Fierce Festival 2015 brochure

Fierce Festival 2015 October 7–11

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Fierce Festival Programme Schedule Wednesday 7 October

Venue

Times

Chris Goode, Weaklings

Warwicks Art Centre

8pm

Thursday 8 October

Venue

Times

Opening Night

BOM

6 – 8pm

Neil Callaghan & Simone Kenyon, Permuations in the City

around the city

11am – 5pm

One Five West, Code and Carpentry

BOM

6 – 8pm

Demi Nandhra, Contemporary Other magazine launch

BOM

6 – 8pm

Chris Goode, Weaklings

Warwick Arts Centre

8pm

Emily Mulenga, Orange Bikini

BOM

6 – 8pm

Selina Thompson, Race Cards

BOM

6 – 8pm

Friday 9 October

Venue

Times

One Five West, Code and Carpentry

BOM

10am – 9.30pm

Emily Mulenga, Orange Bikini

BOM

10am – 9pm

Selina Thompson, Race Cards

BOM

10am – 9.30pm

Neil Callaghan & Simone Kenyon, Permuations in the City

around the city

11am – 5pm

Katherine Araniello, The Dinner Party Revisited

BOM

6pm

Simone Aughterlony, Antonija Livingstone & Hahn Rowe, Supernatural

DanceXchange

8pm

Ria Jade Hartley, Spit Kit

BOM

12 – 3pm & 4 – 7pm

Club Fierce, Anklepants & Chromatouch

BOM

Doors open at 9pm

Rosalie Schweiker & Maria Guggenbichler, Sleep with a Curator

Eastside Projects

Overnight, access closes at 11pm

Saturday 10 October

Venue

Times

One Five West, Code and Carpentry

BOM

10am – 8pm

Emily Mulenga, Orange Bikini

BOM

10am – 8pm

Selina Thompson, Race Cards

BOM

10am – 8pm

Children & Live Art – discussion

macBirmingham

11am – 12:30pm

Neil Callaghan & Simone Kenyon, Permuations in the City

around the city

11am – 5pm

Ria Jade Hartley, Spit Kit

BOM

12 – 3pm & 4 – 7pm

Kate McIntosh, All Ears

macBirmingham

1.30pm

PME-ART, Listening Party

Cow

3:30 – 5pm

Livingstone/Lacey/Pétrin/Thompson, Culture Administration & Trembling

Lakeside Gallery

5:30 & 6:30pm

Ursula Martinez, Free Admission

The Mockingbird Theatre

8pm

Club Fierce, Gazelle Twin, Miguel Gutierrez (Deep Aerobics) & Sarah Farina

The Old Print Works

Doors open at 9pm

Sunday 11 October

Venue

Times

Neil Callaghan & Simone Kenyon, Permuations in the City

around the city

11am – 1pm

Season Butler, Happiness Forgets

The Drum

1.30 – 2.30pm

Emily Mulenga, Orange Bikini

BOM

2 – 9pm

One Five West, Code and Carpentry

BOM

2 – 9pm

Selina Thompson, Race Cards

BOM

2 – 9pm

Fernando Belfiore, AL13FB<3

The Drum

3 – 4pm

PME-ART, The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information

The Drum

4.30 – 7.30pm

Davis Freeman, Karaoke (ART)

BOM

9 – 11.00pm

Boy with Wings, Queezone 3000 Launch

BOM

10.30pm – late

Tim Etchells, Will Be: Moseley Road Baths. Installed till 16th Oct. Open everyday all hours.

Fierce Festival This is our fifth and final Fierce Festival.

Our time here has been a chapter of dynamic change and learning.

When we arrived as Joint Artistic Directors in November 2009 there was a question in the air – was there an essence to Fierce that could live on beyond Mark Ball, the founding director of the festival?

We like to think there was – and having contributed over half a decade to exploring that essence we are excited to see what the Fierce future holds.

Connections We have made myriad connections in the city, across the UK and all over the world.

We have grown a brilliant new board of Trustees, who will appoint a new director by the end of this year. We are confident that our new Co-Chairs, Eileen Evans & Sam Trotman (supported by the rest of the board) will recruit successors that build on our work whilst bringing fresh ideas and energy.

In our time in Birmingham, we have sought to continue and expand on the legacy of Fierce Festival. We invited artists who have previously presented in Fierce to return with new works, such as Ron Athey Gifts of The Spirit (2012), Franko B Because of Love (2013), Mammalian Diving Reflex Eat the Street (2014) and Ursula Martinez Free Admission (2015).

Global Perspective We have produced art works in the public realm that marked people’s memories although their physical presence was fleeting.

We have kept a firmly global perspective,

inviting artists from all over the world and cross-pollinating their work with local artists in our programme. We have loved working across the city, staging performances in unique buildings – from the Brutalist Central Library to a former metal factory or a deconsecrated Cathedral. Birmingham is a place with a layered architectural history and a lot of idiosyncrasy – it fires the curatorial imagination.

West Midlands roots It has been important to nourish and be nourished by the festival’s West Midlands roots. This year five emerging artists from the West Midlands realise works within the festival: Emily Mulenga, Demi Nandhra, One Five West (Anna Horton Cremin & Sophie Bullock) and Selina Thompson.

We supported these artists last year through our local artist development scheme Fierce FWD, a scheme made possible with funding from Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Arts Council England. We are also working with The Drum (an arts centre in Aston) for the first time in our tenure, presenting three UK premiere performances: Season Butler Happiness Forgets, PME-ART The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information and Fernando Belfiore AL13FB<3.

Partnership We have enjoyed working in partnership with other local organisations this year.

We were proud to participate in Digbeth First Fridays, a monthly late-night programme of activity in Eastside on Friday 3 July 2015. We invited CHRISTEENE – “ a gender bending, booty pounding perversion of punk dragged through the musical theatre gutter” from Austin, Texas.

The night was a loud and filthy gig at the

performance project space, Home For Waifs & Strays. It was a potent moment, not least because the space as we knew it closed soon afterwards – converted into a commercial unit due to pressures from the landlord.

Collaboration In September we collaborated with the Friends of Moseley Road Baths, on a weekend programme called SLIP, which involved West Midlands artists showing performance, installation, film and sound art in the women’s slipper baths – a heritage space usually closed to the public. As part of Birmingham Weekender on Friday 25 and Saturday 26 September, we staged Still House Of Riders & Running Horses – a frenetic dance gathering choreographed for forgotten urban spaces – on the roof of a car park overlooking the city.

Heterogeneity and difference Threading through all our curatorial choices is an embrace of heterogeneity and difference.

This is manifest through the diversity of voices that make up the programme as well as the team of producers, production staff, marketeers and volunteers that realise the festival.

