23.11.19
PROGRAMME
ARTISTS SHOWING
Toby Harrison
https://thrucolours.github.io/dysutopia
Harrison’s work is driven by a balanced interest in sci-fi and physics, borrowing from the aesthetics of sci-fi to present visualisations of data taken from physics concepts. Recent works include Atomic Clock, a representative, interactive demonstration of the underlying physics behind atomic clocks, and Dysutopia, an online web based artwork illustrating two possible futures. Toby is currently working on a physical object that responds to a NASA data feed providing realtime information about Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and 'potentially hazardous' asteroids. Through his work, Toby brings the attention of the audience to data that is overlooked or largely inaccessible. By focusing our attention on scientific fact, Harrison reveals to a wider audiences the nuances of our relationship with the universe, in a way we might not otherwise think to.
Conor O’Sullivan
Conor O'Sullivan's background is Architecture. He works directly with raw, natural materials. In the past he explored cob as core building material for design and learned how to work with it in the Hollies community in rural Ireland. More recently he has been using bamboo as his main medium to work with. Its simplicity expresses its usefulness in creating large scale, site specific installations.
For his most recent piece, for Immerse, London, Conor made use of the immediate scale and structural possibilities of bamboo to surround an audience with a geometric bamboo installation, the immersion extending beyond the physical structure through the use of light and shadow. For KIN Symposium, Conor will work with living and cut bamboo to create an installation to enhance the immersive atmosphere of the space.
PERFORMERS
Femi Oriogon-Williams
https://soundcloud.com/femi-oriogun-williams
Femi Oriogun-Williams is a sound artist and musician based in South East London whose practise centres around capturing oral histories and expressing these through storytelling and song. His current project is a cyberspace punk opera about a dystopian future in which the only memory of human existence is through the eyes and voices of two voice assistants, Alexa and OK Google, and their respective banks of collected consciousness, a massive jumble of oral and visual human data. All this while navigating their own understanding of their composite identities in a world which has been re-wilded in the absence of civilisation.
Femi is also a podcast maker. He has made a number of podcasts for Arts and Culture institutions such as Somerset House and their recent exhibition Get Up, Stand Up Now, The Rough Guide to Everywhere, and probably most relevant to KIN Symposium, the Serpentine Gallery Podcasts On General Ecology. He will be performing his dystopian space Opera, and producing a podcast for KIN Symposium.
Wilderthorn and Sekrit
http://www.wilderthorn.com/immerse.html
Jon Bilbrough (Wilderthorn) & Dan Bilbrough (Sekrit) are two artist/musician brothers based in the East End of London.
Jon is known for his performances in atmospheric and historic spaces. He has shared the stage with the likes of St Vincent, Ben Howard and Foy Vance. He is featured on Nitin Sawhney’s album ‘Last Days Of Meaning’ as well as Max Cooper’s ‘One hundred Billion Sparks'. Dan has composed music for films and theatre including the 5 star hit ‘Custody’ and has received radio play on Radio 1, 1xtra, Worldwide FM and Rinse FM.
As a collective they have created ‘Immerse’, a live ambient experience where attendees are invited to sit and bath in the sound of their electronic textures and wordless-vocal loops. They will perform Immerse at the symposium, with samples of the natural world, giving the audience a chance to enter a meditative reflection during the symposium.
Amanda Hohenberg
Mani Hohenberg is an eco-poet, performance maker and translator working on the intersections of queer subject-hood and ecological inquiry. She is currently based in New York City, were she is an MFA candidate at the Pratt Institute for Writing and Social Activism. Her work tries to entangle human and non-human actors through sound and storytelling.
Weaving Weed Kin is a multi disciplinary project, which seeks to look and care for local undergrowth as a way to unravel a site’s counter-histories. An excerpt of Weaving Weed Kin will be played as a recorded reading at KIN Symposium, and the whole text included in the accompanying publication.
GUEST SPEAKERS
Estelle Asselin
Estelle Asselin is a qualified integrative counsellor and a certified nature and forest therapy guide. For several years, Asselin has questioned the issues around our disconnection to the natural world and how it impacts our lives and societies. Asselin has explored and trained in deep nature connection practices and ecopsychology theory and skills. Asselin now sees individuals for therapy both indoors and outdoors, and has recently joined the Wilderness Foundation as an associate counsellor. Asselin also guides small groups of people for forest bathing walks, in London, as a way to support well-being, personal development and a renewed relationship with the other-than-human.
