challenge to maintain this could be a very positive thing, both for the Biennial and for the city. With 29 events taking place over ten days, this year’s programme was busy. There was a noticeable emphasis on event-based work, be that performance proper, or exhibitions animated through discussions and workshops. This, combined with the fact that so many of the featured artists were international, lent the festival the quality of an active takeover, a temporary intervention into the city. Complementary to this, the use of such a wide variety of venues (public toilets and private houses amongst them) allowed those of us who’ve lived in Bristol for years the opportunity to feel like we were discovering it anew. Crossing the Line, at police station-turnedcommunity art space The Island, was the culmination of an opening programme of events, co-curated with the International Performance Association. This combined durational with timetabled live art pieces and, as is often the case with these sorts of events, I struggled to find a rhythm to properly engage with the work shown, unsure when I needed to be in another part of the building and unable to see through the crowd that congregated around whatever was claiming the most audience attention at the time. Nevertheless, there were plenty of sustaining moments through the evening: my glimpse of Diana Dieva folding small origami sculptures of birds in a former prison cell, with its metal toilet bowl directly behind her in my eye line,
the images of freedom and incarceration searing against one another; the rubbery casts pulled by Bean from the inside of her mouth, left to congeal around sticks and looking so much like lilies; or the amusingly silly Desert Island Deaths by Jonathan Rogerson, who, swathed in flowing black, collapsed, again and again, to the accompaniment of lovelorn pop songs. The Church of St Thomas the Martyr hosted Nanna Lysholt Hansen’s video installation Temporary Sculptures for Beijing Apartments. Six or so television monitors each screened footage of the artist posing nude in the manner of a classical sculpture inside different domestic spaces in Beijing. Each film, through Hansen’s occupation, gave a unique access point to private life in a radically different culture from our own. And occupations they are – referencing beauty, yet invasive, static and melancholy, almost malingering. In the midst of the chaos of a one-room flat, apparently home to ten female art students, Lysholt’s hosts go about their tasks around her; passing quiet, knowing comment and failing to appear unembarrassed, or seemingly completely ignoring her. Quite apart from the fascination of voyeurism (me watching them trying not to watch her), there was much to reflect on here around the impact of looking – visual presence disrupted by broken social norms, or the global reach of Western, historical visual culture – and the installation’s position, right in front of the ostentatious 18th century altarpieces which St Thomas’ is famed for, added another rich layer for consideration.
Holly Corfield-Carr’s MINE took place in the extraordinary shell and crystal-filled grotto, dug 300 years ago, beneath the gardens of Goldney Hall in Clifton. Her piece was intimately, lovingly site-responsive, produced from several months studying the space. Spoken-word, undertaken for only six audience members at a time (we were inveigled to read ourselves at points), and a narrative as intricate as the arrangement of minerals on the grotto walls, explored the interface of geology and human time, dropping in many arcane points from Bristol mythology. Set against the potential overload of the space, and the detail of her text, Carr’s performance style was informal and inviting – I almost felt like I shouldn’t look her in the eye, in case we both started giggling. Ded. Reckoning by the Dowsing for Water collective took the form of an open studio/ laboratory, the artists undertaking various water-referencing projects according to a process, and for an intended form of audience-engagement, which remained cloudy to this visitor. Similarly fluvial, Eve Mosher’s High Water Line was amongst the most visible pieces in the biennial, in which groups from across the city were invited to use a sports-pitch marker to draw the boundaries of local flood zones. The result was what looked like possible plans for alternative methods of traversing the city, counter to current streets and pavements, or reorganisations of territory – which of course, as indication of potential outcomes of
p58 NoFit State at Green Man Festival 2014, (a ten second performance), Ric Bower for CCQ p59 High Shoes, Zejing Liu, 2014; photo: Roser Diaz p60 Forest of Fallen Trees, Bjørn Erik Haugen; photo: Stephanie Elizabeth Third
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