Within the range of what we present and produce we like to return to the question of ‘what is the difference between making political work and working politically’?

The libidinal and carnivalesque spirit of Fierce: the outrageous parties, the celebratory comings together have always been more than communal enjoyment – they are propositions of a more utopic way of being together.

Laura McDermott & Harun Morrison Autumn 2015

Live Art This includes performance art, theatre, dance, music, installation, public intervention, digital and interactive practices.

Collision Fierce believes a good festival should celebrate collision – of artforms; of artworks and contexts; of ideas in salons, debates, workshops and talks and of strangers in late night parties...

Hyperlocal Artists from across the globe showing work in Birmingham, developed in Birmingham.

Performances sited in locations that re-imagine the city; in car parks, legendary clubs, the Brutalist Central Library and @AE Harris (a venue in an old metal factory), alongside established art centres like IKON, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Symphony Hall, Birmingham Repertory Theatre and macBirmingham.

Supernow adj. [soo’per nou] 1. an intense sense of presence or awareness in a moment 2. an emergent or contemporaneous form 3. an attitude provoking new ways of seeing, being, feeling and thinking

Fierce Trailblazers

Festival Hub

Christeene

Photo: Inès Elsa Dalal

Photo: Pete Ashton

DATE

THURSDAY 8 OCTOBER, 6 – 8PM FRIDAY 9 OCTOBER, 10AM – MIDNIGHT SATURDAY 10 OCTOBER, 10AM – 8PM SUNDAY 11 OCTOBER, 2PM – MIDNIGHT VENUE

BOM (BIRMINGHAM OPEN MEDIA)

Christeene performing at Home For Waifs & Strays, Minerva Works, Digbeth, Friday 3 July 2015.

SLIP

Join us at BOM a new creative, collaborative workspace for art, technology and science.

Photo: Sorina Reiber

The hub is a space you can grab coffee or beer, a map, brochure and get general info about the festival. There will also be a program of film, an installation

by One Five West and the launch of the second edition of contemporary culture magazine Contemporary Other.

Live music events include Club Fierce: Anklepants & Chromatouch and our closing festival events, Karaoke (Art).

SLIP, a programme of video, soundwork and live performance at Moseley Road Baths, organised with Friends of Moseley Road Baths. Friday 11 and Saturday 12 September 2015. Featuring Alek Wojtulewicz, Annie Mahtani, Emily Warner, Sarah Farmer, Sheila Ghelani, Sophie Bullock, Kino 10 and Harminder Judge & Sorina Reiber (pictured).

Supported by Arts Council England.

Fierce Talks

The Dinner Party Revisited Katherine Araniello (London)

Children & Live Art

Photo: Katja Ogrin

Fierce Screening

DATE

FRIDAY 9 OCTOBER, 6PM (1HR 15MINS) PRICE

FREE VENUE

BOM

An exposé of control, awkwardness and mishap sets the scene for a three course live art dinner party. The nightmare guests are stuck in their boxes, the inebriated staff are losing the plot, the Chihuahuas are live, and the host wants the dinner party to play out to the end.

The film is subtitled, with audio description.

The audio description brings a new dynamic to the film, creating another filter through which to experience the performance while playing with the concept of accessibility.

Supported by Unlimited celebrating the work of disabled artists, using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

www.araniello-art.com

DATE

SATURDAY 10 OCTOBER, 11AM – 12.30PM PRICE

FREE VENUE

MAC BIRMINGHAM

In collaboration with Live Art UK; Fierce Festival have convened a panel discussion of artists, programmers and young people exploring the potential of live art in relation to children. The panel will reflect on previous Fierce Festival projects created in collaboration with young people – Sound Like Catastrophes with Eva Meyer Keller and Car Deconstructions with Dina Roncˇ evic´ .

German artist Eva Meyer Keller will return to Birmingham to speak on this panel, which also marks the launch of the Fierce Girls commission process. In this project a group of local girls from Birmingham will lead the commissioning process of a new piece of participatory performance – from setting the brief, managing the international callout and interviewing shortlisted candidates.

Supported by Live Art UK (a national network of promoters which supports and develops the Live Art infrastructure for the benefit of artists and audiences) and the Goethe-Institut London

Photo: Paul Blakemore

Of Riders and Running Horses Still House (Bristol) DATE

FRIDAY 25 & SATURDAY 26 SEPTEMBER, 6.30PM (1HR) PRICE

£5 VENUE

NCP CAR PARK, NEWHALL STREET

“We find a space in the margins of the city in which to gather: to start an ad-hoc ceremony, to stamp our feet and shake our limbs, to dance in the face of an ending.”

Of Riders and Running Horses is a stirring and visceral new dance event by Still House created as a communal animation of urban spaces. Five female dancers and a live band conjure a new kind of old dance, an insistent rhythm, a joyful step into what it means to move together.

Still House’s desire to energise a forgotten piece of landscape (brownfield sites and car park roofs) felt like a perfect connection to Birmingham. This performance will take place on the top floor of a Birmingham car park with sweeping views across the city.

Produced by MAYK. Co-presented with mac Birmingham as part of Birmingham Weekender. Directed by Dan Canham with associate director Laura Dannequin.

Created by the company with live music by Luke Harney and Sam Halmarack.

www.stillhouse.co.uk

Fierce Thoughts…

Dan has been researching folk culture for years. His question “what would a modern-day folk dance look like?” inspired this work. Dan and the company of dancers have conjured a totally unique, glitchy movement vocabulary from a mashed-up blend of Youtube videos and different forms of street dance.

– Laura McDermott

Photo: Richard Davenport

Weaklings Chris Goode & Company (London) DATE

WEDNESDAY 7 & THURSDAY 8 OCTOBER, 8PM (1 HR 20 MINS) PRICE

£13 (£11), UNDER 26 £10 VENUE

WARWICK ARTS CENTRE

At a website dedicated to the work of a cult novelist and his personal obsessions, fans gather to interact with their hero – and each other.

In this delirious space where identity is slippery and ideas are everything, an anarchic virtual community of queer punks and lonely teens, paranoid artists and wannabe slaves, forms and endlessly re-forms, until it’s hard to know what’s scarier: that a lot of what happens here isn’t really real – or that some of it is.

Inspired by and loosely based on the notorious blog of writer and artist Dennis Cooper, Weaklings disorientingly blurs fiction and documentary, fact and fantasy, to create a compelling portrait of people on the edge, finding a strange refuge together in dangerous times.

Featuring a specially composed soundtrack by Scanner, Weaklings brings together a remarkable cast, including Karen Christopher (ex-Goat Island) and Christopher Brett Bailey (This Is How We Die) as well as two members of Chris Goode’s ‘avant-garde performance boyband’ Ponyboy Curtis.

