Fierce Festival 2012 brochure

Live art. Collision. Hyperlocal. Supernow.

Fierce Festival March 29 – April 8, 2012

Live art. Collision. Hyperlocal. Supernow.

Fierce Festival March 29 – April 8, 2012

6. St Philip’s Square outside Birmingham Cathedral Birmingham, B3 2QB

5. TROVE 144 Newhall Street Birmingham, B3 1RZ

4. @AE Harris 110 Northwood Street Birmingham, B3 1SZ

3. Q Club 212 Corporation Street Birmingham, B4 6QB

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12. Grand Union 19 Minerva Works Fazeley Street Birmingham, B5 5RS

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11. Edible Eastside at the rear of 122 Fazeley Street Birmingham, B5 5RS

10. Symphony Hall Broad Street Birmingham, B1 2EA

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15. Club PST 71 Lombard Street Birmingham, B12 0QU

9. Oozells Square outside IKON Gallery 1 Oozells Square Brindleyplace Birmingham, B1 2HS

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16. Moseley Friends Institute 220 Moseley Road Birmingham, B12 0DG

14. Heath Mill Studios 68 Heath Mill Lane Birmingham, B9 4AR

8. The Crescent Theatre Sheepcote Street Birmingham, B16 8AE

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2. Aston Train Station meeting point for Track

by Graeme Miller

13. VIVID — The Garage 140 Heath Mill Lane Birmingham, B9 4AR

7. Birmingham Central Library Chamberlain Square Birmingham, B3 3HQ

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1. Underneath Spaghetti Junction For exact location of Track, see: bit.ly/trackbirmingham

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Photo: Laura Hemming-Lowe. Action Hero, Frontman, Fierce 2011

About Fierce Festival A man in a giant bird’s nest on the side of a high-rise; Una White’s name spelled out in lights above the city; a flock of hot-air balloons playing music at dawn…

Fierce is an annual international festival of live art that takes place across Birmingham. For over a decade, Fierce Festival has established an international reputation for risk-taking, excellence and innovation and is now widely recognised as one of the UK’s most important contemporary arts festivals.

Fierce Festival was founded in 1998 by Mark Ball, now Artistic Director at LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre). In 2009, Laura McDermott and Harun Morrison took over as joint artistic directors of Fierce.

The duo have introduced a new ‘slow burn’ programming model centred around a core group of artists called the Fierce Festival Caravan of Artists. They look for artists whose practice has an interesting engagement with Fierce’s context: the city of Birmingham, its history, places and people.

Fierce works closely with the Caravan of Artists over the course of a year (or more) to develop their projects.

They also like to involve the expertise of partners – curators and producers at the various organisations in Birmingham they work with. They often present more than one piece of work by each artist in the Caravan, giving audiences a richer sense of that artist’s practice.

Fierce strives to produce a festival that is infused with the unique texture of the city.

Fierce announces the Caravan of Artists annually (usually nine months ahead of the festival) at an event called the Fierce Festival Start Party. This year, the Fierce Festival Caravan of Artists are Ann Liv Young, Bennett Miller, Daniel Lismore, Eloise Fornieles, Graeme Miller, Harminder Judge, LuckyPDF, Mehmet Sander, Mette Edvardsen, Playgroup, Reynir Hutber, Ron Athey, SECRET SHOW, Subject to_change and Uninvited Guests.

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 mac.

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 2012 Fierce 2012 is the second festival under our direction and another opportunity to build on the relationships between artists, audience and the city. As in 2011, the spine of the programme continues to be our Caravan of Artists. A mix of artists who have been practising for decades, alongside those at the dawn of their careers, hailing from the US, Turkey, Norway, Ireland, Spain, South Africa and Australia. We cannot emphasise enough the value of bringing such high calibre artists to Birmingham’s doorstep; especially the transformative effect that their presence can have on young local artists in the West Midlands.

In this spirit of jumbling together varying levels of experience, Fierce opens with PILOT at mac (Midlands Art Centre).

PILOT is a dynamic platform for presenting work-in-progress, which is supportive of recent graduates but welcoming of new work from artists across the UK. We’re particularly excited that the duo Action Hero, who staged Frontman to such acclaim last year, return alongside recent local graduate Kate Spence.

