23 May 2012
Opportunity for three postgraduate/emerging artist participants
Lin Hixon and Matthew Goulish (formerly Goat Island) seek three participants for a month-long development workshop in Bristol. Participants will have the opportunity to work directly with these internationally regarded artists as they develop a piece of work for their new company Every house has a door. This new work is being developed as part of Performing Documents, a major collaborative research project looking at Live Art and its documents. The development workshop will take place between 20 August – 14 September, and the results will be performed as part of a day-long symposium at Arnolfini. The following opportunities are available:
• 1 assistant to the director Lin Hixson: to keep notes on the performance as it develops, support performer needs in rehearsal, and assist with research.
• 2 choreographed stagehands: non-speaking performing roles, changing the arrangement of objects, chairs, etc. between the segments of the performance.
All three will need to be present at all rehearsals. There is a bursary of £300 for each participant, to support your involvement.
TO APPLY
Please send a CV and covering letter (no longer than one sheet of A4) to performing-docs@bristol.ac.uk. Outline your relevant background, and interest in taking part. Deadline for applications is 15 June, 2012. Successful applicants will be informed by early July.
ABOUT EVERY HOUSE HAS A DOOR
Every house has a door is Lin Hixson (director) and Matthew Goulish (dramaturg). After a twenty-year collaboration as co-founders of Goat Island, they have formed Every house has a door to create project-specific collaborative performances with invited guests. This company seeks to retain Goat Island’s narrow thematic focus and rigorous presentation, but to broaden the canvas to include careful intercultural collaboration, and its unfamiliar, even awkward, spectrum. Let us think of these things always. Let us speak of them never. a bilingual performance collaboration between U.S. and Croatian artists, premiered in Rijeka, Croatia in 2010, and has been performed at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the Fusebox Festival in Austin Texas, and New York’s COIL Festival at Performance Space 122. The dance performance They’re Mending the Great Forest Highway was commissioned by the Chicago Dancemakers’ Forum and will premier in Chicago in late 2012. Every house has also presented collaborative lectures, taught workshops, and co-produced the film Waking Things (2011) by Melika Bass. The company has received support from The Fund for Mutual Understanding, the National Performance Network’s Commissioning and Forth Fund, and The Driehaus Foundation. Goulish and Hixson shared the United States Artists Ziporyn Fellowship in 2009, and received honorary doctorates from Dartington College of Arts 2007.
ABOUT PERFORMING DOCUMENTS
Performing Documents is a major collaborative research project which asks how we are dealing with the remains of Live Art today. Drawing on creative, curatorial and research strategies, this project stages a wide-reaching investigation into the problems and potential of performance and its documents. What are the stories performance tells about itself, and what can these tell us about its wider cultural context? How can performance remain a source for critical intervention while many of its practitioners are increasingly embraced by established institutions, and how can performance theorists resist notions of definitive histories and final words? How can new generations of artists draw on the marks and traces that earlier works have left behind?
Performing Documents is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and hosted by University of Bristol, in partnership with Arnolfini and In Between Time.