This work is a guided tour for six at a time, both a collective but extremely personal journey around the museum. Via wireless headphones a voice takes visitors, led by performers, on an itinerary that traverses layers of physical and imaginary architecture. Through the use of multi-sensory illusions and binaural sound recordings the visitor’s attention is steered away from the visible and tangible world and diverted into a new perception of the self, time and space.
http://www.lundahl-seitl.com/
Please note: the performance involves a walk though the museum you are advised to wear comfortable shoes. You must be over 16 unless accompanied by a guardian.
Symphony of a Missing Room was originally produced and commissioned by Weld. The European touring of this project (to Gothenburg’s Dans & Teatr festival and Playground Festival – STUK, Leuven) has been supported by Birmingham Cultural Partnership as part of the International Project Partnership Program, and produced by Fierce Festival.
Date
Tuesday 22 – Sunday 27 March,
10.15 am – 3.45pm
(1 hour performance slots during museum opening hours – see booking page for details)
Limited capacity. Advanced booking essential.
Venue
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Great Charles Street entrance
Price
£12 / £9 concessions
The Irrepressibles are a 10-piece performance orchestra who create ‘art pop’ that iconoclastically collides musical styles with theatrical costumes and distinctive visuals. The band’s vocalist, Jamie McDermott, channels the spirit of iconic frontmen like Klaus Nomi. The set for the Irrepressibles’ Mirror Mirror spectacular creates kaleidoscopic stage images – reflecting the choregraphic movements of the musicians amongst a myriad of mirrors and glitterballs on stage.
In this installative sound work, James Webb presents a city with a portrait of itself, as a place of diverse religious faiths and beliefs. For Birmingham, Webb will take recordings of prayers donated by faith groups across the city – including Greek and Russian Orthodox Christianity, African Zionist, Baha’i, Wicca and Eckankar. His contemplative installation brings together separate recordings of prayers fusing voice, melody and language to weave a multi-layered sonic tapestry that subtly envelops the visitor.
Date
Tuesday 22 – Sunday 27 March,
12pm – 8pm
Venue
The Old Library, Digbeth (opposite Custard Factory)
Price
Free (no booking required)
The Soldier’s Song is a video installation developed over an 18 month period of questions and conversations. The Soldier’s Song offers an intimate screen karaoke liaison with a currently serving soldier. The piece examines our preconceptions about soldiers and asks us to consider our connection with them, inviting us to duet with an individual who might fight in our name.
A simple, quietly provocative piece that asks us whether we’re willing to remain an audience.
http://www.qtine.com/
Presented by Quarantine in association with Fierce Festival and Warwick Arts Centre. Supported by Chiltern Railways. Originally commissioned by Leeds Studio Met with support from the Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster.
Date
Tuesday 22nd – Saturday 26th March
12pm-8pm
Venue
‘The Cube’ Moor Street station
Price
Free (no booking required)
Burningham is a playful intervention on Eastside Green conceived and constructed by acclaimed French architecture collective EXYZT. The site is in the shadow of Birmingham’s abandoned Curzon Street railway station and on the route of the proposed HS2 high speed rail link. You are invited to drop in and help EXYZT in their process of ‘urban psychoanalysis’ of the city. Does Birmingham have low self-esteem? Does Birmingham have multiple personality disorder? Should Birmingham be renamed? Visit throughout the week, and join us for a public feast at dusk on Saturday 26th March.
www.exyzt.net
Commissioned and produced by Fierce Festival in partnership with Birmingham City University. Funded by Birmingham Cultural Partnership and the Working Neighbourhoods Fund. Supported by Arts Council England, Birmingham City Council, Birmingham Metropolitan College Young Apprentice Programme 14-16, Birmingham Hippodrome, Culture France, CLP Cultural Leadership Programme, CORE, Nikal, MADE and Stans Cafe @AE Harris. Timber from Arnold Laver & Co. Jigisha Patel lead producer for Fierce on EXYZT.
