Somerset House Weekender, London, 2016
About
We are super excited this December to be gathering people at Somerset House in London to think back over the last decade of Forest Fringe’s work and explore some of the things that matter most to us today. Spread across several rooms, the event will be open throughout the weekend and everyone is welcome. There will be performances, talks, workshops, conversations, installations and exhibitions.
Whether you have known about Forest Fringe for many years, or have never heard about us before, we hope that this will be a space of exchange and experiment, a place to share good ideas and to encounter brilliant people doing interesting things. In the dying embers of this most grimly disheartening of years, we hope to begin for ourselves the task of asking where do we go now, and how we can work together to begin to make things better.
Friday 9th December
Opening Night Double Bill, doors at 7pm
Simone Kenyon & Neil Callaghan, and Augusto Corrieri
A double-bill of short works about collision, collapse, memory, history and survival.
Saturday 10th December
Chapter 1 – Memory, 12pm-3pm
How do we remember performance and who does the remembering? We have asked artists, archivists, critics and academics to think about the memories they have of performance and the way in which they remember. Performances and conversations featuring: Season Butler, Arike Oke, Alan Read, Diana Damian, and Simon Bowes.
Chapter 2 – Europe, 3pm-6pm
We want to take some time to think about Europe, about our place within it – how it is changing and what if anything we can do about it. Including the first UK sharing of some new experiments by Andy Field, Deborah Pearson and Ira Brand, alongside Gigi Argyropoulou speaking about Green Park and its self-organised Performance Biennial earlier this year.
Sunday 11th December
Chapter 3 – Resistance, 12pm-3pm
Thinking about gestures and spaces of resistance, about the relationships that currently exist between art and activism, and how to build new ones. Talks and installations involving: Farah Saleh, Hamja Ahsen, Liberate Tate, Lisa Skuret, and Rima Najdi.
Chapter 4 – Survival, 3pm-6pm
An opportunity to think about survival as artists, survival under capitalism, about longevity, and about self-care and adaptation. Talks and music, involving: Alex Swift, Douglas Murphy, Liz Aggiss, and Rhiannon Armstrong.
And throughout the weekend:
Jemima Yong, Action Hero (Gemma Paintin & James Stenhouse) and They Are Here (Helen Walker & Harun Morrison) explore the nature of collaboration, video installation All The Arguments We’ve Ever Had, and Farah Saleh's video dance installation Cells of Illegal Education.
Partners: Forest Fringe at Somerset House is supported by Arts Council England, Creative Scotland, Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Somerset House Studios