INTRODUCTION:
An exhibition assembled in response to a score.
A multi-lingual choir.
Five performance pieces, in sequence.
Framed by the contemporary context of austerity, and with Brexit looming, this project in three parts introduces the multi-faceted practice of Spanish performance art pioneer Esther Ferrer and proposes a dialogue with the work of six artists living and working in the UK today and a collaboration with amateur performers from different cultural and language backgrounds.
Emerging during the Franco years, at a complicated historical moment in terms of freedom of thought and expression, and moving to Paris in the early 1970s, Ferrer has sustained a practice outside of the artistic mainstream and within limited means for most of her lifetime, gaining greater exposure only after turning 60.
How a performance work is received changes all the time, according to the context where it is given. In revisiting key aspects of Ferrer’s legacy such as the body (transformed through age) as the subject of simple and direct work, the economy of means, her engagement with feminist and anarchist ideas, the musical paradigm within the everyday (influence of John Cage), the artist as polymath and art as an invitation to freedom, this project invites questions about our own present moment. What has changed for radical performance during Ferrer’s lifetime? What insights and approaches may be useful to a younger generation of artists and publics, faced with the experience of living through times of intense social and political upheaval?
RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
1. What does the context of Brexit bring to the reception of the wide-ranging artistic legacy of Spanish performance artist Esther Ferrer?
2. How might the notions of ‘poor practice’ and ‘creative conduct’, as articulated in Ferrer’s work, inform the development of new work by younger artists currently practising in the UK? What aspects of Ferrer’s practice are most relevant to them?
3. What has changed for radical performance through Ferrer’s lifetime? How is critical purpose negotiated in relation to changing support structures?
4. How can we employ curatorial methodologies to platform new interpretations of Ferrer’s work and energise debates concerning the conflation of arts practice and political intent in the UK today, from artists as well as publics?
5. How can the dialogue between Ferrer, collaborating artists and performers be documented? What will change for them, and how can this be evidenced?
METHODOLOGY:
The research methodology combined:
- Studio visits, aimed at identifying artists whose practice has a connection with Ferrer’s;
- The commissioning of new work, including mentoring artists and undertaking workshop sessions with them and Ferrer to develop the different elements of the project; -
Showcase of performance works, which specifically addressed the time and place of presentation and how publics are produced; -
Exhibition of scores, props and other documentation, which deepened and extended the knowledge gained from the collaboration between Ferrer and selected artists;
- Interview / oral histories, with Ferrer;
PROJECT OUTPUTS:
- Exhibition House Party at Project Ability, Third Floor Project Space (20th April – 7th May 2018). Works by Esther Ferrer, Louise Ahl and Fritz Welch, Jessica Higgins, Sandra Johnston and Pester & Rossi.
- Re-staging of Esther Ferrer’s participatory piece I’m Going To Tell You About My Life at Pearce Institute, McLeod Hall (22nd April 2018).
- Performance showcase event Minimal/Poor/Present at Pearce Institute, McLeod Hall (23rd April 2018). Featuring Esther Ferrer’s performative action Spaces, Tracks and Sounds and newly commissioned works by Louise Ahl and Fritz Welch (I Never Perform As Me), Jessica Higgins (When One Says To Another), Sandra Johnston (Considerations on Infinity) and Pester & Rossi (Infinity Walk, in collaboration with women’s groups in South Glasgow).
LEGACY:
The close study of Esther Ferrer’s participatory performance work, offering a method of equal participation that allows intersectional groups to perform simultaneously, has directly influenced my subsequent collaboration with artists Nadia Rossi (from Pester & Rossi), Rachel Walker and Jamie Bolland to develop the experimental performance workshop Mutual Playing Ground held at Rumpus Room studio in Govan and funded by Glasgow Life as part of the 2019-20 Arts Development scheme. This project has centred around the proposition to work with a mixed community of young people in Govanhill, Glasgow in order to explore ways to co-devise a participatory performance project to which everyone involved could shape and contribute.
I have also been invited to co-curate with Nuno Sacramento at Peacock Visual Arts (Aberdeen) an exhibition centred around Esther Ferrer’s approach to scoring, working closely with Ferrer’s collaborators Sandra Johnston and Denys Blacker, which proposes an encounter with a younger generation of artists based in Scotland who are arriving at performance from different creative backgrounds (delayed due to Covid’19).