Produced by Chris Goode and Company. Triggered@ and co-produced

by Warwick Arts Centre. Co-commissioned by Theatre in the Mill.

Supported by Arts Council England.

chrisgoodeandcompany.co.uk

Fierce Thoughts…

Weaklings probes the ethics of community – the permission, care and support that we grant each other. Using an internet-based community as its source material, it asks us searching questions about our disembodied relationships and our behaviour online.

– Laura McDermott

Photo: Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez Muelle

Contemporary Other Magazine Launch Edited by Demi Nandhra (Birmingham) DATE

THURSDAY 8 OCTOBER, 6 – 8PM PRICE

FREE VENUE

BOM

Issue #2 ‘Feminism is’ CONTEMPORARY OTHER Issue #2 explores what feminism is in 2015, what it looks like and whom it serves.

‘If your feminism is only for cis women is your feminism invalid?’

1. Contemporary Other was formed out the desire to dedicate a sole publication to the modern marginalised identity. To deny the standardisations of our cultural and artistic diet and give precedence to diversity of thought.

2. CO is a limited biannually printed publication – A celebration of alienated voices, artists, thinkers and activists. We stand in solidarity with these voices and acknowledge their contribution/necessity to the fields of art, performance, politics and culture.

3. CO is interested in building a platform for the documentation and discussion of subjectivity for the modern ‘other’s’ experience. As the idea of the ‘other’ and ‘otherness’ is pivotal to sociological analysis of how majority and minority identities are constructed in society. Contemporary Other therefore is interested in the dismissal of the majority and favouring the other.

Demi Nandhra was a Fierce FWD 14 artist. Fierce FWD is a scheme that supports emerging artists from or based in the West Midlands.

Supported and co-commissioned by Fierce FWD. Supported by John Feeney Charitable Trust.

www.contemporaryother.com

Fierce Thoughts…

Since we got to know Demi through our Fierce FWD artist development scheme, we have been watching her force grow. Demi is brave and she is building a movement with her team at Contemporary Other.

The magazine is a beautifully produced biannual edition featuring critical and creative writing examining ‘Otherness’ in the 21st Century. We are proud to host the launch of issue #2 on feminisms at Fierce 2015.

– Laura McDermott

Photo: Bios

SPIT KIT Ria Jade Hartley (Bristol) DATE

FRIDAY 9 OCTOBER, 12 – 3PM & 4 – 7PM, SATURDAY 10 OCTOBER, 12 – 3PM & 4 – 7PM (15MINS) PRICE

£5 VENUE

BOM

SPIT KIT: An invitation to salivate, talk about identity markers and consider what we might know and think about our ancestry via the medium of spit.

What is your national identity? Your cultural identity?

Your ethnicity? Race? …Do these questions make you feel uncomfortable? Yes? No? Prefer not to say?

Other? (Please specify) Last year, I took a DNA test to see what I might discover about my identity through tracing unknown ancestry.

If you were to take one, what do you think it would reveal or confirm?

Your saliva contains genetic code, within it clues to centuries of human migration – perhaps a more reliable source than aural family histories or your physical appearance. We are regularly asked to affirm our identity, but what do we really know? Who is it for and why is it so important to be classified?

In this one-to-one performance, enter a lab for a DIY DNA test. You will be asked to donate some saliva.

Untested, it will become part of a collection, displayed alongside your self-identification, with the labels you choose for yourself.

This work is part of a wider body of research and performance, titled The Genetic Body, a project supported by Arts Council England.

SPIT KIT was originally performed at Steakhouse Live as part of the Hackney WickED Festival 2014 and at INIVA Contemporary Rites Programme.

www.riahartley.com

Fierce Thoughts…

I encountered Ria’s work at the SPILL National Platform. I was struck by her interest in weaving scientific research into the structure of her performances. We brought her to Birmingham to meet Karen Newman at BOM and they made a brilliant connection.

Ria will perform Spit Kit in the wet lab at BOM and hopes to return for a longer research residency at BOM later in the year.

– Laura McDermott

Photo: One Five West

Code and Carpentry One Five West (Birmingham) DATE

THURSDAY 8 OCTOBER (OPENING) – 7 NOVEMBER PRICE

FREE VENUE

BOM

One Five West will be exhibiting Code and Carpentry, a series of interactive objects that the audience can manipulate through movement, sound and touch.

This new body of work is a continuation of Feedback, an installation developed through Fierce Festival’s artist development scheme, Fierce FWD, 2014.

One Five West are interested in tactile creativity and play in a digital age. The structures they build draw inspiration from minimalist sculpture and retrofuturism, and wish to encourage physical interactions in a rapidly evolving digital world that favours the virtual.

The technologies One Five West employ – light bulbs, mini-spy cameras, LED lights and so on – are affordable and readily accessible to audiences. Their objects have no prescribed instructions, so audiences can intuitively create and play according to their individual or collective approach.

Code and Carpentry uses a blend of traditional woodwork with low-fi technological elements to create interactive pieces. This work invites audiences to physically engage with the artwork in order to change the outcomes of the physical and digital elements: using body movement and altering the structures to creating visuals and sounds.

Supported and co-commissioned by Fierce FWD. Supported by John Feeney Charitable Trust.

www.onefivewest.com

Fierce Thoughts…

Teaching themselves to code, Sophie Bullock and Anna Horton escape being passive consumers of networked technologies to devisors of the platforms themselves.

The duo’s interactive structures assert the DIY roots of team coding as a context for play and social interaction.

– Harun Morrison

Photo: Julia Bauer

Race Cards Selina Thompson (Leeds/Birmingham) DATE

THURSDAY 8 – SUNDAY 11 OCTOBER (INSTALLATION) PRICE

FREE VENUE

BOM

65. Are you black, or are you ‘new black’?

170. What is the long term psychological impact of white supremacy on people of colour?

220. My mum does not talk about race any more. It makes her uncomfortable, tired. Will this happen to me?

307. Why do people assume that racism will just passively die out if we wait long enough?

440. Are you angry?

541. What ever happened to Kony 2012?

660. Who is more problematic – famous racist Nigel Farage, or the liberal journalist politely asking him questions?

720. When does it all end?

Selina Thompson has devised a thousand questions concerning issues of race and identity. You are invited to respond to one of the questions which will feed into her research for this ongoing project. Selina Thompson was a Fierce FWD 14 artist, Fierce FWD is a scheme that supports emerging artists from or based in the West Midlands.

