Saturday 6 December 2014

Jizni Mesto, Apophenia, Islington Mill, Manchester


Costumes: Dean Wellings & Louis Backhouse
Accessories: Janina Pedan
Staging: Ben Burgis


I'm just right there with you straight away and it had to be punctured in intravenously, a jolting invasion invoked with such a specific and fine kind of violence. It's so deep. It's not a violence which is directed at us, so it doesn't provoke a reflexive defensiveness or anger or hostility. I do feel violated though but it's necessary. Bc the violence is held in place with a screaming vulnerability but not one which I feel I need to cloak or pad or hide from or for. I kind of want to help but I'm unsure of the task which seems like an Ouroboros bc at first it felt like you knew the task but then you undid the task, cutting everything down and open and everything leaking and slipping and falling out of you. Which it always was anyway. And the taupe mesh forms a cross over your chest. And then I feel like the best kind of help I could give is to really be right there. To live is to bear witness. And be somehow invisible- and we are. Somehow the balance is that we are all fucking alone together with all this pressure above our heads. The fact that you use each other's names. Bypass. During valve surgery your heart must not beat.

Friday 26 September 2014

Vesmir Peklo, New Noveta, Susu Laroche, Dean Wellings & Seán Collum, Lima Zulu Gallery, London

A collaborative exhibition of photos, sound, installation, video by New Noveta, Susu Laroche, Dean Wellings and Seán Collum at Lima Zulu

EMBRACING TERROR. VYKON. FUNCTIONAL HYSTERIA. PLNOU SILOU. ZAROVKA. DELAKTIG CONFLICT. PRUZRACNY AGITATION. ZEZINXUSHUNXUSHU. KUSEDUZE. FULL FORCE. PELLUCID POBUDZENIE. FULL KRAFT

IZIMEKO


Sunday 8 June 2014

Jet femme Dovolena, Fem Fresh -­‐ Feminism, Age and Live Art, Queen Mary, University of London and the Live Art Development Agency, London

Link to event
In preparation for this show we were mentored by performance artist Oreet Ashery


"A piece exploring repetitive ritual, within a framework of noise and projected through a semi constructed physical structure. Through this piece New Noveta will attempt to challenge boundaries and expectations of the female working body."

Saturday 26 April 2014

Arcade Overseas, Marabouparken, Stockholm -­ SE

15 minute live performance/intervention part of event curated by Lap-See Lam & Jin Mustafa.

" - a tiny bit dangerous and above all humorous. It also moved towards a kind of performance art that moves beyond the metaphoric that often, in a too circumstantial way but also to simple way tries to show something other than the mere sensation of the work to the audience (I say this but I mean that). Not to talk of the political performances than oftentimes does nothing more than smears a few layers of artistry on to a political stance or message that had been easier to convey through a lukewarm debate article.

We was shown was nothing more than what we saw and heard. There were no hidden debts to uncover to reach its meaning.

But, what was it that we saw? Two life-forms, dressed up in earth tinted bathing suits, with clusters of potatoes hanging from the crotch; acting according to a logic dictated by the task to, as fast as possible gather and carry away a number of sticks tied to the walls. A sort of manic and violent state, whose end is nothing other than the actions themselves. A sort of absurd [male, potatoes=testicles?] insanity. A negative dialectic only producing the self reflective vacuum that encloses the action without pointing to an external end.

It wasn’t hopeful, or a balm for the soul, but a brutal showing of a process active on many segments of our existence. On a higher level of abstraction, I would argue that the above described dynamic is that which rules over the circulation of (economic) value and labour, in other words: Capital.

But I also think that this movement is reproduced on the micro levels that constitutes the higher grants it its means of sustenance. All could be described as ruled by the same negative dialectic – in the smaller games of gestures on which our institutions are based: work and reproduction, family. But now, my mind is wandering. 

I have to mention mental illness or addiction, which are good images of the same destructive circular movements of which I’ve talked above. I also praise you for daring to bring out these states from inside of yourselves, and show it in the way you did.

Herein I also find the humor. The laying bare of the arbitrariness of certain processes, revealing the absurd laws governing the world. And absurdity is fun, fun is laughter and laughter is fun."
- Artist Karl Sjölund 

Saturday 11 January 2014

Zmizí Klub Pět, LTOPO7, London Topophobia, Silwex House, London


15 minute live performance. Event curated by Fernanda Munoz-Newsome and Charlie Hope.
Documentation by Louis Backhouse