Live Forever

An afternoon of performance and conversation at DRAF Studio

20 June 2015

DRAF Studio presents an afternoon of performance and discussion.

The programme will commence at 4pm with a panel discussion between Teresa Calonje (editor of the book of essays Live Forever: Collecting Live Art (2014)), Claire Louise Staunton (Director, Flat Time House), dancer Ellen van Schuylenburch and Jonah Westerman (Postdoctoral Research Associate, ‘Performance at Tate’). Together, they will be considering the question, does performance need collecting?

From 6pm we present two performances. Fernanda Muñoz–Newsome performs 2 Dive In, a tapestry of dance and spoken score. The elastic counterpoint of movement and found-text fragments form a study into how meaning is shaped in performance; shapeshifting between ‘the jester, the witch, the shaman and the poet.’ The choreography is by Fernanda Muñoz–Newsome, sound is composed by Nena Zinovieff.

Roberts Institute of Art

Next, at 6.30pm, a live music set by singer, pianist, performer and ‘Baroque creature’ Mathilde Fernandez. This unique voice is trained with an operatic coach for performances that celebrate ‘freedom, madness, poetry and savagery.’

Afterwards, from 7.30pm, we invite you to stay for drinks and continue to the conversation with artists, panelists and guests.

Throughout the afternoon, Dora García’s, The Game of Questions (2004) will be activated across the space.

Teresa Calonje

Teresa Calonje is a curator and researcher based in London. She is a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths College and is currently commissioning a series of live interventions at Second Home, London. In 2014, she published a collection of essays and interviews critically engaging in issues of acquisition and conservation of performance, Live Forever: Collecting Live Art (Koenig Books).

Mathilde Fernandez

Mathilde Fernandez was brought up by a family of progressive rockers, and spent her early years attending performance art and music concerts; early encounters that were to be as informative as her mother’s favourite Kate Bush record. Her vocal practice is inspired by idols including Nina Hagen, Lisa Gerard, Lene Lovich, Mylene Farmer and Catherine Ringer. Fernandez is based in Brussels.

Dora García

Dora García is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Barcelona. Her work often draws on interactivity and performance, using the exhibition space as a platform to investigate the relationship between the visitor, the artwork and place. Garcíarepresented Spain at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011), and has exhibited internationally including at (d)OCUMENTA 13, Kassel, Germany (2012), Gwangju Biennial, Korea (2010), Lyon Biennial, France (2009), Tate Modern, London, UK (2008), Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2008) and SMAK, Gent, Belgium (2006).

Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome

Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome is a London-based dance artist, who creates and performs choreographies across the UK and Europe. She works with composers, visual artists, pop/punk bands and other choreographers in live performance and video works. Recently, she has collaborated with Savages and A Dead Forest Index in Station to Station at the Barbican. She co-founded the cross-disciplinary performance night London Topophobia, which she regularly curates and performs in.

Ellen van Schuylenburch

Ellen van Schuylenburch was an independent dancer in the late 1970s in New York working with experimental and postmodern choreographers whilst training with Merce Cunningham from 1978 to 1984. In 1983 Michael Clark invited Van Schuylenburch to dance in a duet and she soon became a founder member of Michael Clark Company. More recently she set up Clark’s archive. She teaches at Trinity Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance. She has performed in Nina Beier’s The Complete Works since 2011 and in several of Tino Sehgal’s productions.

Claire Louise Staunton

Claire Louise Staunton is a curator and researcher based in London. She is Director of Flat Time House: an institute, gallery and archive in the former home and studio of artist, John Latham. Staunton is also Curator with Inheritance Projects that she established in 2007. She writes for a number of paper and on-line publications including Frieze and rhizome.org. Her research interests focus on the social imaginary, the idea of a ‘fictional public,’ temporal contingencies, migrancy and newness as a condition for art making.

Jonah Westerman

Jonah Westerman holds a PhD in Art History from The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY) and a BA from Harvard University. He is now working on a two-year, AHRC-funded research project, ‘Performance at Tate,’ which interrogates the place of performance in the museum’s collection and programming. He has published on the relationship between performance and its media in journals and edited collections, and has taught courses on modern and contemporary art at Brooklyn College, CUNY and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Live Art Commissions

Roberts Institute of Art

On Performance: SERAFINE1369 and Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome

Roberts Institute of Art