Seed commission from Camden People’s Theatre. Developed at Buzzcut and Forest Fringe Supported by Fierce FWD and John Feeney Charitable Trust.

www.selinathompson.co.uk

Fierce Thoughts…

Race is a subject we’re often compelled to discuss but find intimidating to talk openly about. It was electrifying to see how Selina’s Race Cards at Glasgow’s Buzzcut, (my first encounter with the project) opened up a space for discussion between visitors.

– Harun Morrison

Orange Bikini Emily Mulenga (Burton-on-Trent) DATE

THURSDAY 8 – SUNDAY 11 (ON LOOP) PRICE

FREE VENUE

BIRMINGHAM OPEN MEDIA

Emily Mulenga uses video and the digital to explore ideas based around the (female, Black) body in the internet age, with a view to utilising the supposedly democratic nature of online space as a platform for the gendered body of colour.

Her works take place in multi-layered landscapes.

Groundless, floating visuals are splashed throughout the work, positioning the artist’s likeness within a fictitious virtual space. She is currently concerned with the idea of the ‘safe space’ and ways in which oppressed groups can find solace in these designated places and spaces in the face of constant trauma. She looks to explore how these bodies can find comfort through acts of self-care and self-love, reclaiming them as sites of positivity and celebration.

The artist’s avatar, appearing in much of her work, will begin a new quest wandering through various spaces on a fantastical journey to promote her own happiness. She is interested in editing together a world where rules and barriers are broken down and we are presented with the opportunity to use this groundless new world to put ourselves first.

Emily Mulenga was a Fierce FWD 14 artist. Fierce FWD is a scheme that supports emerging artists from or based in the West Midlands.

Co-commissioned by Fierce FWD. Supported by John Feeney Charitable Trust.

www. emilymulenga.wix.com/artist

Fierce Thoughts…

Emily grasps the fluidity of the digital world as a space where identity can be kaleidoscopically fragmented. Her brightly coloured avatars layer up upon each other in her films to a high-octane bubblegum pop soundtrack.

– Laura McDermott

Sleep with a Curator Rosalie Schweiker & Maria Guggenbichler (London/Amsterdam) DATE

FRIDAY 9 OCTOBER, 10.30PM – OVERNIGHT PRICE

FREE (ADVANCED BOOKING ONLY) VENUE

EASTSIDE PROJECTS

Sleep With A Curator is a public sleepover with a curator in a gallery.

For this edition of Sleep With A Curator we have invited Gavin Wade, director of Eastside Projects. Previous sleepovers have been held at The Showroom London, Kunsthalle Zürich and Flat Time House.

Please arrive at Eastside Projects between 10.30–11pm and bring your own sleeping bag, air beds or whatever you will need to feel comfortable. The sleepover will end with a breakfast on Saturday morning, with a special curator's choice of pancakes.

This work takes place within the context of Display Show, which runs from 19 September – 12 December 2015 at Eastside Projects.

For more details see the Fierce website. www.rosalieschweiker.info www.mariaguggenbichler.com

Fierce Thoughts…

Rosalie’s practice holds up frames to the world (especially the art world) with humour and a political poke in the ribs. Gavin Wade was the perfect curator to work with in Birmingham for this project – a sleepover in a public gallery. He met our invitation with a combination of playfulness and deadpan wit.

Bring on the bacon pancakes!

– Laura McDermott

Photo: Jorge Le贸n

Supernatural Simone Aughterlony, Antonija Livingstone, Hahn Rowe (Zurich/Berlin/ Montreal/New York) DATE

FRIDAY 9 OCTOBER, 8PM (1HR 5 MINS) PRICE

£12/£8 VENUE

DANCEXCHANGE

** UK Premiere ** Human and non-human actants camp for the night together on a hot pink terrain under an unblinking fluorescent sky.

With axes, wood, violin, electronics and the bare body, Simone Aughterlony, Antonija Livingstone and Hahn Rowe stage a careful inquiry into some vibrant matters.

Through practicing a meditation and a choreography of reorienting the hierarchy of thinking and sensing, a fluid new rapport with the material and immaterial world is perceived and played with.

The repurposing of recognizable human behaviours engender by-product activities that may seem like dancing, and might sound like music. The vigour of the blade, the skin, the wood, the rope, the gaze, and all in our midst, buzz together lovingly in a hot debate on the political ecology of things.

Coproduction: Gessnerallee Zurich, HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt, Theatre Freiburg. Co-presented with DanceXchange

www.aughterlony.com

Fierce Thoughts…

Supernatural seems to transport us into a parallel universe.

It is a hypnotic experience for the audience. The movement and sound score gradually deconstruct the physical matter of the material that surrounds us. I will never forget watching the work at Gessnerallee in Zurich, when the high-pitched notes of Hahn Rowe’s sound score awoke the resident bat, who spent the rest of the show flitting around above the stage and the audience.

– Laura McDermott

Club Fierce DATE

FRIDAY 9 OCTOBER, DOORS OPEN 9PM 9PM INTRO SET, CHROMATOUCH 9.45PM ANKLEPANTS 10.45PM CLOSING SET, CHROMATOURCH PRICE

£10 VENUE

BOM

Photo: Dina Schweiger

Anklepants & Chromatouch Anklepants (Berlin), Chromatouch (Birmingham) An ongoing mutation through music, character design, creature effects, and animatronics. You are cordially invited to meet the first of many faces of Dr. Reecard Farché… Anklepants combines a vast array of hardware and instruments including synths, guitar, oud, voice, animal/any sounds, and field recordings.

Chromatouch, aka video artist Leon Trimble, has been appropriating music and gaming tech for over ten years creating visuals to accompany DJs and live musicians.

At this year’s Shambala festival he programmed a back projected, 360º immersive yurtdome. For Club Fierce, he will be put the same immersive engine to use in the BOM gallery, linking it to an array of grid instruments, semi modular experimental synth kits, and custom VJ software patches to create a tightly synced piece of audio-visual experience. www.chromatouch.tumblr.com www.reecardfarche.com

Photo: Robin Junicke

All Ears Kate McIntosh (Brussels) DATE

SATURDAY 10 OCTOBER, 1.30PM (1HR 15 MINS) PRICE

£10/£8 VENUE

MAC BIRMINGHAM

** UK Premiere ** For All Ears Kate McIntosh sets up the stage as an improvised adhoc laboratory for a series of unusual recordings and acoustic experiments, using everyday objects and materials. Chairs are dragged, paper is torn, glasses are toppled. Sounds are gathered, recorded and played back – the action of one part of the performance providing soundtrack, background or atmosphere for another. Along the way McIntosh – as combination curious scientist, mischievous questioner and eclectic storyteller – leads us on a distinctive journey through a diverse landscape of ideas.

