level. The drawing surface is amplified, allowing the work to be fully activated through the contact of the drawing medium and the surface.

Kimvi Nguyen (UK/Vietnam) – www.kimvi.co.uk    Silent|Action  A paused on graphite powder, and then stamping on the surface of an A3 sheet of paper. Over a period the action reveals a graphite imprint of the gallery floor. The action with the footsteps on the floor will produce a rhythmic sound, whilst fixed within the parametersof the paper: Sound is Silence, Sound is Action.

14:00-15:00

Jazz Moreton (UK) – www.jazzmoretonartist.wixsite.com/jazzmoretonartist     Learning to Juggleis a drawing performance inspired by the lifelong recovery from Acquired Brain Injury. Jazz Moreton survived a stroke at the age of thirteen, which initially caused her to completely lost the use of her right side. Her drawing performance reflects the struggle to rewire her brain and regain control of her life following this event.

Xelís de Toro (UK/Spain) – www.xelisdetoro.net    Uncommon language is a collaborative performance in which the public is encouraged to draw in response to a set of instructions delivered by vocal cues and movements; some of the instructions are straightforward but some are deliberately confusing and open to interpretation. The public will draw in a big piece of paper on the floor, which will also serve as dance-floor for the performer. This performance is an experimentation on human communication, understanding between cultures and translating across languages, here metaphorically: voice and body movement into markings. The vocal cues will be recorded, looped, manipulated and overdub on the top of each other creating a sound environment background for the body movements of the performer.

15:00-15:40

Ram Samocha (UK/Israel) & Mark Browne( UK) – www.samocha.com  www.bandcamp/MarkBrowne    CrossOver. Inspired by childhood memories and elder experience,this collaboration, between multidisciplinary artists Ram Samocha and Mark Browne, is intended to explore basic ways of expression, communication and collaboration.Togetherthey create experimental sound and drawing performance, which will include free playing (saxophone, percussion, and collected objects)and live metalpoint drawing (unusual drawing tools on stone paper).

Liesje van den Berk (NL) – www.liesjeberk.nl     Should I sharpen my pencil or soften my voice?In this interactive performance a dialogue is created between the public, the surroundings and performer.  Found objects of Brighton are draw and sand in a straight line to soften the edges. The objects are filed to dust but also become refined gems. Traces of dust lines are a memory of a temporary presence, an expression of identity in a site-specific place, a dialogue without words.

16:00-17:00

Liliana Robins & Micky Bimble (UK) – www.lilianarobins.com    Sweet draws on the artist’s upbringing in the circus and investigates the relationship between contemporary circus imagery and visual art through performative drawing. The choreography is inspired by aspects of the sugar trade and its relationship to the slave trade. Sweet presents the process of construction and deconstruction of a time based work. An undercurrent is formed by the performers father-daughter collaborative relationship.

Molly Macleod (Portugal/UK) – www.mollymacleod.allyou.net   Vertebrae. A participatory performance challenging the concept of physical privacy and addressing situations in which we release ownership of our own bodies, challenging the social boundaries of personal space. Blurring the line between audience and artwork, the performer invites viewers to become part of the process, ceremoniously wrapping them in paper and creating charcoal impressions of their spine. A set of gloves worn by the artist amplifies each sound generated throughout the performance, forming a sonic reactionary relationship where the creation of different sonic textures guides the artist in the visual choices that are made.

17:00 -18:00

Isabel The Phantomat (UK) – www.thephantomat.com    Black water painting. A large sheet of paper is placed on the floor. The artist is inside a skin-tight sack of transparent latex, closed around the neck. She pours black water into it. The water fills the spaces that the latex can’t enclose. The water can drip through a hole at the bottom of the sack and leak around the neck. With her movements being compromised, the artist creates an abstract drawing through little drops of black water. Her movements vary from meditative slow to explosive spasms. The painting wants to be spiral galaxy.

Carli Jefferson (UK) – www.youtube.com/user/opposetheillusion    Footfall: service, spillage, steps and the stain. Twelve cups on saucers huddle around a cafetière in the centre of the canvas, encircled by a thick line of black printing ink. The performer fills each cup to the brim and dances to the edge of the canvas to serve coffee to the audience. Her inky feet respond to the ambient sound, simultaneously marking improvised rhythm in time, and marking notation on the canvas, in one and the same gesture. The hands cope with holding the cups stable as they rattle on their saucers. Inevitable accidents occur: coffee is spilled onto the apron and canvas. A conversation forms between the audience, the tapping feet, the rattling and falling cups, the spills, the stains, and the ink.

18:00-19:00

Jenny Arran (UK) – www.jennyarran.co.uk   Axe Drawing.Jenny Arran makes drawings using an axe dipped in ink, working intuitively in response to music and the marks, as they develop. Arran’s interested in drawing as an embodied practice – the idea of being ‘in conversation’ with the paper, the axe, the ink, the music – drawing as a response and a translation. Jenny has been using an axe in her work for a while, liking the primacy and energy of it – how it connects to landscape – which is a running theme in her work – and shifting its use and context, in relation to what the axe stands for as a tool.

