ICA | Choreographic Devices

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Live

A stone sculpture torso upside down on a tray being driven by a truck, in front of old houses

Choreographic Devices is an annual event that activates the choreographic as a methodology for trans-disciplinary forms of inquiry and rehearsal. Bringing together practitioners from across an expanded ecology of practices, this multi-format forum speculates on and with choreographic arrangements and their complex modes of co-production. Choreographic Devices tests how material assemblages, organisational forms, and modes of being alongside each other, might be choreographed otherwise.

Following on from the larger scale inaugural 2022 edition, the 2023 iteration acts as a smaller scale in-between moment to both echo the prior event and its ripple effects, as well as reflect and imagine toward next year’s event. During four distinct sessions taking place over one day, four hosts and their invited contributors will utilize the choreographic across a range of bodies of knowledge to, again, conjure the 2024 edition of Choreographic Devices as the afterlife of the performative gestures enacted now.

With contributions by: Murat Adash, Charlie Ashwell, Eglė Budvytytė, Elly Clarke, Ofri Cnaani, keyon gaskin, Adrian Heathfield, Raimundas Malasauskas, SERAFINE1369, Protektorama toxica, Emily Rosamond, Sara Sassanelli, Edgar Schmitz, and Himali Singh Soin.

Also: Choreographic Devices recommends Fest en Fest LAB from 19 – 22 of June.

Schedule

12:00pm Doors

12:30 – 1:45pm this dark gleam: choreographic listening with Charlie Ashwell and Sara Sassanelli

1:45 – 2:30pm Lunch break

2:30 – 4:30pm alterity, alterity with Murat Adash, Eglė Budvytytė, Protektorama toxica and Himali Singh Soin

4:30 – 5pm Break

5 – 6:30pm Dragging Affordances with Elly Clarke, Ofri Cnaani, Adrian Heathfield, Emily Rosamond

6:30 – 7pm Break

7 – 9pm proposals for the next one, with contributions from keyon gaskin, Raimundas Malasauskas, Edgar Schmitz and SERAFINE1369

Artist Bios

Adrian Heathfield is a writer and curator working across the scenes of live art, experimental theatre and dance. He is the author of Out of Now, a monograph on the artist Tehching Hsieh, and editor of numerous other books. He curated Doing Time at the Venice Biennale 2017 and co-curated Live Culture at Tate Modern 2003. adrianheathfield.net

Murat Adash is an artist and researcher engaged with thresholds: focusing on the dynamic edges where things begin and end, where they cross over – between bodies and spaces, inter-subjectivities, (in)visibilities, (dis)appearances and across media-specific boundaries. Through an expanded choreographic practice, Murat creates choreographies in a range of media and formats encompassing movement practice, moving image, installation, CGI, sound and writing. Murat holds an MFA in Visual Arts and Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently completing a PhD on camouflage at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Charlie Ashwell dances, teaches, choreographs, writes and does dramaturgy. They have performed with Seke Chimutengwende & Friends, Dog Kennel Hill Project, Florence Peake, Janine Harrington, and English National Opera. As a dramaturg, Charlie has worked closely with dance artists Es Morgan and Seke Chimutengwende, and more recently, theatre makers Greg Wohead and Emergency Chorus. Charlie’s own research explores magic as a mode of conjuring alternative realities out of dance and language. They teach technique, improvisation and choreography at the University of Roehampton, and have led artist workshops at venues such as The Place, ICA, Dance4 and Siobhan Davies Dance.

Eglė Budvytytė is an artist based in Vilnius and Amsterdam working at the intersection between visual and performing arts. She approaches movement and gesture as technologies for a possible subversion of normativity, gender and social roles and for dominant narratives governing public spaces. Her practice, spanning across songs, poetry, videos and performances, explores the persuasive power of collectivity, vulnerability and permeable relationships between bodies, audiences and the environments.

Edgar Schmitz’ architectures and soundscapes are concerned with developing modes of withdrawal. His work has been the subject of solo presentations at Netwerk Aalst, Himalayas Museum Shanghai, Cooper Gallery Dundee, FormContent London, the ICA, and has featured in A.C.A.D.E.M.Y at Vanabbemuseum, No Soul for Sale at Tate Modern, and British Art Show 7 among others. He is a Reader in Art at Goldsmiths and directs the Art Research Programme there.

Elly Clarke is an artist interested in the performance and burden (‘the drag’) of the physical body in a digitally mediated world, as well as the ‘snapping-to-grid’ of templates. S/he explores this through performance, photography, music, curating, and #Sergina, multi-bodied drag queen who, across one body and several, performs online and offline about love, lust and loneliness in the mesh of hyper-dis/connection. ellyclarke.com

Emily Rosamond is Senior Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Associate Editor of Finance and Society. Her research explores the assetization of reputation, character, and personality within online platforms and social impact investing.

Himali Singh Soin is a writer and artist based between London and Delhi. She uses metaphors from outer space and the natural environment to construct imaginary cosmologies of interferences, entanglements, deep voids, debris, delays, alienation, distance and intimacy. In doing this, she thinks through ecological loss, and the loss of home, seeking shelter somewhere in the radicality of love. Her speculations are performed in audio-visual, immersive environments.

keyon gaskin prefers not to contextualize with their credentials.

Ofri Cnaani is an artist and researcher. She works in time-based media, performances, and installations. Her work appeared at: Tate Britain, UK; Venice Architecture Biennale; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC; Inhotim Institute, Brazil; PS1/MoMA, NYC; BMW Guggenheim Lab, NYC; and Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna. Cnaani is a guest professor at TU Wien and a research fellow at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) at the University of Amsterdam. Cnaani currently working on a project at the International Space Station (ISS).

Protektorama toxica (fed and cared for by JP Raether) is an Artificial Identity and part of a group of WorldWideWitches that investigate people’s obsession with their smartphones. They address the relationship of the body to the screen, explore portable computer systems as body prosthetics, and trace the materiality, manufacturing, and mines of information technologies. Protektorama appear as humanoid beings in performative, distributed social interventions, engaging an elaborated vocabulary. In their appearances, they work to demonstrate that in every common reality the potential for another reality is always present.

Raimundas Malašauskas has co-written an opera libretto, co-produced a television show, served as an agent for dOCUMENTA (13), curated oO, the Lithuanian and Cyprus pavilions at the 55th Venice Biennale, and kept occurring under hypnosis.

Sara Sassanelli is Curator of Live at the ICA and an associate of alternative education programme CONDITIONS. They are currently working on a research project about references to the rave tradition in experimental live practice. They have curated programmes for Somerset House Studios, Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Southwark Platform, Royal Academy of Arts, Guest Projects, Ormside Projects and Arts Admin and Fierce Festival.

SERAFINE1369 is a London born and based artist, dancer and body-focused researcher 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.

Edgar Schmitz’ architectures and soundscapes are concerned with developing modes of withdrawal. His work has been the subject of solo presentations at Netwerk Aalst, Himalayas Museum Shanghai, Cooper Gallery Dundee, FormContent London, the ICA, and has featured in A.C.A.D.E.M.Y at Vanabbemuseum, No Soul for Sale at Tate Modern, and British Art Show 7 among others. He is a Reader in Art at Goldsmiths and directs the Art Research Programme there

Note: Please leave extra time if travelling on Saturday 17 May, due to events on the Mall.

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