Participation is at the heart of the festival this year. Mehmet Sander’s IMPACT, Ron Athey’s Gifts of the Spirit, Mette Edvardsen’s Time Has Fallen Asleep in the Afternoon Sunshine, Hamish Fulton’s group walk… all have casts comprised of non-professional performers; keen respondents to call-outs made in the lead-up to the festival. Bennett Miller’s Daschund U.N. (a social-sculpture activated by the presence of scores of sausage dogs in place of politicians) could not be realised without countless trips to dog fairs and meetings with dog owners.

Perhaps appropriately for a festival that coincides with Easter, ritual and myth feature prominently. In the case of Fornieles, Athey, Uninvited Guests and Subject to_change; the creation of a personal ritual and invitation to engage is at the heart of their respective projects. Our nod to the Christian festival is evident in the scheduling of certain works, evocations of pilgrimage in Hamish Fulton’s group walk and the tradition of eating fish on Fridays with Ann Liv Young’s Mermaid Show.

Our love of unique architecture, forgotten or neglected sites continues. This year we’ll be at The Q Club, a former Methodist cathedral, its grandeur undimmed by the passing of time. We return to the former electro-plating works, home of the curatorial platform TROVE. Particularly timely is the use John Madin’s Brutalist masterpiece, Central Library, as a venue for our shelf of ‘living books’. With this building due to close and the architect’s death earlier this year, Edvardsen’s themes of loss and memory are all the more emphasized. Not far away from this library a new one is under construction.

Across the square facing this new building is Symphony Hall, celebrating its 21st birthday. To celebrate this occasion Fierce warmly accepted the invitation to curate a series of sound-based works around the building, re-imagining the space as a giant instrument in the process.

Finally, we welcome the expansion of Team Fierce this year to include our Fierce Press Gang, a group of 16 – 19 year olds who will be writing, documenting, reporting and interacting with you over the festival’s eleven days. We hope they will share their perspective of 2012 and lay the path for our 15th anniversary in 2013.

Laura McDermott + Harun Morrison Spring 2012

Audiences at Fierce Festival 2011

Festival Hub Rolling programme of events and performances Date

Friday 30 March – Sunday 8 April price

FREE (door charge on selected advertised events) venue

VIVID, The Garage, 140 Heath Mill Lane, Digbeth, Birmingham

The festival hub at The Garage, Digbeth will be the place to pick up a brochure and find out the latest festival news, get tea, coffee, wine or beer, wind down after performances.

The festival hub will also have its own rolling programme that will include the presence of LuckyPDF, free haircuts

by The Haircut Before the Party, performance recollections with Helen Cole’s We See Fireworks and talks. The hub programme kicks off with a live gig by Grouper and closes with a festival feast.

Highlights from the Festival Hub >>>

The Haircut Before the Party Date

Saturday 31 March – Sunday 1 April, 12pm – 7pm price

Free

The Haircut Before the Party (THCBTP) are a political, haircutting, artist collective who have set up a radical hair salon in Whitechapel offering people a convivial space where different discourses can meet through the act of cutting hair for free.

People come to the salon because of the need for a haircut. These are offered for free, to explore other potential values within exchange when financial transactions are removed.

THCBTP will spend 2012 looking for sites of community, collectivity and places where collaboration offers alternatives to traditional party politics. Fierce will see the first outing of the collective’s new mobile space that will allow them to offer cuts and conversations to communities across the UK. If you would like to book a haircut, please email: haircutbtp@gmail.com thehaircutbeforetheparty. net

Violet Replacement Grouper (US)

Collecting Fireworks Helen Cole (UK)

Date

Date

Friday 30 March, 8 – 11pm

Friday 6 – Saturday 7 April, 12pm – 7pm

price

price

£8 adv

Free.

Half hour, one-on-one performance.

Violet Replacement is a haunting new performance by Grouper comprising tape loops, field recordings and submerged atmospherics.

Grouper’s live shows are rare occurrences – for this unique performance Grouper presents a new collection of tape collages derived from a commission for New York’s Issue Project Room. Archive field recordings, Wurlitzer loops and vocal tracks are mixed, spliced and processed live through an array of dictaphones and tape players.

Additional acts include Diamond Catalog and SWLLWS. Tickets include free entry to afterparty with special guest DJs BOYD. Violet Replacement is presented

by Capsule

Collecting Fireworks begins with the premise that the idea of theatre is essentially viral.