There are parables of human and animal behaviour, fragments on crowd control and linguistics, jokes about politics and group dynamics, maps of birds and traffic jams, stories about systems, societies and social interactions. At the heart of the piece – in the silence between the sounds recorded, at the centre of the listening crowd – are questions about who we are alone and how we are together, about what it might take to change a culture and what we could be missing in the push for individual self-sufficiency.

This is Kate McIntosh’s second appearance at Fierce, having presented Worktable in Digbeth in 2013.

Concept & performance by Kate McIntosh; produced by SPIN. Co-presented with mac Birmingham, with the support of the Flemish Community.

www.spinspin.be

Fierce Thoughts…

Kate McIntosh talks of this performance as an act of collective research with the audience, an exploration of how we negotiate the experience of being in a crowd while retaining our individuality.

It can also be considered a series of games – audience move chairs on stage from their seats via strings and pulleys, paper is scrunched and thrown in unison… by recording and looping back sound made in these instances the feedback inherent in live performance becomes explicit and made subject.

– Harun Morrison

Photo: David Jacques

The DJ who gave too much information & Bring your own record/ Listening party PME-ART (Montreal) DATE

SATURDAY 10, 3.30 – 5PM & SUNDAY 11 OCTOBER, 4.30 – 7.30PM PRICE

FREE VENUE

COW VINTAGE (SAT) & THE DRUM (SUN)

** UK Premiere ** [Sunday] It never ceases to amaze us how important and resonant music can be in our lives. Often connected with childhood and adolescence, it is difficult to imagine the modern world without the songs that form its continuous soundtrack. In The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information, the Montreal based interdisciplinary group PME-ART have one hundred and twenty records and stories about each one. Each time they perform, they find themselves playing the records in a different order, creating new, on-the-spot connections between the music they love (and even a few songs they hate). A loose, improvised, but still surprisingly effective, journey through art, politics, love and work; all seen through the lens of every kind of music.

[Saturday] The public is invited to a special encounter where anyone can bring their own record and tell a story of their own in a casual atmosphere, raising every kind of question.

The work of PME-ART is an ongoing process of questioning the world, of finding the courage to say things about the current predicament that are direct and complex, of interrogating the performance situation. Bring your own Record/Listening Party takes place at WE ARE COW, one of Birmingham’s most cherished vintage clothes stores.

Presented on a UK tour with Contact, Manchester and Chapter Arts, Cardiff.

Supported by the Ministry of Culture in Québec.

www.pme-art.ca

Fierce Thoughts…

In 2013 Amee Baird and Séverine Samson, published research of their use of popular music to help brain-injured patients recall personal memories. This builds on current neuroscience exploring how music engages brain regions associated with autobiographical memory, motor actions and emotions.

– Harun Morrison

Photo: Dominique Petrin & Valerie Sangin

Culture, Administration & Trembling Antonija Livingstone/ Jennifer Lacey/ Dominique Pétrin/ Stephen Thompson (Montreal/Berlin) DATE

SATURDAY 10 OCTOBER, 5.30PM & 6.30PM (1HR LOOPS) PRICE

£15/£10 VENUE

LAKESIDE GALLERY

** UK Premiere ** A singular experiment in exotic companionship; a meticulous yet playful study of hand bell algorithms; an affective assemblage of Male Breast Feeding…

Culture, Administration & Trembling exposes a collection of durational, artificial situations developed collaboratively between dance artists Antonija Livingstone, Jennifer Lacey, Stephen Thompson, and visual artist Dominique Pétrin. Each piece, or “time-based sculpture,” is conceived as a score that prompts a series of rare, endangered practices the public is invited to witness. A collective mode of attention, these choreographic sculptures shift between the human and the animal, the real and the imaginary, the old school and the now to create a series of unexpected contemplative landscapes. In this intimate yet out-of-bounds choreographic salon, Livingstone proposes a critically joyful and queer study of movement, presence and territory where dance becomes a curatorial practice. Enacting a series of vital tremors, the work unfolds in a collection of sublime, precarious choreographic ecologies.

Supported by the Ministry of Culture in Québec.

Fierce Thoughts…

I saw this work in FTA, Montreal 2014. I found it both deeply perplexing and super watchable.

I consider it an invitation to regard every movement from any kind of body as thing unique to itself, a challenge to resist placing any hierarchy on how that movement is perceived; be that how a snake winds across the ground or a dog hobbles or how a man breastfeeds.

– Harun Morrison

Photo: Donald Cooper

Free Admission Ursula Martinez (London) DATE

SATURDAY 10 OCTOBER, 8PM (1HR) PRICE

ENTRY ONLY WITH SATURDAY OR FRIDAY – SUNDAY PASS VENUE

THE MOCKINGBIRD THEATRE

Following on from the success of My Stories, Your Emails, Olivier Award-winning performance provocateur Ursula Martinez is back on her dirty soapbox. In a social media-obsessed climate of self-promotion, Martinez offers up her positive self-deprecation, baring her soul (and possibly more), as she tries to understand the absurdity of modern living, and celebrate the difficulties of being a human, particularly a human with a vagina.

Ursula has a long association with the festival having performed Show Off in Fierce 2001, a Fierce launch party in 2002 and performed OAP in Fierce 2004.

Co-commissioned by Fierce Festival and Southbank Centre.

www.ursulamartinez.com

Fierce Thoughts…

We are so happy to have co-commissioned Ursula Martinez’ new work with the Southbank Centre and look forward to watching it travel the world after Fierce Festival. In previous years Ursula’s infamous red hanky dance was the centerpiece of a Fierce launch party and the red handkerchief in question is kept in our archive.

– Laura McDermott

Club Fierce DATE

SATURDAY 10 OCTOBER, 9PM TILL LATE 9PM DOORS OPEN 10PM GAZELLE TWIN 11.15PM DEEP AEROBICS MIDNIGHT SARAH FARINA (DJ SET) PRICE

£15 (£10 IN ADVANCE) VENUE

OLD PRINT WORKS (These former Print Works in Balsall Heath, with their industrial warrens have been the scene of unforgettable parties. They recently hosted the legendary psychedelic party Sensateria.)

Photo: Tash Tung

Gazelle Twin (Brighton) Gazelle Twin is the creation of producer, composer and artist, Elizabeth Bernholz. The critically acclaimed debut, The Entire City (2011, Anti-Ghost Moon Ray) and following Mammal EP (2013, Sugarcane) was succeeded by a full-length industrial-pop offering UNFLESH (2014).

We have planned a special live show for Birmingham that involves five local dancers. Gazelle Twin and her team are also going to spend time filming in underpasses and flyovers around the city to create visuals for another one-off show at the Barbican in November. www.gazelletwin.com

Fierce Thoughtsâ&#x20AC;Ś I was captivated the first time I saw a Gazelle Twin video that my friend Luke Cooper shared online.

