How Does It Feel?

how does it feel?

how does it feel?

Thursday 17th October, 11am – 5pm @ Birmingham Black Box

What sort of atmospheres and sensations do possession and automation generate? Can we feel possessed or automated (haunted, taken over, entranced, enchanted)? Can it be simply something that happens as we sing, speak or even just breathe? A rhythm of the body that’s not quite the same as the movement of the algorithm.

Karen Christopher is a collaborative performance maker, performer, and teacher. Her company, Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects, is devoted to collaborative processes, listening for the unnoticed, the almost invisible, and the very quiet, paying attention as an act of social cooperation.

James Goodwin is a poet. Faux Ice (London: Materials, 2022) is his most recent book of poetry. He has read and performed widely.

J Neve Harrington is a London-based artist whose work includes writing, dance & choreography, video, installation, costume and space design. She works mainly in gallery and non-stage spaces where her work prioritises explorations around access, play, agency, confrontation by times/scales beyond the human, neuroqueer experiences of information processing and attention.

Jassem el Hindi is a French Lebanese Palestinian artist working with sound and choreography. His last recent works circle around ruins of folk dances, pre-islamic cults and death poems from West Asia (Etel Adnan, Nazik el Malaika, Leila Malik…).

Dana Michel is a live artist. Her works interact with the expanded fields of improvisation, choreography, sculpture, comedy, hip-hop, cinematography, techno, poetry, psychology, dub and social commentary to create a centrifuge of experience. Last at Fierce in 2019 as part of the ensemble of Make Banana Cry and previously with Yellow Towel, Dana will also be presenting MIKE on Saturday 19 October.

an*dre neely and Melanie Sien Min Lyn will be presenting Pre-Submission, two films and a performance installation.

Martin O’Brien’s practice is concerned with the performance and representation of illness and disability. His professional performance work considers and stems from his existence with a severe chronic illness without our contemporary situation.

Keioui Keijaun Thomas is based in Brooklyn, New York. She earned her MA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BFA with honours from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She was last seen performing at Fierce in 2019 with My Last American Dollar. Here, she will be re-imagining that performance in advance of Come Hell or High Femmes: The Era of the Dolls at Fierce on Friday 18 October.

SERAFINE1369 is a choreographer working with dancing as a philosophical undertaking, a political project with ethical psycho-spiritual ramifications for being-in-the-world; dancing as intimate technology. They work with/in the context of the hostile architectures of the metropolis towards moments and states of transcendence. They were last at Fierce in 2017 with i ride in colour and soft focus, no longer anywhere.

melissandre varin is an undisciplined atmosphere-maker. Intimacy, embodiment, and healing emerge from their work via experimental partnerships contributing to freedom and liberation.⁠ melissandre will be collaborating with Za Lahai for their performance.

plus audio interventions from Shane Boyle, Brian Bartell, Adriana Garriga-López, Paul Rekret, Ronald Rose-Antoinette and Arabella Stanger