Across 10 international cities, we have sought to uncover the true essence of contemporary liveness.

Add your voice to this unique archive of over 700 recordings that reveal powerfully evocative memories of performances or strange performative moments. Whispered by strangers, these words sear into our consciousness, to collapse their memories into yours.

They talk of religious ceremonies, accidents, lovers’ meetings, fair grounds, car parks, fetish clubs and school halls to collapse their deepest memories into yours.

To book go to: bit.ly/collectingfireworks

FEASTER Fierce closing party curated by Trevor Pitt Date

Sunday 08 April, from 5pm price

£5 cash on the door Trevor Pitt invites a host of locally sourced talent for Fierce’s customary final feast – an evening of fine English food, ale and entertainment! Participate in Easter-themed handicrafts including egg painting and bonnet making; to the accompaniment of folk music and Morris dancing. Including special guest performance from Wayfarers Folk Dance Club and Border Brethren Morris…

Capture the day with Joey Vivo and Roseanna Velin in their Feaster Fotostudio. See you there! www.podprojects.org

John Mercier, Photo: Luc Boulianne

PILOT Various artists – curated by Fierce Festival and Kindle Theatre Date

Thurs 29 March, 7.30pm price

£5 / £3 venue

mac

Fierce Festival kicks off with PILOT: a night of risky new works-in-progress around the spaces at mac in Cannon Hill Park. The evening also includes live music, a screening of artists’ films and a personal introduction to the Fierce Festival programme from Fierce artistic directors Harun Morrison and Laura McDermott. The selected PILOT artists are: a smith, Action Hero, Bone Ensemble, Mamoru Iriguchi, Jessica Latowicki, Joseph Mercier, Kate Spence and Aleks Wojtulewicz. They will be verbally boxing, cross dressing, parading and playing with projections in the cinema, the Hexagon Lecture Theatre, the foyer, bar and Arena Gallery at mac.

PilotNights is supported by Arts Council West Midlands, Warwick Arts Centre, mac Birmingham, The Arena, Wolverhampton and The Public.

www.pilotnights.co.uk

Joost Nieuwenburg, Photo: Henry Chang

Holy Mountain Party curated by Harminder Judge (UK) & Fierce Date

Saturday 31 March, 9pm till late price

£5 in advance, £7 on the door venue

Club PST (18+ only)

Multi-artform party with live performances inspired by the mesmeric cult film Holy Mountain directed

by Alejandro Jodorowsky in 1973. This film has been a rich source of inspiration to Judge; its wild and dangerous imagery will be a departure point for a range of artists making striking interventions over the course of the evening. The interior of Club PST will be transformed in accordance with the dark hallucinogenic theme…

A rare set from Oni Ayhun ( ) will compliment this unique event. “Oni Ayhun’s music is (about) drama.

OA makes records that combines disturbed dance music on the border to insanity with free dreamy drone stories without a beat. Like a surrealistic musical with a narrative based on associations, abstractions and confusion, the music is a journey through multiple settings and scenes”. www.oniayhun.com Also featuring live performance from Brian Catling, Eleni Savvidou, Eloise Fornieles, Iona Kewney Joost Nieuwenburg and DJ set from LuckyPDF. www.harminderjudge.com

Photo: Linda Cooper

Shabba Dabba Dah: HOLY COMMUNION Daniel Lismore (UK) Date

Friday 6 April, 9.30pm til late price

£5 in advance, £7 on the door venue

The Q Club loft space, 18+ only

Daniel Lismore, ‘London’s most outrageous dresser’ (Vogue) and star of the alternative London clubbing scene, hosts what promises to be an extraordinary party. Taking place in the legendary Q Club – a grand deconsecrated cathedral in the heart of Birmingham, Shabba Dabba Dah is an outrageous, sacrilegous Good-turned-bad Friday night of adventure. One for voyeurs and those who crave immortality through iconography... expect DIY high fashion dressing up, bad nuns and twisted Madonnas. Fierce will be running its own glam beauty parlour for those who need dolling up. Paparazzi will be roaming the dancefloor. The best outfits make the final cut film of the night.