Date
Tuesday 22nd – Sunday 27th March 12pm – 10.30pm
Feast – dusk on Saturday 26th March
Venue
Eastside Green (New Canal Street – by abandoned Curzon Street Station)
Price
Free, feast by donation
plan b have been recording everywhere they go with GPS tracking devices since 2003. For Fierce they have begun creating a living map of Birmingham (collating donated GPS data of people’s daily movements). The artists will present the animation as it stands on that day, along with interviews from the walkers of Birmingham who have participated. In this lecture performance plan b will also reference their ongoing practice of capturing their daily journeys, text messages and moods.
www.planbperformance.net
Commissioned by Fierce Festival and mac. Supported by Arts Council’s Digital Content Development scheme. This work is in collaboration with the Mixed Reality Lab at The University of Nottingham, and is supported by Horizon Digital Economy Research through the Research Councils UK grant EP/G065802/1 and by Mixed Reality Lab.
Date
Wednesday 23 March, 7pm (1 hour duration)
Venue
mac (Hexagon Theatre)
Price
£7 / £5 concessions
Rat, Rose, Bird is a meditation on farewells, departures, long journeys and the hunt.
The hunt (possibly with a rifle gun) for a better life, a better love, a place to drop anchor or a space to claim as one’s own.
Roses are proffered.
Champagne is sipped.
The clock ticks.
Exits are made.
Sheila Ghelani makes visually rich performance work that engages with ideas surrounding hybridity, migration and love.
www.sheilaghelani.co.uk
A BAC Scratch Commission. This project is supported by Arts Council England.
Date
Wednesday 23 March, 8.30pm (1 hour duration)
Venue
mac (Foyle Studio)
Price
£9 / £6 concessions
On 5th March 2011, Eitan Buchlater created an intervention among the Birmingham City football fans on their way to the stadium to watch the Blues v West Bromich Albion. Eitan will talk about this project and how it relates to his practice in general, while showing documentation of the intervention. This intervention was co-produced with VIVID and supported by Arts Council England. Eitan Buchalter is a ‘VIVID In Association With… ‘ artist.
Date
Wednesday 23rd March 2pm
Venue
The Dirty End
Price
Free (no booking required)
In a half-cut lament for a faded fantasy, your Frontman performs a
defiant, brazen, raucous reproduction of lip syncs and all night gigs through a fog of dry-ice and furious noise.
Backed by an analogue synth and a tambourine, the frontman transmits hazy replicas of rhetoric, love and noise. She re-masters, re-works and re-releases her back catalogue with vacant gaze, drifting off into an endless reverie of b-sides and noisy echoes that could replay all night…
www.actionhero.org.uk
Frontman is commissioned by Fierce Festival and Inbetween Time Productions.
Its development was supported by Forest Fringe and Residence. Sound support by Alex Bradley. Action Hero is the collaboration of Bristol based artists Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse. They are Arnolfini Associate Artists and Chelsea Theatre Associates.
Date
Thursday 24 March, 8pm (1 hour duration)
Venue
The Rainbow Warehouse
Price
£9 / £6 concessions
Join Fierce Festival Caravan Artist Eitan Buchalter as he shares his method of developing site-specific intervention through this hour long workshop. This workshop is suitable for anyone and does not need specialized training or experience.
www.eitanbuchalter.com
Date
Thursday 24th March, 11am – 12pm
Venue
The Dirty End (VIVID) – meeting point
Price
Free (book in advance)
Fierce Festival Caravan Artists James Webb, has spent this month in Birmingham recording prayers of a multitude of faiths for his sound installation Prayer, sited in the Old Library in Digbeth. James Webb will talk about the process behind the work, how this piece relates to his general practice and how the work has differed from city to city.
Date
Thursday 24th March, 2pm
Venue
The Dirty End
Price
Free (no booking required)
South African artist, James Webb, will conduct a master class on sound as an interventionist practice. The workshop will cover historical and theoretical aspects of sound in art and focus on the practical elements of this style of work Including field recording, editing and installation). Participants will work together to create new public sound interventions around the mac and its environs.
Artists and musicians, with an interest in collaborative, site-specific and unconventional work should apply. Computer literacy is encouraged.
Date
Friday 25 – Sunday 27 March,
10am – 4pm
(whole weekend workshop)
Venue
mac
Price
£40 / £25 concessions
(limited capacity: advanced booking essential)
This performance-installation sees Dominic Johnson’s left hand tattooed by Alex Binnie, one of the world’s most highly regarded tattoo artists, and continues Johnson’s investigation into the representation and decoration of wounds, secular images of disaster, and the politics of body modification. The prrocedure is accompanied by a specially developed sound design and a spectacular trio of performers are stationed to bear witness to this event. The performance will culminate in a procession to Human Salvage, a night of spectacular and immersive club performance.
www.dominicjohnson.co.uk
Departure is a co-commission between Fierce Festival and Chelsea Theatre. Supported by QMUL and Arts Council England.