A menacing, blue-hooded figure stalked through the aisles of a supermarket under flickering fluorescent lights, her face obscured by a stocking. Gazelle Twin captivated Birmingham with her recent performance at Supersonic Festival so we are thrilled to invite her back to spend more time in the city. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Laura McDermott

Club Fierce DATE

SATURDAY 10 OCTOBER, 9PM TILL LATE 9PM DOORS OPEN 10PM GAZELLE TWIN 11.15PM DEEP AEROBICS MIDNIGHT SARAH FARINA (DJ SET) PRICE

£15 (£10 IN ADVANCE) VENUE

OLD PRINT WORKS

Photo: Ariana Dongus

Sarah Farina (Berlin) Over the last couple of years, Sarah Farina has grown to become one of Berlin’s main tastemakers in underground bass. Sarah is well recognized throughout Germany and noticed by artists and music heads on each and every continent. Her sets are driven by futuristic breakbeats and intense basslines. Not sticking to any specific genre, she defines the music she plays as rainbow-bass.

Sarah Farina is one of the original founders of Through My Speakers, which became a record label in 2014, after being a collective and event production crew since 2010. Over the last years she supported some of the most respected of her bass music contemporaries, both locally and abroad. She contributed to Rinse.fm’s Hyperdub show with Kode9 and Scratcha DVA in London 2013 and shared the DJ booth with artists like Loefah, Disclosure, Gaslampkiller, Lunice and many many more. She is connected to crews like Teklife (RIP DJ Rashad), Buraka Som Sistema and Exit Records. She has also performed two sets with Boiler Room Berlin in 2013 and 2014.

Supported by the Goethe Institute.

www.throughmyspeakers.com/sarah-farina

Fierce Thoughts…

In February this year I was at CTM Berlin a music and art festival.

YAAM is riverside club in the German capital. Farina’s set was incredible in its range, sense of the ravers needs and riding of rhythm from track to track.

– Harun Morrison

Club Fierce DATE

SATURDAY 10 OCTOBER, 9PM TILL LATE 9PM DOORS OPEN 10PM GAZELLE TWIN 11.15PM DEEP AEROBICS MIDNIGHT SARAH FARINA (DJ SET) PRICE

£15 (£10 IN ADVANCE) VENUE

OLD PRINT WORKS

Photo: Pekka Mäkinen

DEEP AEROBICS Miguel Gutierrez (New York) ** UK Premiere ** ‘Death Electric Emo Protest Aerobics aka DEEP AEROBICS is a workout form invented and shamelessly disseminated by New York-based choreographer Miguel Gutierrez, who hopes to soon destroy the technique, because it’s just too hard to teach, and really the world is going to hell in a handbasket anyway.

It is one hour plus of the communal/political/conceptual/ imaginational workout experience you always wanted but never could embarrass yourself enough to find or do in public.

It is for anyone who has ever had any interest in combining the joie de vivre that is the vigorous bouncing of one’s anatomical/spiritual/energetic molecules with the existential absurdity that is living in a world/country/ economic system of injustice, war-mongering, and cultural ineptitude.

Oh wait, that’s you. DEEP AEROBICS is a participatory spectacle - it’s a movement, it’s a transformative experience for the mind/body/spirit/genital matrix.

Gutierrez asks that each participant come in costume.

Please push your imagination beyond the 80’s! In ONE evening, you are instantly certified as a Master Teacher, no dues or fees or follow up visits. It will be legendary.

Miguel will lose his mind, then his voice, and so will you.

(DEEP AEROBICS is open to all ages and abilities) .

Taste the sweat!

Gutierrez describes his work as “philosophical inquiry disguised as performance.” Miguel performed the UK premiere of HEAVENS WHAT HAVE I DONE at Fierce 2014, co-presented with DanceXchange.

www.miguelgutierrez.org

Fierce Thoughts…

I encountered DEEP AEROBICS at Gothenburg Dance & Theatre Festival in 2014. It was intoxicating to see how Miguel generated such sense of freedom.

– Harun Morrison

Photo: Marco Beradi

Happiness Forgets Season Butler (London) DATE

SUNDAY 11 OCTOBER, 1.30PM (1HR) PRICE

SUNDAY PASS £20/15 VENUE

THE DRUM

** UK Premiere ** ‘Remember the good old days when everyone got along, when life was simple, when our television screens protected us from sex, violence and the discomfort of difference? Remember when politicians were statesmen, mothers were wholesome, the rich worked hard and celebrities were role models? Remember when we knew where we belonged, when no one was gay, no one was black and political correctness was barely a glint in some liberal's eye?

Me neither.

Happiness Forgets is a lecture, an ode and an elegy for our imperfect past, for the people we once were and can never be again, now that we know what we know now.

In this piece, Season Butler pins down the past, examines it under a microscope, charges it with electricity to see if she can make it dance. Throwing tradition onto the junk heap of history, Happiness Forgets will try to nudge us into the gaps between rich and poor, comedy and tragedy, celebrities and fans, credibility and doubt, grab the power that these differences generate and grind it into dust. It's about sex, race, nostalgia and the moment when you see something familiar in a whole new light.’

Choreography by Jamila Johnson-Small. Dramaturgy by Justin Hunt.

Sound by Jan Mertens. Co-commissioned by Fierce, Chelsea Theatre (for Sacred), Colchester Arts Centre, Compass, Live Collision and LICA. Supported by Arts Council, England.

www.seasonbutler.com www.happinessforgetslive.tumblr.com

Fierce Thoughts…

Like many people growing up in the 80s and 90s in the UK I watched The Cosby Show every Sunday.

At that time televised portrayals of professional middle-class black families were so rare, that the conservative normativity of the Cosby Show was generally overlooked.

The allegations of sexual assault against Bill Cosby, make this new commission a timely exploration of how the content of a work and the context of its production are political and inseparable.

– Harun Morrison

Photo: Photo: Thomas ColmLenden Hogan

AL13FB<3 Fernando Belfiore (Brussels) DATE

SUNDAY 11 OCTOBER, 3PM (1HR) PRICE

SUNDAY PASS £20/15 VENUE

THE DRUM

** UK Premiere ** “It is the transformation of substance that is my concern in art, rather than the traditional aesthetic understanding of beautiful appearances. If the creativity relates to the transformation, change, and development of substance, then it can be applied to everything in the world, and is no longer restricted to art…”

– Joseph Beuys about his work Bathtub (1960) Fernando Belfiore’s solo, AL13FB<3 investigates the idea of body-sculpture. Fernando (per)forms an encounter with elements to construct a physical experience, body states and retranslate emotions. While leading his audience through poetic and futuristic worlds, he explores the potential of transformation.