Daniel Lismore, originally hailing from neighbouring city Coventry, picks up where the likes of Leigh Bowery left off, collapsing distinctions between fashion, art and clubbing. www.daniellismore.tumblr.com

IMPACT Mehmet Sander (TR) Date

Friday 30 March, 9pm (approx 1 hour) price

£10 / 7 venue

@AE Harris

A new piece of high-impact choreography presented in the former metal works @AE Harris and devised with local participants. ‘ Dance is to be performed and perceived primarily on a physical level... Physics is used to create locomotion through invisible forces such as impact, rebound, inertia, velocity and ricochet. Correspondingly, movement systems are developed without the use of the bottom of the feet, i.e. popping, splatting, thumping.’ These words from Mehmet Sander’s manifesto, written over 20 years ago and rigorously adhered to today, give a taster of what to expect.

Mehmet Sander currently lives in Turkey. He started dancing with Geyvan Mcmillen in Istanbul continuing his dance education at the London Contemporary Dance School, California State University (Long Beach), Harvard University and American Dance Festival.

In 1990 he founded the Mehmet Sander Dance Company and in the 90s was awarded the Long Beach Public Arts Fund Artists Award and the Lester Horton Dance Award.

Presented by Fierce Festival and the Live Art Development Agency.

Supported by Stan’s Cafe. The process of Mehmet Sander working with local participants was originally developed during an AIR Project Residency at Queen Mary, University of London.

Fierce Thoughts…

Mehmet Sander is a visionary.

He wrote his ‘Manifesto on Dance’ aged 23 and has been living it through his career, putting it into action ever since. When Mehmet first saw the video of his work Single Space projected on the wall @AE Harris (a venue in a metal factory, providing the perfect foil for his uncompromising choreography) he said: “You’ve made my dream come true.”

– Laura, Fierce Artistic Director

Photo: L.Bernaerts

Time Has Fallen Asleep In The Afternoon Sunshine (UK Premiere) Mette Edvardsen (BE/NO) Date

Friday 30 March – Saturday 7 April, 10.30am – 5pm (individual slots of approx 30 mins) price

£3 venue

Birmingham Central Library

This intimate scenario for one audience member at a time is inspired by Ray Bradbury’s sci-fi novel Fahrenheit 451.

Here books are forbidden and burnt. An underground community learns them by heart for future preservation.

For this work a group of local non-professional performers have memorised a book of their choice. Together they form a library collection consisting of ‘living books’. You are invited to make a half-hour appointment with a ‘book’, over the course of which you will experience a one-on-one recital. The books include Aesop’s Fables, The Short Stories of Oscar Wilde, Kafka’s The Trial, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, (Un)arranged Marriage

by Bali Rai, Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville, Crash by J.G. Ballard and I am a Cat by Natsume So¯seki.

The work of Mette Edvardsen is situated within the performing arts field, she has worked for several years as a dancer and performer for Les Ballets C de la B and danced in pieces by Thomas Hauert/ZOO, Bock/Vincenzi, Mårten Spångberg, Lynda Gaudreau, and deepblue amongst others.

Presented with Birmingham Repertory Theatre in association with Birmingham Central Library.

Concept: Mette Edvardsen. With: Aaron Virdee, Chloe Fisher, David Helbich, Elly Clarke, Kristien Van den Brande, Mette Edvardsen, Moqapi Selassie, Philip Holyman… Production: Helga Duchamps/ duchamps vzw and Mette Edvardsen/ Athome. Special thanks to: Dubbelspel (STUK Kunstencentrum & 30CC, Leuven), Kaaitheater/ Brussels, Sarah Vanhee. Supported by: Norsk Kulturråd, Fond for Lyd og Bilde, Fond for Utøvende Kunstnere, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Flemish Authorities, Step Beyond travel grants.

Title: Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine is a sentence from a book by Alexander Smith appearing in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953).

www.metteedvardsen.be

Fierce Thoughts…

I first experienced this work in Leuven, Belgium at Playground Festival with a colleague. There were options for books to be read in Flemish, French or English.

We were surprised by the piece’s impact despite not knowing the titles or even the language.

Watching someone trying to remember, sometimes stuttering, failing, this ‘performance’ of the act of remembering struck us deeply.

