Self-isolation Spotlight
This is a platform for putting a spotlight on projects, exhibitions or screenings that have been delayed or cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It may also include works made by artists created in response to this global period of self-isolation. It will be a non-curated selection...if you have something that you would like to show then please email hello@new-flesh.com with some short info, images and/or video links.
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Posted: Sunday 22nd March:
O‘Pierrot
Tanoa Sasraku
Tanoa Sasraku
Our artist-in-residence of 2019, Tanoa, had just opened her solo show at LUX, the biggest public presentation of her new work, O’Pierrot, created during her residency. The exhibition has found a new digital home on the LUX website here. And can still be visited physically by appointment only.
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O’PierrotThe life goal of Pierrot Mulatto (played by the artist) is to catch a giant sycamore seed that spins down every day from the arms of Harlequin Jack, a crazed black man in whiteface, driven mad by his own quest for British acceptance. Jack toys with Pierrot throughout the story, performing a satirical essence of white British sensibility whilst referencing early minstrel troupes’ caricatures of the post-slavery, black populace. Mixed-race Pierrot is encouraged to strive for her ‘white potential’ whilst battling rejection, rage, and the bending of time amidst the English countryside.
The story of the black, British experience: one driven by misplaced loyalty, melancholy, and historical reprise stands as a mirror to the traditional tale of Pierrot’s existence under Harlequin’s thumb. This forms the narrative pillar for Sasraku’s semi-autobiographical fairytale whilst the script is built upon a colliding of verses from the Jim Crow-era song ‘Jump Jim Crow’ and lesser-known passages from the British National Anthem.
Artist Bio
Tanoa Sasraku (1995, Plymouth, Devon) works with themes examining the intersections of her identity as a young, mixed-race, gay woman and the endeavour to draw these senses of self together as one in 21st century England. Sasraku is based in London, England and her practice shifts between filmmaking and flag-making.
Watch here: https://lux.org.uk/online-exhibition/tanoa-sasraku-o-pierrot
Posted: Sunday 22nd March:
I Exist On The Internet
Ambie Drew
Not made during self-isolation, but seeming particularly relevant in these times. I Exist On The Internet, 2019 commissioned by Vivid Projects, explore fabricated femininity, gender and identity in the digital age. We exist in a human body, but what would it mean to live through an artificial digital body? This experimental film explores ideas around artificial intelligence and digital enhancements in an online environment to create a fluid overlap between fantasy and reality.
Posted: Thursday 19th March:
CONTACT
Matthew Grouse & Andy Sowerby
Matthew Grouse & Andy Sowerby
This project was due to be a live audio visual performance at Cryptic Nights at the CCA in Glasgow on 26th March. But has been cancelled indefinitely due the coronavirus situation.
CONTACT Video Extract 1 from Andy Sowerby on Vimeo.
Award-winning composer, Matthew Grouse, in collaboration with filmmaker and visual artist Andy Sowerby, combines sight, sound and even touch in a multi-layered exploration of the body's largest sensory organ - our skin. Contact is a performance where our sense of touch is enhanced equally to that of seeing and hearing using custom-built, tactile instruments amongst more familiar ones. The artists enable you to feel music; to experience microscopic and distorted visuals reacting to both live violin and pre-recorded sounds; and for their own bodies to be an integral part of the performance.
CONTACT Video Extract 2 from Andy Sowerby on Vimeo.
CONTACT is a live audiovisual performance in three movements that examines the skin as the boundary for the body and also as a mediator between the body and its environment.
Our skin envelops and protects us.
Our skin is vulnerable and highly sensitive.
Our skin allows us to feel and connect.
Not only capable of letting us feel and experience our external environment, the skin allows us to notice the boundary of our own being, and the beginning of another’s. As we leave our mark on the world around us through fingerprints and the realities of our daily lives, the world also leaves its mark on us.
CONTACT explores notions of ‘haptic perception’ in audiovisual expression, in this case meaning that tactility is integral to the audience and performer’s engagement with the work.
During the process we have been looking to uncover chains of sensory connection, which have prompted questions such as:
How can we ‘feel’ auditory and visual components of the work?
How can we encourage a bodily relationship between the audience, the performer, the staging and the audiovisual material?
How can one sense act as a lens through which to interpret another?
CONTACT Video Extract 3 from Andy Sowerby on Vimeo.
Artist Bios
Matthew Grouse
Matthew Grouse is a composer from the UK, currently based in Aarhus (DK), who regularly combines music for instruments and voices with electronic sound, text, video and performative media. His work is often concerned with human frailties and reframing the seemingly mundane aspects of everyday life.
Matthew has made work for ensembles such as The Hermes Experiment; Hebrides Ensemble; Red Note Ensemble; Royal Northern Sinfonia; and Nevis Ensemble.
His music has been showcased internationally at festivals including: Darmstadt (DE); Matera Intermedia (IT); St Magnus International Festival (UK); Visiones Sonoras (MX); The Cumnock Tryst (UK); EviMus (DE); Sound-Image (UK).
Website | Instagram | Twitter
Andy Sowerby
Andy Sowerby is a filmmaker and visual artist based in the UK. Andy’s work engages with tensions between narrative storytelling and abstract expressive representation. Andy has an interest in representing our lived experience: exploring subjects including memory and subjective experiences of time.
Andy is a graduate of Newport Film School UK. His films have been screened international at film festivals including: Atlanta (USA), Bogotá Experimental (CO), Boston Sci-Fi (USA), Aesthetica (UK), and London Short Film Festival (UK). He has performed live video performances at venues and festivals across the UK including: Latitude (UK), White Night (UK) and Great Escape (UK).
Website | Instagram | Twitter
Matthew Grouse
Matthew Grouse is a composer from the UK, currently based in Aarhus (DK), who regularly combines music for instruments and voices with electronic sound, text, video and performative media. His work is often concerned with human frailties and reframing the seemingly mundane aspects of everyday life.
Matthew has made work for ensembles such as The Hermes Experiment; Hebrides Ensemble; Red Note Ensemble; Royal Northern Sinfonia; and Nevis Ensemble.
His music has been showcased internationally at festivals including: Darmstadt (DE); Matera Intermedia (IT); St Magnus International Festival (UK); Visiones Sonoras (MX); The Cumnock Tryst (UK); EviMus (DE); Sound-Image (UK).
Website | Instagram | Twitter
Andy Sowerby
Andy Sowerby is a filmmaker and visual artist based in the UK. Andy’s work engages with tensions between narrative storytelling and abstract expressive representation. Andy has an interest in representing our lived experience: exploring subjects including memory and subjective experiences of time.
Andy is a graduate of Newport Film School UK. His films have been screened international at film festivals including: Atlanta (USA), Bogotá Experimental (CO), Boston Sci-Fi (USA), Aesthetica (UK), and London Short Film Festival (UK). He has performed live video performances at venues and festivals across the UK including: Latitude (UK), White Night (UK) and Great Escape (UK).
Website | Instagram | Twitter