erms? extravaganza
Interdisciplinary Zoom Festival
30th APRIL & 7th MAY 2021
CREDITS
Curators: Tasha Hess-Neustadt and Rebecca Douglass.
Participating Artists:
APRIL 30th: Titilayo Adebayo, Lauryn Lamb, Jess Child, Breeanne Saxton, Synne Lundesgaard, Laura Ahumada García & Thea Kallhed Möller, Ioana Onofrei, Jake Burgess (aka DJ DEATH SENTENCE).
MAY 7th: Abi Lewis, Lisa Chaerles, Sam Dodgshon (Stolen Table Collective), Zak Harry, Anouk Jouanne, Emma Langstrump, Lily T Wells, Andrea Abrami.
____________
This was an unfunded initiative. Each artist was offered a portion of donations gathered via the platform Ko-Fi.
To the disgruntled creators questioning life. To those who are still making, and those who are craving a space to share. To those that need feedback in an age of digital fatigue, when the digital is still all we have. To those who need something to break up their evenings of streaming, screaming, or feverishly dreaming.
For these aforementioned creatives, Tasha and I organised and curated an interdisciplinary interactive international (interscholastic, interphalangeal, interstellar...) online festival!! ‘erms? extravaganza’ was a cyber-sharing, squeezing out what is left of virtual video communications.
Within this festival, we premiered our immersive performance film ‘erms?’. Whilst we did not propose an overarching theme, we encouraged the submission of work that drew some parallels with the concepts we explored in our film; existentialism, trying to answer some of life’s big questions, the digital, absurdity or the obsession with one specific colour. Or maybe just wanting to make something with someone else for no reason other than simply wanting to.
Instead of being a static moment of showing and watching, we aspired for this platform to be a moment of interaction, participation and all-round collectivity. Along with sharing art, we encouraged each creator to offer a suggestion of how the audience can engage with their art, before, during or after. We hoped that this format would allow emerging artists to gather feedback and ideas to expand their art beyond its embryonic state.
For these aforementioned creatives, Tasha and I organised and curated an interdisciplinary interactive international (interscholastic, interphalangeal, interstellar...) online festival!! ‘erms? extravaganza’ was a cyber-sharing, squeezing out what is left of virtual video communications.
Within this festival, we premiered our immersive performance film ‘erms?’. Whilst we did not propose an overarching theme, we encouraged the submission of work that drew some parallels with the concepts we explored in our film; existentialism, trying to answer some of life’s big questions, the digital, absurdity or the obsession with one specific colour. Or maybe just wanting to make something with someone else for no reason other than simply wanting to.
Instead of being a static moment of showing and watching, we aspired for this platform to be a moment of interaction, participation and all-round collectivity. Along with sharing art, we encouraged each creator to offer a suggestion of how the audience can engage with their art, before, during or after. We hoped that this format would allow emerging artists to gather feedback and ideas to expand their art beyond its embryonic state.
The festival took place over two consecutive Friday evenings, each with its own unique, interdisciplinary programme of creatives. In the planning and presenting of ‘erms? extravaganza’, Tasha and I still found ourselves seperated, one in Berlin and the other in London, with very little having changed since the creation of our film.
Further stretching our digital limbs, we surrended to the social cyberspace to find participants, with the real world very much still closed due to COVID. The power of the web allowed our outreach to span a lot further than our immediate dance circle. Within days we had submissions from illustrators, comedians, photographers and filmmakers. DMs between folk we had never met, and quite possibly may never meet, became an intuitive part of the curatorial process. Whilst there was no physical room for us to all gather and gabble in excitement for a collaborative event, the sense of an urge to share was (digitally) palpable.
With limitations comes a new found freedom. This for ‘erms? extravaganza’, was the ability to connect artists on a global level. No longer were we limited to the creatives with whom we share a building/school/city/country. Instead, as our programme began to build up, the festival began to stretch across continents, with artists from the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Slovakia and Mexico. This is without mentioning from which corners of the world our audience tuned in from. Seeing boxes with heads pop into the screen on the first evening was like lighting up some artist fueled light across the world.
Desperate to prevent this festival from being indistinguishable from an evening in front of the television, each artist has theorised a way to pull the audience into their work. This participation ranged from guided meditation, improvisation and dance, to open discussions and written feedback- we even contructed a collective drawing after being inspired by the work of illustrator Abi Lewis. In the end, though we missed our face-to-face sharings so severely, there was no reason not to craft and code a digital version of this. Now onto the next great ‘erms?’ adventure...
READ MORE ABOUT THE WIDER PROJECT ERMS? HERE ︎︎︎