– Harun, Fierce Artistic Director

Photo: Colm Hogan

BERLIN LOVE TOUR (UK Premiere) Playgroup (IE) Date

Friday 30 March – Sunday 8 April, 6.30pm (approx 1hr 45, no show Sunday 1 April) price

£12 / 9 venue

Start point: Outside The Crescent Theatre, Sheepcote Street

“ Welcome to Berlin! Walk through this famously divided city and journey into the depths of the human heart. Visit the Berlin Wall, the Brandenburg Gate and the notorious site of Hitler’s bunker. Hear stories of tragedy and lost love. Your experienced and charming guide will reveal the secrets of this city of angels and ruins, and may have a few stories of her own to tell along the way.”

BERLIN LOVE TOUR is a guided tour of the city, with Birmingham standing-in for Berlin. An outdoor, promenade experience using monuments and memory, the performance is about contradictory impulses to remember and forget, how places are charged with the events that happened there, and how we carry around all the places we’ve been inside us. Dress for the weather, wear comfortable shoes, and bring an open heart.

Written by Lynda Radley after an idea by Tom Creed and Hilary O’Shaughnessy.

Performed by Hilary O’Shaughnessy. Costume design by Deirdre Dwyer.

Produced by Lara Hickey. Directed by Tom Creed.

This walking tour lasts approximately 1h 45mins. If you have concerns about access please contact the box office.

Presented with Birmingham Repertory Theatre.

Developed with the support of an Arts Council of Ireland Projects: New Work Award, a work in progress showing as part of Project Brand New, and MAKE, facilitated by Cork Midsummer Festival, Dublin Fringe Festival, Project Arts Centre and Theatre Forum. First performed at Dublin Fringe Festival 2010, funded by an Arts Council of Ireland Theatre Project Award and a Cork City Council Theatre Project Award, and with support from Irish Theatre Institute and Rough Magic Hub. The performances of BERLIN LOVE TOUR at Fierce are generously supported by Culture Ireland; and the Jerwood Charitable Foundation as part of ‘Re-Tracing the City’a programme of walking-based public artwork within Fierce Festival 2012.

playgrouptheatre.tumblr.com

Fierce Thoughts…

I saw Berlin Love Tour on my first visit to Dublin. It was a beautiful way to experience an unfamiliar city. Not through the literal explanation of buildings and their factual histories but via the filter of another place, Berlin, which in 2010 I had yet to visit. Reading Calvino’s Invisible Cities at the time, I kept asking myself to what degree are all our cities escapist fictions?

– Harun, Fierce Artistic Director

Love Letters Straight From Your Heart Uninvited Guests and Fuel (UK) Date

Saturday 31 March & Sunday 1 April, 9.30pm (approx 1hr 30 minutes) price

£12 / 9 venue

TROVE

Let’s raise our glasses to long lost loves and current lovers, to mums, to dads and to absent friends. Uninvited Guests stage an event that is somewhere between a wedding reception, a wake and a radio dedication show. We speak of our own and other’s loves – deep, passionate, ambivalent and unrequited – and dedicate songs to them. Using dedications contributed before the event, the performers recite words exclusively written by those in the audience, creating unique content for every show that is then interspersed with back-to-back songs played in an amateur DJ battle.

Audience and performers are seated at two long tables, where cava is served, toasts are made and speeches given, continuing the company’s practice of blurring the lines between theatre and social festivity. If you want to join us on this happy occasion, send a dedication to someone you love to info@uninvited-guests.net.

Uninvited Guests is a UK company founded in 1998.

They are dedicated to producing innovative, collaborative and challenging work that uses the high-tech and low-tech, visceral and virtual, new and second-hand material, to produce original and ground-breaking performance pieces. Love Letters Straight From Your Heart is presented alongside another show from this company, Make Better Please, at two separate but historically resonant sites.

A BAC Scratch and an Arnolfini We Live Here commission. Also commissioned

by Leeds Met Studio Theatre. Produced by Fuel, presented in association with mac.

www.uninvited-guests.net

Fierce Thoughts…

I am a groupie for this show, which I have probably seen at least three times. I’ve blinked back tears as a table full of pensioners sang a throaty and spontaneous chorus of Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again, I’ve stared into the eyes of strangers and watched a very dear friend dancing his heart out for his unborn child. It’s potent.

– Laura, Fierce Artistic Director

Photo: Ben Dowden

Make Better Please Uninvited Guests, in collaboration with Lewis Gibson and Fuel (UK) Date

Friday 30 March, 7pm Saturday 31 March & Sunday 1 April, 6pm (approx 1hr 30 mins) price

£12 / 9 venue

Moseley Friends Institute

Bring us the troubles of the world, this city’s crises and the hope in your hearts.