Fernando Belfiore (1983 Sao Paolo, Brazil) is a choreographer and performer based in Amsterdam. He graduated at the SNDO (School for New Dance Development – AHK) in 2011. His graduation work The miserable thing was nominated for the ITs Choreography Awards and awarded best direction at ACT Festival in Spain, 2012.

Fernando is artist in residence at the production house Dansmakers Amsterdam since 2011.

Choreography and Performance Fernando Belfiore Dramaturg Katarina Bakatsaki, Suzy Blok, Bruno Listopad Light Design & technique Tomas Vondracek Sound Steve Martin Snider Set design Nikola Kneževi Production manager Sanne Wichman PR Lisette Brouwer Writing support Lisa Reinheimer Photography Jamain Brigitha – Associatives Production Dansmakers Amsterdam Supported by Dansmakers Amsterdam Jonge Makers fonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunsten, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds In collaboration with ICK Amsterdam, Z Zentrum für Proben und Forschung Frankfurt, Work Space Brussels and Fabrica de Movimientos Porto Special thanks to Forum of Live Arts Amsterdam, VERBO São Paulo, Eleanor Bauer and Ria Rigler.

www.belfioreword.wordpress.com

Fierce Thoughts…

I saw this work at Workspace Brussels last year, a great platform that supports new and emerging artists working in the city. I still find the piece mysterious and witty.

The scenography was unusually rich and technically adept which I think is quite rare in the early work of emerging artists.

– Harun Morrison

Club Fierce DATE

SUNDAY 11 OCTOBER, 9PM TILL LATE (DURATION 2 HRS) PRICE

£5 VENUE

BOM

Photo: Photo: Sam Anet Vanoverschelde van de Elzen

Karaoke (ART) Davis Freeman (Brussels) ** UK Premiere ** Karaoke brings strangers together in a room to watch one another become stars for the moment. Sometimes prepared, other times spontaneous, a great number of us have found ourselves at least once looking through the karaoke catalogue in a bar and begrudgingly singing in front of expectant friends. Inevitably along with the screens that display the bouncing ball or the words turning yellow on cue is a simple, tasteless, and more often than not kitschy video. These videos vaguely support the song but are actually non-entities.

Karaoke(ART) on the other hand asks for the opposite.

It asks the video art to come forward. This project invites artists to use their own personal style to reflect on what it’s like to live in the world today using the Karaoke song of their choice as their conduit. To mix the contemporary art world with a pop culture phenomenon to create something unexpected for both sides.

The artists currently involved Gary Hill [Good Vibrations The Beach Boys], Chris Kondek [Are you lonesome tonight Elvis Presley], Davis Freeman [Crazy Patsy Cline] (USA) Johan Grimonprez [You are the first, the last, my everything Barry White] , Visual Kitchen [Bohemian Rhapsody Queen], Walter Verdin [Let’s Dance David Bowie], Anouk De Clercq & Fairuz [New York New York Frank Sinatra], Sarah Vanagt [These boots are made for walking Nancy Sinatra] (BE) Tim Etchells [Paint it Black The Rolling Stones] (UK) Jorge León [Like a Virgin Madonna], Laure Prouvost [Sweet Dreams Eurythmics] (FR) Mait Laas [What a wonderful world Louis Armstrong] (EE) Steve Cohen [I will always love you Whitney Houston] (SA)

www.randomscream.be

Fierce Thoughts…

People often ask Harun and I how we program Fierce. Our answer is usually that we are always on the lookout for new artists, new work and new ideas. We met Davis in Zurich drinking late-night whisky in the Gessnerallee bar. It was hard to resist the idea of singing Paint it Black to an art film created by Tim Etchells, or Sweet Dreams with a video by Laure Prouvost.

– Laura McDermott

Photo: Courtesy of the Artist

Will Be Tim Etchells (Sheffield/London) DATE

FRIDAY 2 OCTOBER – FRIDAY 16 OCTOBER PRICE

FREE VENUE

MOSELEY RD BATHS

Tim Etchells’ multi-coloured neon sign Will Be (2010/2015) is installed on the exterior of the Grade 2* listed Moseley Road Baths in Balsall Heath. It features the phrase THE FUTURE WILL BE CONFUSING. This will be the first occasion his solo artwork has been shown publicly in the city.

Fierce has a long engagement with the work of Tim Etchells through Tim's collaborative work; having recently co-commissioned and presented The Last Adventures by Forced Entertainment, directed by Tim Etchells at Fierce Festival 2014.

This installation continues Fierce’s ongoing relationship with the baths. In 2014, Laura Delaney and Lisa Stewart presented Parting Waters, a series of site-specific video and sound works. These were complimented by Amy Sharrocks’ Museum of Water, the same year. In September this year we presented SLIP a two-day programme of video and sound works in the former women’s slipper baths.

Supported by Arts Council England and Friends of Moseley Road Baths.

www.timetchells.com

Fierce Thoughts…

Working with the Friends of Moseley Road Baths over the last two years has been really inspiring.

We hope these beautiful heritage baths can be kept open as a place for swimming. At the moment they are under potential threat of closure.

Tim Etchells’ neon work reflects this atmosphere of uncertainty.

This year, as Harun and I prepare to leave Fierce and go our separate paths, it seems to resonate with our situation too.

– Laura McDermott

Photo: Manuel Vason

Permutations in the City Neil Callaghan & Simone Kenyon (London/Newtonmore) DATE

THURSDAY 8 – SAT 10 OCTOBER PRICE

FREE VENUE

ACROSS THE CITY (SEE FIERCE WEBSITE OR #picFierce15 TO GET EXACT LOCATIONS)

Neil Callaghan and Simone Kenyon will enact a series of public performances around Birmingham city centre.

They will be accompanied by three pairs of Birmingham based performers selected from a workshop organised in the month preceding the festival.

Sites for performance include Millennium Park and the Library of Birmingham.

Supported by Arts Council England and Dance4, Nottingham.

www.neilandsimone.co.uk

Fierce Thoughts…

As a Birmingham Native I consider myself well versed on the city.

I spend a portion of my day traversing the streets but I am all too aware how often we can blindly wander when we are comfortable.

What I like most about Permutations in the City is that it forces you to stop and consider, that it is born of its environment; undulating and curious. I hope that when you see these dance interventions you stop a while too, that you appreciate where you are amid the beauty and texture of this city.

That to watch another interpret what Birmingham feels like is a chance see it again as if for the first time.

