Salamèche

A queering of the space, reclaiming and marking it.… A demystifying of power structures, the hidden work everyone does as organisations and artists. How do we are artists find our place in them and our own loopholes to stretch its meanings & reach?
– Rachel Parry

A performance that takes place in arts organisations at night. Informal stakeholders of the space (founders, local organisers, artists, the audience members who come to everything) are invited to the building for an evening of misguided tours, Q&As, headbanging and plug-in disco lights. Each evening ends with a collective toast, by which the audience collectively expresses and listens to their shared and conflicting visions for the institution’s future.

The performance intervenes on contemporary cultural organisations in receipt of public funds, by reviving and adapting a tradition of ‘beating of the bounds’. In Agreement With… uses night-time occupation and and techno-infused dancing to tune out of the day-to-day administrative rhythms of these arts spaces in order to better attend to their trans-generational vibrations. Our lecture-performance Uninvited Guests features substantial discussion of these ideas.

Performance: Dance4 (Nottingham, July 2021) and Chisenhale Dance Space (London, February 2022).

Sound design by Gareth Cutter. Made with funding from Chisenhale Dance Space, Dance4, Arts Council England, TECHNE.

Photos by Adam Grainger and Anika Vajagic.