Lisa Munnelly, Oliver Blair (New Zealand) & Gus Garside (UK) –  www.lisamunnelly.carbonmade.com

Three Turnspresents the blank page as both a surface to draw upon and a stage on which to perform. With lights dimmed and audience seated, the artist and musician enter. Both operate on a simple script – over 25 minutes the artist to trace the perimeter of a sheet of paper as it moves through a succession of folds, the musician to coax from the instrument sounds to mirror the unfolding lines. Melodic narrative abandoned, chords are led by line’s density, direction and form.This duet is extended into a triadic structure via projection, with a projected live feed of the drawing mirroring the drawn image. Carefully calibrated the projected image blends seamlessly into the page space, the body double, always in movement is phantasmic and intangible.

 

Schedule:
DRAWin festival 2018 by Draw to Perform – Day 3: Day of Workshops

Wednesday 4 April 2018. Fabrica – Brighton’s Centre for Contemporary Art

Workshop 1 (11:00-12:00) with Flexer & Sandiland (UK)   www.flexersandiland.com

Movement & interactive projection workshop/installation for children and adults, Age 4 and above only, and their parents.

In Digital Traces we use interactive motion detection and projection to explore movement and stillness, drawing and erasing. Using your body as a brush, make shapes, knots, lifts and squiggles appear and disappear on screen. Like a giant canvass without the mess!

Beginning with a movement warm-up of games, simple partnering and lifts the workshop will guide adults and children through different movement ideas to play with in the installation –Digital Traces. Digital Traces will be open after workshop so you can continue playing and dancing.

Directed by the Jerwood award-winning choreographer Yael Flexer and installation artist Nic Sandiland, Flexer & Sandiland create live and digital installation work (for theatres, galleries, screens and large outdoor spaces), alongside an extensive programme of commissions and tailor-made training for youth and community groups and professional development settings. Yael and Nic’s work centres on the generating of a sense of intimacy in live performance

and digital installation, in a way which acknowledges the physicality and presence of the viewer.

Workshop 2 (12:15-13:45) with Fu LE (France)   www.schwww.sitew.com

Body Manipulations – A workshop related to the artist’s experience of contemporary dance and puppet manipulation. This workshop will consist of:

– A physical warm up based on body manipulations, in order to open our awareness; an improvisation movement session with paper in order to learn how to use objects as a partner.

– An experiment collaboration in drawing through a relation with a partner based on body manipulations and sound directions.

This workshop is open to children, dancers, actors or visual artists who are willing to develop their awareness and creativity by using effectively simple gestures and materials.

Fu LE is a French award winner filmmaker, choreographer and aerial dancer. Graduated in sculpture at the Art Crafts National School in Paris, he then trained in physical theater (Argentina) and in contemporary dance (Switzerland). Recently he pursued his research in Taiwan, questioning social issues linked with urbanization. He is now evolving on the edge between dance, sculpture and video, and connects visual arts to the intimacy of bodily sensations. Fu LE has experience teaching workshops in Taiwan, Malaysia, Ireland, Australia and France.

Workshop 3 (14:00-15:30) with Sidney Pink (US)  www.sidneypink.com

Sound of Surface: Drawing & Contact Microphones -An introduction to using contact microphones in drawing performance and sound-based artistic practices. Contact microphones (piezo discs) pick up vibrations made through solid structures and surfaces. Participants will make contact microphones and learn the basics of using contact microphones and explore different drawing surfaces and marking tools for creating sound.

Sidney Pink is interest in the relationship between movement and mark making. Pink have a somatic (body) based practice creating intermedia work in drawing, dance, and sound. He is exploring phenomenological themes of body/mind practices such as meditation, waking, and breath as tools for new ways of thinking and moving. Pink create dance scores, performances, installations, and soundscapes as affective spaces for artists and audiences to engage in different modes of being.

Workshop 4 (15:45-17:15) with Molly Macleod (Portugal/UK)   www.mollymacleod.allyou.net

Sound Sketches – Participants will be asked to collectively experiment with mark-making and producing different sounds using various graphite drawing utensils. We will record the sounds created and then use the graphite marks to conduct the sounds, completing an electrical circuit and allowing the drawings to be used as individual sound triggers. Participants can then experiment and improvise with the sound triggers, creating a live soundscape together, exploring the sound of drawing through using their mark-making as improvisational instruments.

Molly Macleod is a multi-disciplinary artist and composer working with sound, interactive performance and installations. Focusing on using sensory manipulation to address the intimate and uncomfortable, blurring the line between audience and performer. She designs wearable audio technology for performance, encouraging instinct and intuition to guide creative choices. Working collaboratively with theatre-makers and artists, on educational arts engagement projects in museums and galleries and also on solo installations/performances across Europe

Workshop 5 (17:30-19:00) with Ram Samocha (UK/Israel)   www.samocha.com

Mark Some Noise -Directed by Draw to Perform founder artist Ram Samocha, this drawing performance workshop is about back to basic artistic expression while learning to draw with simple yet effective marks. The drawing marks that we will create will produce sounds which we will learn to control and use in our work. The sound component will work as an added layer to the piece. The final exploration is an action filled with high energy and amazing vibe that combining drawing, movement and sound. This drawing performance workshop is for all ages.

Ram Samocha is a multi-disciplinary performance artist who currently resides in Brighton, UK. Samocha’s work combines drawing with video, installation, and live performance. Samocha often mixes modern and traditional drawing techniques while searching for new ways to combine between 2D and 3D works. Samocha is the founder of Draw to Perform, an international gathering of artists and theorists involved in drawing performance. Samocha’s work has been recognized nationally and internationally and his work is part of various museums and private collections.