Uninvited Guests are in town. We call on the people to gather with us, to read the day’s newspapers together, to speak and to listen.

We will give voice to the concerns of the hour!

We will question the powers that be!

We will make things better! We will make things better!

This is a town hall meeting and a radio broadcast, a public protest and the news of your world. In these times of crisis we make a collective ministry with you, our society of friends. Possessed by the spirits of corporate fat cats, cabinet ministers and media tycoons, we invoke the demons of the day, in order to banish them forever. Frothing at the mouth, we dance it out, rock out and rage on your behalf.

Each show will draw on the day’s news and will be about whatever matters to you. We’ll speak the unspeakable and do the unthinkable for you. These performances sited in Moseley’s Friends Institute explicitly nod to the company’s appropriation and research of Quaker activity.

Presented by Fuel. Commissioned and developed by Theatre Bristol, Bristol Old Vic and BAC. Funded by Arts Council England. Developed with the support of Beaford Arts. Supported by the Bryant Trust.

Fierce performances presented in association with mac.

www.uninvited-guests.net

Fierce Thoughts…

There is an almost hysterical quality to Uninvited Guests’ cry “We will make things better!

We will make things better!”, but there’s something in the bravery of this bold (and probably futile) statement that’s totally beguiling.

I can’t wait to see our special performances of the piece in the beautiful room upstairs at the Moseley Friends Institute (an old Quaker meeting house), raising ghosts from Birmingham’s heritage.

– Laura, Fierce Artistic Director

Photo: Gemma Riggs

Cupid Subject to_change (UK) Date

Friday 30 March, Saturday 31 March, Sunday 1 April, 6pm and 8.30pm (No shows Monday 2 April) Tuesday 3 – Thursday 5 April, 7.30pm Friday 6 – Sunday 8 April, 6pm and 8.30pm price

£12 / 9 venue

Fierce Thoughts…

The work shares the title of one my favourite Sam Cooke songs, the chorus lyrics sum up the giddy excitement I felt after a work-in-progress sharing at BAC: ‘ Cupid draw back your bow And let your arrow go Straight to my lover’s heart for me Cupid please hear my cry And let your arrow fly Straight to my lover’s heart for me.’

mac, 16 + only

Cupid maps an exploration of the stars, love, and personal mythology. Join Subject to_change on a field trip like no other, as they lead you through the cosmos and into each other’s hearts. This work – part performance, part participatory installation – is for a limited audience of twenty at a time.

Subject to_change is a collaborative company comprising three artists: Abigail Conway, Lara Haworth and Lucy Hayhoe.

Subject to_change make live art works that defy theatrical convention by challenging the boundaries of artistic performance. Their work prioritises spectator engagement.

It strives to re-appropriate the traditions and etiquette of theatre and art, in order to offer a unique experience.

Cupid is a Subject to_change and BAC co-production, commissioned

by Fierce Festival and mac. We would like to acknowledge the support through research and development given to us by: Arts Council England and The Basement.

www.subjecttochange.org.uk

– Harun, Fierce Artistic Director

Dachshund U.N. Bennett Miller (AU) Date

Saturday 31 March, 1pm (approx 45 minutes) price

FREE venue

OUTSIDE IKON GALLERY, BRINDLEYPLACE

Dachshund U.N. is both a large scale architectural installation and a performance work that examines the role of the United Nations as a risk management organisation. A scale replica of a former U.N. office in Geneva, Switzerland, will be constructed by Miller outside Ikon Gallery and on Saturday 31 March this structure will play host to a meeting of the U.N.’s Commission on Human Rights, at which the world’s politicians are live dachshunds, or ‘sausage dogs’.

Dachshund U.N. is both a joyful and chaotic experiment, and a meditation on the utopian aspirations of the Commission on Human Rights, and our capacity as humans to imagine and achieve a universal system of justice.

The dachshunds have been sourced from owners across the West Midlands, who have personally engaged with Bennett during his residency in Birmingham.

Their contribution is the fruit of an intensely convivial aspect of the work necessary for its realisation.

Bennett Miller is a sculptor and installation artist from Perth, Western Australia. Miller has created large-scale installation works for numerous group exhibitions and festivals within Australia. During this time Miller has also held solo exhibitions at IASKA (2006), Canberra Contemporary Art Space (2007) and Chalk Horse (2009).

