The Beginning

The Beginning, by Michael Pinchbeck

They are professionals.
They have learned their lines.
They are waiting to make their entrance.
They are ready to begin.

Part theatrical memoir, part safety announcement, The Beginning is the second in a trilogy of works taking Shakespearean stage directions as starting points for performance and looks at what it means to begin. Because he has promised never to perform again, Michael Pinchbeck has invited Nicki Hobday and Ollie Smith to join him in remembering how it feels to perform for the first time.

Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. Developed at Lakeside Arts Centre (Nottingham), The Junction (Cambridge), Leeds Met Gallery and Studio Theatre and Loughborough University.

http://makingthebeginning.tumblr.com/

Photography by Julian Hughes

Revital Cohen, Butterflies Flying

I had an delight full experience working along side Revital Cohen as Lighting assistant and documentor for this project.

HUMAN CONDITION/ING - Autumn 2011

Radar presented two commissions with Jacqueline Donachie and Revital Cohen that involved a dialogue between the artists and academics based within the Department of Sport and Exercise Science. Both of the works responded in very different ways to research around improving human performance.

Butterflies Flying in Formation investigates the psychology of the elite athlete mindset, the body-mind connection, and how phobias of high level competing, which can be equally as paralysing as a physical injury, can be overcome. The work asks what kind of training equipment could make an athlete stronger, not by hardening the muscles, but through conditioning their mental state?

Researching the practices of mental toughness building and sport psychology techniques, a hypothetical training tool was designed to choreograph the body into conditioning the mind. Loosely based on the principles of samurai armour, protective and impenetrable, the object, in conjunction with the ‘scorpion’, a yoga pose which clears the mind and controls the nerves in the stomach, is put into action, triggering mirror neurons* in the brain which mentally rehearse the next moves to be made.

Revital Cohen is a designer who develops critical objects and provocative scenarios exploring the juxtaposition of the natural with the artificial. Her work spans across various mediums and includes collaborations with scientists, bioethicists and animal breeders. Recent exhibitions have included Talk To Me which is now showing at the MoMA in New York, Alter Nature: The Unnatural Animal, Z33, Belgium and BIOTOPIA: Art in the Wet Zone, Urzon Center, Aalborg, Denmark. This year Revital has been given an award from the Welcome Trust.

http://arts.lboro.ac.uk/radar/programme_archive/human_conditioning/

JACQUELINE DONACHIE
TEMPLE OF JACKIE (TESTING TIMES)
RADAR Loughborogh University

HUMAN CONDITION/ING
Autumn 2011

Radar is currently working on two new commissions with Jacqueline Donachie and Revital Cohen that have involved a dialogue between the artists and academics based within the Department of Sport and Exercise Science. Each of the new works will respond, in very different ways to research around improving human performance.

Jacqueline became interested in the testing and monitoring of athletes and decided to put herself through a rigorous testing programme. She made notes and documented the process and has subsequently spent a period in the studio undertaking a series of drawings. The outcomes of this period of research and development will be presented in November within a temporary mobile structure which documents her process. The structure will be dedicated to the cult of the ordinary in a place where excellence is paramount.

Photography by Julian Hughes

HATCH - FRESH

Hatch, one of the East Midlands’ leading performance platforms, returns to Leicester after a successful first outing at Embrace Arts last year.

A never-to-be-repeated night of innovative live art across three city locations where you can expect the weird and the wonderful in spoken word, theatre, music, one-to-one performance and more. Frankly, anything goes.

Arboretum by Frank Abbott

GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN, 'Oral'

Sylvia Rimat, 'Imagine me to be There'

Olwen Davies, 'Fridge Logic'

Action Hero, 'Frontman'

The Alternative village fete, Tattershall Castle

Matthew Cowan

Matthew Cowan has been working with the Company of Ringers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lincoln, and has produced a new film of their meeting and practice which will accompany a performance. The ringers operate the 13 bells of the Cathedral in the Bell Ringer's Chamber high in the West Tower of the Cathedral. The film is a record of the ritual of the practice of the ringing of the cathedral bells, in space that has been dedicated to such activity for nearly four hundred years.

Alongside the film will be a new live performance involving the repetitive ritual of bell ringing, the mechanism of the bell ropes, and the artist's own take on the physicality of campanology.
http://www.lincolnartprogramme.co.uk

The Company Mathew Cowan