Social Media Performance

Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s May amnesia never kiss us on the mouth (2020– ) examines how communities bear witness to experiences of violence, loss, displacement, and forced migration through performance. Since the early 2010s, Abbas and Abou-Rahme have collected online recordings of everyday people singing and dancing in communal spaces in Iraq, Palestine, and Syria. This work brings these recordings together with new performances conceived by the artists with a dancer, and a group of musicians in Palestine.

Virtual reality dance in the Gallery

How can dance interpret and respond to our paintings and architecture?

How can movement animate our space and art and help us see both in new ways?

How can we share the experience of watching a live dance performance in the Gallery with people who live far away?

Fifty years after man first landed on the Moon, Laurie Anderson is flying us all there at MIF19 with To the Moon. Developed with fellow artist Hsin-Chien Huang and presented in the Royal Exchange Theatre’s intimate Studio, To the Moon is a work in two parts: a dreamlike VR experience that takes us on our own lunar exploration, and an accompanying installation with film, images and music.

Immerse yourself in a dark and shadowy world, and let your whole self be moved as you choose your own viewpoint and flow within the dance. Experiment with the dancers as they explore new pathways within Virtual Realities – fall, rise, turn, and fly with us into the stars. 

Watching dance is often a passive experience with one fixed point of view. We set about creating an immersive and visceral experience, allowing the audience to explore dance from all viewpoints, creating their own flow within the choreography.

Rising (2018) | Virtual Reality

Marina Abramović’s Rising (2018) addresses the effects of climate change by transporting viewers to witness rising sea levels.

Wearing an immersive headset, viewers enter an intimate virtual space, where they come face-to-face with the artist, who beckons from within a glass tank that is slowly filling with water from her waist to her neck.

ALL STORIES BEGIN IN OUR ENDINGS. WE INVENT THEM BECAUSE WE DIE

To Be a Machine, Mark O’Connell

An early iteration of a future project, To Be a Machine (Version 1.0) is an adaptation of the Wellcome prize-winning book by Mark O’Connell: an exploration of Transhumanism, a movement whose aim is to use technology to fundamentally change the human condition, to improve our bodies and minds to the point where we become something other, and better, than the animals we are.