'MIND THE GAP' : PERFORMATIVE-SYMPOSIUM AND WORKSHOP

Established writer, actor and theatre director Aravind Adyanthaya will participate with a live performance of 'Prometheus Bound' using his well known escritura acto (Writing Act) on-stage computerized writing technique. Choreographer of folk afro-Caribbean dances Awilda Sterling-Duprey, appearing live via Skype from the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (MAC), will perform her famous piece 'Vejigante decrépito', and international maskmaker and puppeteer Deborah Hunt will show a video-recorded performance of her work ‘The Package’ shown in festivals around Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. Aravind Adyanthaya will also talk about his work and cultural project in Puerto Rico, Casa Cruz de la Luna.

‘MIND THE GAP’ is curated by Marina Barsy Janer in collaboration with the Centre for Curatorial Studies (CCS) at the University of Essex and the Essex Collection of Art from Latin America.

Thursday 2 May 2013
firstsite, Colchester
2:00 - 6:00pm

Attendance is free.  All welcome. 

Workshop with Aravind Adyanthaya

Aravind will give a free two-hour workshop on his technique of escritura acto(Writing Act) at the Lakeside Theatre Studio, University of Essex, on Thursday 2nd May from  10:30am – 12:30pm.

This  workshop would  be  suitable  for  anyone  interested  in  creative  writing,  literature, theatre, and performance. It will explore the technique of ‘Writing Act’, a form of theatrical poetics  that  investigates  the staging  of  the  act  of  writing.  Through  the  use  of  a  video projection the written on the computer becomes the setting.

Participants will need to bring a laptop.

If you do not have one, please get in touch and we will try to help.

About the artists and speakers

Aravind Adyanthaya

Adyanthaya is a Puerto Rican writer, performer, and theatre director who has performed internationally, including in the USA, Spain, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Cuba and Peru. He has won 17 awards and fellowships nationally and internationally and has held 17 workshops related to his practice. Since 2002 he has published five academic publications and six works of fiction and play scripts. http://www.casacruzdelaluna.com/casacruz/

Marina Barsy Janer, Curator

Marina Barsy Janer is a Puerto Rican artist currently developing a Master’s Degree on Curating Latin American Art on the University of Essex researching performance art. She has been member of the dance company Hincapié and recently has collaborated with firstsite, giving performance workshops for Y.A.K. Currently she works with ESCALA.

Dr Rebecca Breen

Rebecca Breen specializes in contemporary art from Latin America and completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge (2011). Her research focuses on the intersections between conceptualist art practice by women artists and testimonio, or testimonial narrative literature from Latin America in the twentieth-century. Rebecca further holds an MPhil from the University of Cambridge (2003), for which she wrote a dissertation on the visual work of Frida Kahlo. Rebecca has previously lectured at the University of Limerick, Éire, from which university she also received her primary degree (2002).

Deborah Hunt

Deborah Hunt is a maskmaker, puppeteer and performance artist with 35 years’ experience in the creation and presentation of original theatre and performance works. Born in New Zealand but living in Puerto Rico since the 1990s, she is a member of the Magdalena Project, Founder and Artistic Director of MASKHUNT Inc, and Co-Organiser of the theatrical space Teatro Yerbabruja from 2000 until its closure in 2011. She has worked in Europe, USA, Asia, Australia, Latin America and the Caribbean since 1985. She is winner of the price from the Circle of Theatre Critics in Puerto Rico, 2002. She has recently published the book Más Caras con Máscaras and Títeres, titererías y Gogmagog a manual on puppet fabrication. http://hemisphericinstitute.org

Professor Osita Okagbue

Osita Okagbue’s main research interests are in African theatre and performance, theatres and performances of the African Diaspora, postcolonial studies and cultural theory, theatre-for-development and applied theatre, theatres of the world. He is founder and president of the African Theatre Association (AfTA). Some of his publications include Culture and Identity in African and Caribbean Theatre (2009), African Theatres and Performances (2012) and African Theatre: Diasporas (with Christine Matzke 2009), amongst others. He is editor of African Performance Review. Prof Okagbue is based in Goldsmiths, University of London where he is Deputy Head of Department and Director of Postgraduate Studies and Senior Tutor.

Awilda Sterling-Duprey

Sterling-Duprey is an award-winning Puerto Rican folklorist-choreographer and plastic artist whose work is internationally recognized for its ability to profile the everyday lives of those marginalized by society. Recently she has integrated the orixas of Cuban and Puerto Rican Santería into experimental and contemporary aesthetics. She was a founding member of Stomp, the first experimental dance collective in Puerto Rico and has performed in USA, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2010, she was awarded the United States Artists Fellows grant.

Dr Mischa Twitchin

Mischa Twitchin is a founder member of the Shunt collective and freelance lighting-designer, as well as being designer, director, and performer in his own work over the past ten years. Besides performance work, he also teaches at Goldsmiths College and is engaged in academic research on the anthropology of images. Mischa’s research interests mostly address modernist theatre practices, in particular the relation between visual art and theatre practice, puppetry, the relation between voice and gesture, and “post-dramatic” theatres (in, for example, the work of Antonin Artaud, Tadeusz Kantor, Marguerite Duras, Gina Pane, Peter Weibel, and Romeo Castellucci). His current research is concerned with mimesis and iconography – with particular reference to Aby Warburg, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and Georges Didi-Huberman.

Programme

2:00-2:10 Marina Barsy Janer (Artist and Curator of ''MIND THE GAP', University of Essex)
               Introduction to 'MIND THE GAP': performative-symposium

2:10-2:30 Aravind Adyanthaya (Artist, Founder and Director of Casa Cruz de la Luna)
               'Casa Cruz de la Luna: between community and experimentation'

2:30-2:55 Dr Rebecca Breen (University of Essex)
               'Body-art performance in Latin America today: Ana Mendieta and Regina José
               Galindo in dialogue'

2:55-3:25 Awilda Sterling Duprey (Performer, Choreographer, and Visual Artist)
               'Vejigante Decrépito' / Performance via Skype from the Museo de Arte
               Contemporáneo, Puerto Rico

3:25-3:50 Professor Osita Okagbue (Goldsmiths, University of London)
               'Trance and Possession Rituals of Africa and the African Diaspora: Bori, Voodoo and Santeria'

3:50-4:00 Break and refreshments

4:00-4:25 Deborah Hunt (Performer, Maskmaker, and Puppeteer)
               'The Package' / video recorded performance

4:25-4:50 Mischa Twitchin (Artist and Researcher, Goldsmiths, University of London)
               'After Words'

4:50-5:00 Break

5:00-6:00 Aravind Adyanthaya (Performer, Actor, Writer, and Theatre Director)
               'Prometheus' / live performance

6:00         Performative-Symposium ends

Please note that the audio quality of the presentations, posted below, is of varying quality due to the acoustics in the auditorium.  For this reason we have uploaded the transcript of Adyanthaya's presentation at the end of this page.