Control Signal / How to keep our friends away from drowning
Part of TwoFold: a festival of duet performance
Friday 17 March, 2017, 7-9:30pm | Tickets: £12 / £8

*Discussion with all the artists at the end of the evening

Control Signal
a duet by Karen Christopher & Sophie Grodin

Control Signal explores invisible influences and the inexplicable connections we feel but fail to acknowledge. It explores our irresistible urge to impose our will upon our immediate surroundings; upon nature. The starting place for our research was the body as conduit for electrical impulses, following lines of electricity through the body, through the air, and through history. The piece features Topsy the elephant electrocuted for unruly behaviour by Thomas Edison in 1903 and Ethel Rosenberg electrocuted by the state of New York in 1953 for passing secrets to the USSR.

The starting place for our research was the body as conduit for electrical impulses, following lines of electricity through the body, through the air, and through history. The piece features Topsy the elephant electrocuted for unruly behaviour by Thomas Edison in 1903 and Ethel Rosenberg electrocuted by the state of New York in 1953 for passing secrets to the USSR.

Control Signal was a FLINT commission and was supported using public funding by Arts Council England. It premiered in 2013, and toured in 2013-14. Control Signal forms part of The Difference Between Home and Poem: a duet series. Each project in the series is jointly made, directed and performed by Karen Christopher and another artist.

Sound mixed live by Boris Hauf.

Black Holes (cancelled due to personal circumstances)
a duet by Seke Chimutengwende & Alexandrina Hemsley

A short afrofuturist history of the universe. Join us as we retell the history of the universe; from the big bang through to the universe’s death. Orbiting this initial site of birth/ destruction and framing history as one long disaster movie, we’ll race our way through everything that has every happened. Black Holes funks up alternatives, asking the big questions on a small/ short scale: How did it all start? Where did it all go wrong? How will it all end? Could we save the universe from eating itself alive?

Black Holes will be replaced by:

How to keep our friends from drowning

a duet by Eirini Kartsaki & Joe Kelleher

How to keep our friends from drowning is a performance/lecture, which uses repetition, sound and speech to explore how we can make it back to the shore unharmed. These stories of survival are written and re-written so as to create a rhythmic arrangement, activating a certain mode of listening in time: things that are said before can be said again. The material used (language and sound) becomes accumulative, undergoing alterations and transformations and accretions as it is recalled.

Performer Biographies:

Seke Chimutengwende works in dance as a performer, choreographer and teacher. He has performed for companies such as DV8 Physical Theatre and Lost Dog and has performed his own solo improvisation work internationally since 2006. He performs ensemble improvisation with Neat Timothy and teaches improvisation internationally. For his company Seke Chimutengwende & Friends he has choreographed four works: Mr Lawrence, The Time Travel Piece (for The Place Prize), 45 Dances for The People of Ham and King Arthur which premiered at The Yard Theatre in June 2015.

Alexandrina Hemsley’s practice is collaborative and frequently interdisciplinary which she sees as a way of keeping knowing active and open. The work she make aims to reclaim and celebrate her identities as a mixed-race woman & tries to engage with the various cultural frameworks that mark her body on her own terms. Alexandrina is one part of duo Project O with Jamila Johnson-Small who have presented work at South Bank Centre, Somerset House, British Dance Edition, British Council Edinburgh Showcase 2015, Sadler’s Wells WildCard amongst others. Her most recent works – Bounty Bars and Oreo Cookies and Project O’s Voodoo have explored her experiences as a mixed race woman within a sense of non-linear time. In doing so, she has found a sense of freedom from the burden of assumptions placed on her body – Black Holes continues this investigation.

Sophie Grodin is a performance maker working in London and Copenhagen. With other London-based artists she collaborated to create Room (2012), a performance that co-authors a story with one audience member at a time. Sophie graduated in Performance Arts at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

Boris Hauf is a multi-intrumentalist, composer, producer and performer. He composes for large and small ensembles, performance artists, film, radio, soloists, video and installation art. Current bands include Owl & Mack, Postmarks, Next Delusion, The Peeled Eye. As performer and composer he collaborates closely with choreographers including Christina Ciupke, Martin Nachbar, Karen Christopher. He owns and runs the independent record label shameless and lives in Berlin, Germany.

Karen Christopher is a collaborative performance maker, performer, and teacher. Her company, Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects, is engaged in the dynamics of collaboration. Her practice includes listening for the unnoticed, the almost invisible, and the very quiet. She was a member of the Chicago-based performance group Goat Island for 20 years until the group disbanded in 2009.

Photo Credits: Control Signal – Jemima Yong