– Toni Lewis

Residencies

Photo: Meg Lavender

Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Magda Fabianczyk

Boy with Wings

Magda Fabianczyk works on projects that target situations of conflict related to the misunderstanding of social and cultural behaviours. She invites communities and individuals to take part in a collaborative decision-making process, during which personal relationships form â&#x20AC;&#x201C; often lasting beyond the initial time frame of the project.

Dialogical and multilayered processes can result in videos, publications, performance, direct action, installation, or constructed situations.

Supported by the Polish Cultural Institute and Hello East

Boy With Wings is the musical project of Poppy Tibbetts, Leo Francisco, Sean Francis Burns and Thomas Doherty.

In search of euphoria, the family of four forever cling together, clattering through post-industrial wastelands; from lonely gay bars to deserted beaches. The band released their self-produced first record Boy With Wings in 2014 and played their debut show in London soon after. They will be launching Queerzone3000 on Sunday 11th October at BOM. Queerzone 3000 is the name of a non profit organisation setup by members of Boy With Wings and others to create radical queer spaces online.

www.fabianczyk.com

www.boywithwings.co.uk

Elsewhere in Birmingham during Fierce Grand Union Emma Hart: big Mouth 4 September – 31 October big Mouth is a collection of ceramic sculptures by Emma Hart that want to tell you how it really is and how it really feels.

Film and photography mixes with clay body parts, clay hair cascading through anus-like scrunchies and sculptures that fight and choke. www.grand-union.org.uk Eastside Projects Display Show 19 September – 12 December ‘Display Show’ proposes to consider display as intrinsic to artistic production and interpretation.

Céline Condorelli, Charlotte Cullinan & Jeanine Richards, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Flore Nove Josserand, Andrew Lacon, James Langdon, Leeds Weirdo Club, Goshka Macuga, Rita McBride, Eilis McDonald, Nathalie du Pasquier, Amalia Pica, Yelena Popova, Haim Steinbach, Gavin Wade, Nicole Wermers, Christopher Williams.

(After: Franco Albini, Herbert Bayer, Lina Bo Bardi, Eileen Gray, Frederick Kiesler, Adolf Krischanitz, El Lissitzky, Carlo Scarpa) eastsideprojects.org

mac Birmingham Exhibitions: Steenbeckett, Atom Egoyan Sat 19 Sep – Sun 29 Nov http://macbirmingham.co.uk/exhibition/ steenbeckett/ Exhibitions: Stage, Paul Newman Sat 26 Sep – Sun 22 Nov http://macbirmingham.co.uk/exhibition/stage/ Theatre: Sirens, Ontroerend Goed Mon 5 – Tue 6 Oct macbirmingham.co.uk/event/ontroerend-goed-sirens/ [VIVID Projects 9 Evenings: Vis-er-al Thu 8 – Sat 10 Oct Polly Hudson with Katye Coe, Charlie Morrissey, Florence Peake, and Daren Pickles 9 Evenings: Carriage Discreteness Thu 8 Oct Yvonne Rainer (screening), 6 – 7pm vividprojects.org.uk Ikon SCROLL DOWN AND KEEP SCROLLING 10 October 2015 – 17 January 2016 Fiona Banner Open Tuesday – Sunday, 11am-5pm Free entry The most comprehensive exhibition of Fiona Banner’s work to date, re-presenting key early projects alongside recent and unseen works that span a period of 25 years. “It is not a survey – more of an anti-survey,” says the artist. Throughout the exhibition Banner revisits her work with intensity and humour. ikon-gallery.org

Team Fierce Joint Artistic Directors Laura McDermott & Harun Morrison Producer & Communications Assistant Toni Lewis Assistant Producer Bek Berger Governance Support Sadie Newman Production Manager Joe Welden Production Assistant J贸hann Krist贸fer Stef谩nsson Volunteer Coordinator Ria Jones Documentors Kate Rowles & Meg Lavender National Press and PR Anna Goodman at Abstrakt Regional Press and PR Helen Stallard Communications Graphic Design and Identity Julie Kim with Jonathan Rabagliati www.fieldofplay.xyz Graphic Patterns and Animation Josef Musil Additional Design Cody Lee Barbour Fierce Festival Board of Directors Matthew Austin (MAYK and Mayfest) John Diviney (Brunswick Group) Eileen Evans (Forced Entertainment) Dr Cath Lambert (The University of Warwick) Brian Lobel (Artist, lecturer & Wellcome Trust fellow) Marianne Mulvey (Tate) Antonio Roberts (artist & BOM Fellow) Sam Trotman (Artsadmin) Aaron Wright (LADA) Christie Horton-Cremin (Treasurer)

Acknowledgements & Thanks Hannah Sharpe, Corey Baker, Helen Walker, Cody Lee Barbour, Joon Lynn Goh, Abigail Conway, James Smith and Anneka French at This is Tomorrow, our parents, Ian Francis, Selina Hewlett, Sam Groves at Flatpack, Mark Gunton and Friends of Moseley Road Baths, Dave Flora at Moseley Road Baths, James Burkmar, Roxana Collins and all at Birmingham City Council, Karen Newman at BOM, Alison Gagen, Louise Sutton at Arts Council England, Shonagh Manson and Jon Opie at Jerwood Charitable Foundation, Kate Danielson manager of Weston Jerwood Creative Bursaries, Alan Rivett, Matt Burman at Warwick Arts Centre, Lucie Mirkova, David Massingham at DanceXchange, Gavin Wade, Ruth Claxton, Anna Santomauro at Eastside Projects, Dan Whitehouse, Timothy Hodgson at mac, Caroline Davis at Birmingham Weekender, Alison Evans, Susan Winmill, Gavin Richardson at NCP Car Park Birmingham, Ian Sergeant and the team at The Drum, Jude Greenwood at The Old Print Works, Jenna Hallett at ORT cafe, Cheryl Jones and Kim McAleese at Grand Union, Yasmeen Baig Clifford at Vivid Projects, Kate Spence and Aleks Wojtulewicz at Home for Waifs and Strays, Sue Ball, STRYX, Sam Hussain, Roma Piotrowska, Julie Davies and Electric Stage team, Anthony Roberts, our cousins at Between Time and SPILL festivals (especially Helen Cole and Robert Pacitti), Lois Keidan and CJ Mitchell at LADA. About Graphic Patterns Working with Julie Kim and Jonathan Rabagliati, architect and computational designer, Josef Musil, generated the graphic patterns that pervade the whole Fierce Festival brochure. Using python scripts, the artist images are processed to create an array of triangular pixelated patterns. The brochure front cover is generated using smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) a computational method for simulating fluid motion that is increasingly used in real-time animations and games.

The fierce logo becomes liquid, stretched and warped by currents within the computational fluid flows.

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