Tuesday 1 September 2009

HOUSEWARMING




In medieval times a HOUSEWARMING was when the hot embers from the previous home were brought to the new premises. A fire was started from the embers in the grate of the new home.



HOUSEWARMING


"Openness in being occurs in the form of a world, that is a field, a topography, where nothing visible shows itself without hiding most of itself." Merleau Ponty

HOUSEWARMING takes place in an East End council flat waiting for demolition.

HOUSEWARMING is an experiential piece that takes audience members on a journey through the hidden life of a building, questioning the criteria upon which the end of its existence has been decided.

When can a building be destroyed and what kind of impact do these policies have on its residents' lives? As a consequence of these decisions, what can the traces left by forced migrating bodies tell us?

Within the spacial realm of performance and installation, four artists respond to how the tenants' lives have been affected by policy making. Stifled past voices are given a moment to speak, rippling underneath, unarticulated, invisible yet most potent...

The artists, the temporary new tenants, bring with them their own customs that for the final time, overwrite the last layer of cultural reference before the building is destroyed.


Date: September 11th 2009
Time: 7pm-10pm,
Venue: 58 Shelmerdine Close, Ackroyd Drive, E3.

Nearest Station: Mile End

ADMISSION FREE

With thanks to: BOW ARTS TRUST

helen elizabeth cocker's postings

Tuesday 1st September.

Somehow it seemed appropriate to begin on the first.
Although unplanned..... as things often are, in resonance.

Strangely I start my entrance into this space from another empty space. 
A family home, occupied all year round except for these few days when its inhabiters are away on holiday.
These inhabiters have left the home which once was mine, and so it is to some extent a "return" I am part of. Here, in this lived-life house, I find the remnants of my past. Oddly disembodied from my present. 

Here I return to a time, preserved by my trace.

For now this is all, a substantial entry will appear here soon. 
This post will act as my way in - a door if you like.
Everyone needs a door into a space, especially when blinded by the walls. 
These sentences are my door, to remind me that as the day of 58 Shelmerdine Close draws nearer to me, so must I draw nearer to it.

Let me not forget then, that the personal is a space saturated within the empty. 

tanya and christian's posting


in the midst of slow motion
essence, sense and signification
are the experiences of the limit itself

the experience of being within an outside
.


An act

the stillness of the past tense of a room. emptied. the sounds are echoes. enlarged echoes even. the silence is an echo enlarged.

two figures dance in their joint solitude. swaying movement that could even be stillness. the intention.

they wear patina on their feet. the smell of wax. the smell of old. oldness. they dance slowly. circling. waxing. polishing.

the floors tiles are scuffed and broken. the floors have no value. or rather are deemed valueless. so to preserve them is a pointless act.

the sound is from somewhere within. cupboard. interior. mind. interior. the wrecking ball. the first dull deep thud cannot be undone. inevitable next. pendulum. the couple dance on...
with no power to present what in the present has no name

images and bodies of images are dissolved
control as we know, on the other hand
always finds itself

in the last instance
on the separation
between naked existences

the exception, is what the control itself
each and every time decides

naked life is put into question
...revoked

the subject that needs to be turned into the exception is always naked
there are no distinctions between strategies and situation

artificial light and nocturnal inclination
unqualified witnesses