A special event organised by Generative Constraints, in association with the Practice-Based Research Programme and the Department of Drama, Theatre, and Dance’s ‘Breaking Waves Seminar Series’ at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Featuring: Libby Worth & Julie Brixey-Williams, Aimée Lê, Nadira Wallace, and Generative Constraints.
5-7.30pm, 22nd November 2017
Studio 2, Caryl Churchill Theatre, Royal Holloway, Egham
Studio 2, Caryl Churchill Theatre, Royal Holloway, Egham
(This event is open to all, free to attend, and booking is not necessary.)
This event brings together researchers and practitioners who wish to share ideas relating to the problems particular to working in groups: the challenges of collaboration, the disagreements and community-led conflict resolutions, the difficulties with acting professionally, and the desires to keep working together, despite it all.
What are the strategies that art, science, politics, and theory might offer each other for navigating - possibly circumventing - the demise of relationships? If the working relationship breaks down, could the end of the group be considered a constitutive aspect of that group? These are questions about institutions as much as they are about interdependence on personal and planetary scales.
In response to the ecstatic energy of contemporary power to maintain a sense of constantly deepening crises, this event seeks to imagine a position where the discourse of crisis is overcome by an incorporation of difficulty into a different world. This confrontation with difficulty, neither positive nor negative, would circumnavigate pressing trends that avoid what is most important by pretending it does not exist, and worse, inventing new problems that prevent whatever group might still exist from being able to problem-solve. A way forward might be to consider, in a new group of people put together for this event, new perspectives on how division and dissolution, perhaps even non-alignment, might build solidarity.
Programme
Libby Worth and Julie Brixey-Williams will present their recent film made with filmmaker Bucy McDonald, Passing Between Folds (2017). They will talk about their collaborative relationship and the challenges of working across the disciplines of dance, sculpture and, more recently, film.
Aimée Lê will present ‘A Left Critique of the Männerbund’, a performance of critical reflections on neofascist theories of group formation and dissolution, introducing them as problems for the left: problems of cultural difference, of the need for structure in order to coordinate effectively, and of the potential negative impacts of sexual relationships and sexual violence upon organising.
Nadira Wallace will present Defeated, Sea-wandering City-State & the Epic Poem, on attempting to write an epic poem using Virgil's Aeneid as a launch-pad and framing-device.
Generative Constraints will present Break Up Variations, a work-in-progress performance of collaborative experiments. This performance considers the possibility that an end to a dream of symbiotic life is exactly what makes that dream possible and important.
The event will include a wine reception and culminate in a group discussion about the work that has been presented, with a hope to develop new strands of research and practice.
Biographies
Libby Worth is Reader in the Department of Drama, Theatre and Dance at Royal Holloway.
Julie Brixley-Williams is a member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors and has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, with pieces in public and private collections. Alongside her collaborative relationship with Libby Worth, she is also a founder member of the collective point and place.
Aimée Lê is a PhD candidate in English at Royal Holloway.
Nadira Wallace is PhD candidate in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway.
Generative Constraints is a group of practice-based researchers: Diana Damian, Kate Potts, Nisha Ramayya, Nik Wakefield, and Eley Williams.
