From the fringes of artistic performance to the fore, York’s leading performance art collective invite you to an immersive experience at York Medical Society.
A SLAP Odyssey is a multi-sensory voyage into the unknown. Enter with an open mind as you explore and interact with the artwork formed for the SLAPover creative laboratory – an intensive week-long residency for collaboration, developing and devising new performances in partnership, that took place during summer 2018. Aaron Howell, Ali Matthews, Fran Bundey, Minyung Im and Roderick Morgan, along with SLAP’s Sophie Unwin and Lydia Cottrell, will guide you through their alternative visions for tomorrow taking in experimental performance, live art, installation and sound.
The evening will also include a specially-commissioned interactive theatre gaming experience by Closed Forum, probing the intersection of dreams, games, reality and anxiety.
A SLAP Odyssey is supported using public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England. With further support from York Mediale and York St John University.
The Artists
Aaron Howell - Interlude
Experience the ethereal and disjointed landscapes created by live VJ animation. Exploring concepts of presence, evolution and memory, you will be exposed to a fragmented vision of the body moving through time. Choose to listen to the audio in the installation space or through the headphones as the visuals respond to the rhythms and soundscapes. The drawn animation itself is inspired by contrasts between the digital age and primal physicality’s of movement, intimacy and expression.
Ali Matthews - Litany of Lasts (Auction Chant)
Litany of Lasts (Auction Chant)is an interactive performance in the form of an estate sale; the future has been cancelled until the past has been auctioned off first. Audience members will put on headphones, be provided with bid paddles and preview the bid list on display before the auctioneer begins her chant – after that, (fake) money talks.
* Please note that the performer will be outside the bay windows of the lecture room and you will interact with her through the windows. Audience members wishing to take part in the auction should position themselves by the windows with headphones at the appointed time if they wish to participate or merely watch the auction. Watching is okay too.
Fran Bundey
Hi there, I am your DJ for this special night, I’m going to take care of you. I am here to help you let go of those tunes that are plaguing you, the ones you can’t help but return to. Let go of this stagnant and tired music and you will feel a weight lifted from your shoulders. You will be cleansed.
What do you want to hear one last time? What songs do you want to say goodbye to? Just make a request to me and I’ll stick it on for you. If you want to say some special words about the song just let me know, or I can pass on the message for you. Whatever you feel most comfortable with.
Soon we will be unstuck.
Minyung Im - Ghost Tour
York can feel like a museum-city, surrounded by medieval walls, riddled with historic snickleways and the towering minster standing at the centre of it all. The streets are clean and ready for tourists, filled with hotels, airbnbs, souvenir shops, and chain restaurants. Most of the late twentieth-century architecture has been erased or sanitised so as to not disrupt the ambience of the ancient architecture. The homeless have been cleared from the city centre.
During the SLAPover residency, I filmed a performance called “Ghost Tour”. Rolling a shopping trolley overspilling with loose toilet rolls through the busy city centre, I felt like an alien carrying this unglamorous, practical load through town. But why? Why should York only be about the past? Why must the realities of the present be hidden? Does history stop now?
Roderick Morgan - Tāctus
When we recycle the past to imagine the future the two become undisguisable. Here the past, the present and the future collapse down into a single moment of touch in this interactive digital installation and durational performance piece. Nine chapters, each expressed through a combination of sound, visuals and intimate performance, deconstructs the character of York and its place in the modern world. The installation is activated when someone makes contact with the performer and the exchange between the performer, the participant and the wider audience combines to construct the meaning of the work.
Closed Forum
The evening also included a specially-commissioned interactive theatre gaming experience by Closed Forum, probing the intersection of dreams, games, reality and anxiety.
The Dispensary
Have you been feeling a little absinthe minded recently? Are you thinking about renewing your gin membership? Is your relationship with whiskey on the rocks? Or does beer cure what ales you?
The Dispensary is the bar of the future. Pull up a stool, settle in and let us assess your needs. You choose your poison, we’ll check your blood pressure and serve up your recommended daily unit intake.
Share your feelings don’t drink your feelings.
It’s worth a shot... To health!