Final reflections #IBTlive10

So, here we are, late Sunday night and it’s all… over. My brain has roughly ground to a halt, and I have but a few final offerings before going away to a quiet room where I don’t have to think of any interview questions or edit any images/video/audio for at least a week. Firstly, the final images from today can be found up on Flickr, do go and also have a browse through everything that I captured. And subscribe to the RSS to the site if you fancy being updated about any creative, critical, or observational contributions that may trickle in, and on the big shiny ‘feel-for-it-all’ video that I will do and put up as soon as I have a moment over the coming week. 

Secondly, thoughts on today’s pieces.

Hancock and Kelly - Iconographia (pictured). This was the final performance of this piece after it having travelled the whole world. Kelly gently covers Hancock, who is lying cradling a pig carcass, in gold leaf, the piece lasts several hours. This is the kind of thing that on paper, might sound a little flimsy or silly, but is one of the highlights of the week for me. The kind of thing that makes me descend into a list of adjectives. Gentle, fragile, painful, shivery stuff.  None of the images I took do it justice, especially the way the leaves fluttered like glued-on butterflies every Hancock breathed, shivered, or spasmed in cramp. An image that will take a long time to leave me.

Kim Noble - You Are Not Alone. A work in progress tracking the comedian-come-artist Kim Noble’s neighbours and people he daily encounters - and his decision (or you could say obsession) with protecting or helping others, in lieu of someone to do either for him. The style resisted emotional engagement in terms of the voiceovers, lack of eye contact, and use of mediation, at the same time as inviting specific interactions - tapping in (I thought) to an overarching idea of a transaction - Kim’s deeds of exploitative loveliness seemed to cry out for payback. ‘I’m lovely, love me’. This underscored by the final dedication - to his ex girlfriend.

Hunt and Darton - Break Your Own Pony. Hunt and Darton closed the festival with a rollicking, gently humorous, and highly tongue-in-cheek piece about horse-play. The two women presented fragments of horsey language, actions, dress, and meanings, whilst also chivvying the audience into action; horse trot patterns, encouraging them to leap fences and handing out polos. Great fun, and an active light touch to end the festival on.

Low Profile - You Made It offered a lovely finale to the festival as we all were greeted to the finish soup kitchen/party through a human archway of free chocolate, marathon reflective-capes, and cheers.

And finally; we danced.

I hope you’ve enjoyed following the festival on this live blog. It’s been such an honour to talk to so many brilliant audience members, organisers and artists, as well as to try and communicate the feel as well as the content of the festival. Please do feel free to add any further thoughts, reviews, images, videos, sounds or comments you might have at http://www.ibtlive.newworknetwork.info/submit and also to download and remix anything you like - I’ve struggled for the bandwidth to share raw video files for download, but if you see something you like, or want to know if I have anything in particular, just tweet me @hannahnicklin, or leave a comment, and I’ll sort out a download for you.

Thanks Bristol, I had a blast. 

Images from Hancock and Kelly’s final performance of Iconographia. #IBTlive10

Click here to view full size on Flickr. But be warned, these pictures do the piece absolutely zero justice. Painful, fragile stuff.

Saturday Reflections From #IBTlive10

So here we are again, another day, another selection of world class live art to consider. In terms of the coverage, yesterday we hit 1000 unique views, which is very encouraging. I’m beginning to process the audio and video at a higher rate (not allowing for finding somewhere with a decent enough connection for me to upload) so today you should be able to listen to 3 extracts from Action Hero’s piece, an interview with Duncan Speakman, and later, a snippet of a chat with the lovely Search Party.

Following a day of sound on Friday, quite a few of yesterday’s selection could be seen to be scored by variations on blinding light. And bread. Well actually the bread one probably is the exception to the rule. So, what did I see?

Sleepdogs - The Dead Phone. A fascinating piece, washed in red light, and lit by a single ineffective bulb the performer’s features blended away. Possibly the most play-like thing I’ve seen at the festival so far. Carefully and achingingly negotiated a very modern issue (that of our ability to watch real violence in an unreal way - online) in a very simple, analogue, and fundamentally humane way. This could have been a much less subtle piece had it set out to be about the ‘issue’, but really it was mostly about the age-old pain of losing someone.

Sylvia Rimat - Imagine Me To Be There. A performance conveyed almost entirely through a script typed as the audience watched - projected on stage - whilst Rimat sat silently to one side. Imagine Me To Be There brought up some interesting ideas about the exchanges in power between the author and the audience in performative experiences. The author had the power to create the universe and set the rules, the audience the ultimate power to reject them if they wished. Quiet, powerful, interesting.

Rod Maclachlan - Exchange. A simple prospect - though I imagine more complicated in execution - two individuals are fitted with belts that measure their breath, and then enter a large room where two sets of lights are controlled by their in and exhalations. You begin by exploring the ‘how’ and ‘who’ - who controls which lights, how exactly, laughing and joking - but as the time moves on you fall silent and begin to play in a different wat. I wanted more time, and I was annoyed that I was unable to sustain the level of light I liked best, because I had to carry on breathing.

Carter and Zierle - Pearls of Sustenance. Bread! Two figures - heads covered entirely, and vision obscured completely by a helmet of white bread fixed to chicken and wire - make their way slowly and blindly across the Arnolfini towards one another. Eventually they find each other, and feed each other the bread until they can see. Watching the reactions to this piece was wonderful, and as Helen Cole said in her interview - something there that taps into clowning.

Action Hero - Frontman. I’m still processing this piece, and very much looking forward to chatting to James and Gemma today about the work. It felt like it was about the tension between offstage and on, the high euphoria and lows that have to follow - of being onstage. Full of loud, burning sound and light, the frontman (or woman actually) twanged tragically around breaking point, and fought with the offstage, dark, rumbling, painful sounds. You can get a taste for a tiny part of it over here. Do listen on headphones and in HD for higher-quality sound.

..And here we are on Sunday. Time has simultaneously seem stretched and in short supply (I’m beginning to agree with Helen about the appropriateness of the name of the festival). The whole thing winds up this evening, but before that there’s Hancock and Kelly, Hunt and Darton, and Kim Noble amongst others.

The buzz about Kim Noble’s piece yesterday was palpable so I’m particularly intrigued as to what his show today is going to be like, I’ll hopefully be posting images throughout the day, and might finish with a similar style video to the launch one. Let’s see shall we? Onwards!

Creative Challenge! #ibtlive10 ‘Why did the people wash the dead bodies in the washing machine?’

Our friends over at @inbetweentime10 have been collecting whispers from the audience members visiting their reading room. So today’s creative challenge is to respond visually, or textually, to one of the following quotes. You can submit anything you make on the submit page. Or @hannahnicklin or @newworknetwork on Twitter. As long or as short as you like!

‘Why did the people wash the dead bodies in the washing machine?’

‘Is this sort of festival - with a mammoth amount of events going on over a short period of time, attended largely by artists and producers - the best platform for Live Art?’.

‘This place freaked me out’.

‘Being here makes me feel better’.

‘If I’d gone to New York as a dancer I would have been one amongst hundreds’.