Through her work, Asselin endeavours to bring connection, meaning, resilience and creativity to people.
For the symposium, Asselin will give a talk, during which she will take the audience on a virtual participatory exercise in line with the philosophy of forest bathing.
Alejandro Villa Duran
Alejandro Villa is interested in the broken relationship between human/nature. His approach is explorative playfulness, in search of connection. His work is a constant fight for liberation, in which nature holds the questions. He uses performance as a tool of exploration, of ritual and human behaviour, and sculpture as a means of documenting the answers of new languages and experiences given to him by nature. Alejandro has mainly worked in outdoor landscapes, where he uses video as a device of documentation, and where he is the main subject of his ritualistic performances. As maker, he tries to be in control of the production of his performances, and he creates his costumes and sets from a variety of mixed media.
'Again, till the end' is a participative performance that will be executed in the style of a workshop that focuses on the exploration of human expression, and provokes the audience to imagine the alternative. The audience will explore their power of creativity through a material based practice. The performance will guide the participants through an act of making, so they can explore their making capabilities with abandoned materials, and reach multiple outcomes from materials that can be transformed. Again till the end is a life event that tries to release the creative self that we all possess, and to reimagine the alternative from the written off. The performance will be a communion, where no right or wrong exists, just creativity and play.
Mena Shah
Through her work, Mena Shah explores connections, relationships and understanding life itself. In the modern day we are more disconnected, more individual or alone, and distracted from really living life.
Shah's study into Landscape Architecture at Edinburgh University is just one of the tools that is aiding her to read and understand our environment by sensorial observation, to then be able to connect the dots about what is really happening. Just like a plant, we have our daily tasks, relationships, tolerances, limitations, and optimum conditions. For KIN Symposium, Shah would like to share and explore connecting the dots for each one of our unique inner ecologies, guiding us to look inside ourselves. This will be through physical work, play and reflection. She will then connect us to the other, and to our outer environment, with which we are so deeply interdependent.
Mena has recently worked with Brixton based organisation Urban Growth, delivering Natural Dyes workshop at The Jetty in Greenwich. She has also worked with Barnet Refugee Service delivering Capoeira workshops to teenage boys without families in London, and environmental charities Kingston Environment Centre, Groundwork and TCV, leading community based workshops on the themes of biodiversity and food growing.
Teresa Chadwick
Chilean artist and creative inventor based in London. Strongly concerned about sustainability and promoting Latin American culture abroad. She is a Co- Founder of the Latinos Creative Society at the University of the Arts London and Founder of Alter Us, an emergent multidisciplinary collective that attempts to find solutions to face the challenges of the Anthropocene.
Through her mixed media practice, she exposes how touch screen technologies detaches us from our tactile instincts and empowers the society of the spectacle. She attempts to invite us to try to find a healthy balance between reassessing haptic sensitiveness while approaching new technologies.
She has had 6 solo exhibitions, participated in more than 15 collective shows and done 3 residencies in 4 different continents. Her recent shows include:, ‘The Society of the Spectacle’ solo exhibition at Latin American Restaurant Paladar, ‘Alter Us Manifesto Declaration’ in the Old Baths at Hackney and ‘A World in Vertigo’ collective show at the Brunel Museum. Last December won the Tagsmart Open Call and was interviewed on February for ‘Latinas Rising’ edition at Latino Life magazine in London.
Chadwick is currently studying the MA Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London, where she researches sustainable solutions in sculptural practices, and how this could positively impact on the public space.
William Rees
William Rees is a writer and curator based in London. Earlier this year, he took part in the Venice Fellowship with the British Council, during which he researched queerness and ecology in the city. Using Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice as his starting point, his project included writing and fermenting, resulting in a pickle party. At Kinstinct, these strands of research are brought together in a performative text (part menu, part recipe, part essay) exploring the queer ecology that is Venice. A selection of pickles will also be served.
Tom Morath
Tom Morath works for the Hawk Conservancy Trust, a Hampshire based visitor attraction who’s overseas efforts focus on the research and conservation of these critically endangered vultures.
Vultures are probably the world’s most misunderstood birds. Sadly, they are also the most endangered. Thought of as dirty, ugly and uninspiring by most – to Tom they could not be more fascinating or more beautiful. Tom spends much of his time at work trying to encourage individuals to see vultures from a new perspective and so develop love for the unlovable.