Date
Friday 25th March, 8pm (1 hour duration)
Venue
TROVE
Price
£12 / £9 concessions (the purchase of a ticket includes free entry to Human Salvage)
A night of spiky club performance in the former metal factory, AE Harris, located in the heart of the Jewellery Quarter. Expect provocative performances by a coterie of artists who straddle the worlds of live art, performance art and ‘low’ performance modes, including Dickie Beau, Lauren Barri Holstein and Leo Hedman, alongside a great bar, a roster of DJs and live music.
Fierce’s reputation for unforgettable late events is certain to continue with Human Salvage, channeling the spirit of the legendary past festival nights, like Visions of Excess.
Human Salvage is supported by Stan’s Cafe and Arts Council England
Date
Friday 25th March, 8pm – 2am
Venue
@A.E. Harris, Northwood Street
Price
£9 / £6 concessions
The Silent Walk is an aimless wondering through local space and environment.
It’s not about the singular or authorship; rather it’s an emergent congregating, conjugating, perambulation of randomly shifting navigation made together as a non verbal flock
It’s origins are from an exercise set by the former Chicago based performance group, Goat Island, it has since gone through slight changes as I’ve introduced it to groups at the beginnings of workshops or as an event in itself.
Date
Friday 25 March, 11.30am
Venue
Starting point at VIVID (The Dirty End)
Price
Free – booking necessary
In 1998 Mark Ball founded Queerfest, which later became Fierce Festival in 2000. This panel discussion brings together the founder and first artistic director of Fierce, with the director of the Live Art Development Agency Lois Keidan and a number of artists who featured in the first line-up to discuss the context in which the festival first emerged and where it might go next.
Date
Friday 25th March, 2pm
Venue
The Dirty End
Price
Free (no booking required)
Two men in the guise of 1970s sports pundits comment on daily life as though it’s a football game. Thursday they’ll be broadcasting from Broad Street (Birmingham’s equivalent of t of Leceister Square). On Saturday they’ll be resident in Selfridges, roaming the store from opening at 9am till closing at 8pm. Sections of the broadcasts can be heard in Thee Dirty End at special listening posts, or you can follow the commentaries in their entirety online.
This project is supported by Selfridges and Broad Street Business Improvement District
Date
Thursday 24th March, 6pm – 6am
Saturday 26th March, 8am – 9pm
Venue
The Dirty End and online ( www.thisistomorrow.info / www.rhubarbradio.com/stanscafe.html )
Price
Free (no booking required)
Turn on, tune in and something else.
Kim Noble, art-comic provocateur, brings his own TV channel to Birmingham and the rest of the planet.*
Streaming live from a studio throughout the final weekend of the festival. Watch stuff that might be absolutely incredible.**
* (excluding parts of China and Rotherham)
** (it might not be incredible)
www.mrkimnoble.com
Date
Friday 25th – Sunday 27th March
The Dirty End streaming at 9pm each night (45 minutes duration, 15 mins Saturday 26 March)
Venue
The Dirty End (or online www.mrkimnoble.com / www.wearefierce.org / www.flatpackfestival.co.uk)
Kim’s TVstudio in Zellig
Price
Free (no booking required)
“There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hallway.” wrote man of letters Cyril Connolly in his book Enemies of Promise (1938). This provocative statement is refuted by many of the artists in the festival who have young children. Join us and Fierce artists for a discussion about how children inspire and affect your artistic productivity and work.
Date
Saturday 26th March, 1pm
Venue
The Dirty End
Price
Free (no booking required)
From the duo who brought you Bone Dinner, Companis – purveyors of bad taste and rule bending – present an eating experience to remember at the Dirty End.
Spit or Swallow? is a rolling, durational brunch fit for a queen, in the form of a large-scale Flemish still life. While you help us to demolish this banquet, you can celebrate the imminent demise of this year’s Fierce and Flatpack and chew over the best and worst bits of the week in typically interactive Companis fashion.