Bennett spent five years obsessed with mini golf for his Golf War series of 2003-2007, which retold the story of a war in Iraq across nine different courses.

Presented in association with Ikon and Brindleyplace. Supported

by Department of Culture and the Arts – Western Australia and Australia Council for the Arts (Australian Government). Dachshund U.N. was originally commissioned and developed for the 2010 Next Wave Festival in Melbourne, Australia. This project forms part of a three-year partnership between Fierce and Next Wave, supported by British Council Australia.

bit.ly/dachshundun

Fierce Thoughts…

Dachshund U.N. is a cocktail of an almost absurd amount of chutzpah, playful wit and sharp politics.

It’s been incredibly fun making it in Birmingham. We’ve been up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday for dog shows at the NEC, we were in parks in December and Bennett saw his first ever snow. Mainly we met amazing, generous, brilliant people (and dogs). We thank them all so much.

– Laura, Fierce Artistic Director

Acts of Memory Monica Ross (UK) and co-recitors Date

Saturday 31 March, 2.30pm (approx 1 hour) price

FREE venue

St Philip’s Square (outside Birmingham Cathedral)

VIVID is inviting individuals from Birmingham to take part in solo, collective and multi-lingual recitations from memory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with artist Monica Ross. Participants are invited to learn a small part of the Declaration of Human Rights and recite it in public, in their own language, as part of this unique public performance.

Presented in association with VIVID (www.vivid.org.uk).

www.actsofmemory.net

Photo: Graeme Miller

Track Graeme Miller (UK) Date

Saturday 31 March and Sunday 1 April 11am – 5pm (individual slots – allow at least 20mins, more at busy times) price

FREE venue

Near Gravelly Hill, signage from Aston train station

This moveable participatory installation throws landscape through 90° and sets it in motion. Face-up and camera-style, participants are moved by their individual ‘grip’ on a slow, smooth journey along a 100 metre length of dolly track and invited to gaze upwards. They undergo a solitary, immersive experience as the landscape is transformed around them. Track takes place in the dramatic underbelly of the city’s Gravelly Hill Interchange. Opened in 1972 and popularly known as Spaghetti Junction, the structure plaits together five different levels of road on 559 columns up to 80 feet high and has become intrinsically associated with Birmingham. Track reveals a bewildering visual and sonic perspective from the landscape below where a ground-level system of local roads, railways, canals, rivers and pipelines make their own intersections.

Graeme Miller is a theatre maker, composer and artist.

Emerging from the bold and influential stage work of Impact Theatre Co-operative in the 1980s, a group he co-founded, his own work now embraces a wide range of media. With the idea of being ‘a composer of many things that may include music’, he has made theatre, dance, installations and interventions.

No need to book, just drop in. Open to all ages, children should be accompanied by an adult at all times. If you have concerns about mobility and access please get in touch via contact@wearefierce.org bit.ly/trackbirmingham This version of Track is presented in association with Ikon. Track is an Artsadmin project, co-produced by EntreCour et Jardins and originally commissioned by home live art and Wandsworth Council Arts Team for The Shimmy.

www.artsadmin.co.uk/artists/graeme-miller

Fierce Thoughts…

Matthew Higginbottom (production manager) and I have made site visits to Spaghetti Junction a number of times.

When we visited with Graeme his excitement was palpable as he’d always wanted to do Track here, amid the road-dust of this concrete highway. Sometimes we find it harder to find beauty in industrial architecture compared to more natural surroundings, but this work focuses on the poetics of moving through space itself.

– Harun, Fierce Artistic Director

Opening of Edible Eastside: Garden Party Date

Sunday 1 April, 12pm price

FREE venue

Edible Eastside

Join us for the official opening of Edible Eastside, a new public space in the heart of Digbeth, offering a bold communal vision for the future. Edible Eastside will become a interdisciplinary space for discussions around art, urbanism, and cultural change. The inaugural study called Hedge Enquiry will include Eloise Fornieles’ new performance installation, The Message, and a series of specially themed salons and interventions, which will explore the nature of the re-imagined space. www.edibleeastside.net

Photo: Cathy Wade

The Message Eloise Fornieles (UK) Date

Sunday April 1 – Saturday 7th April, (closing fire ritual at 7.45pm Saturday 7 April) price

FREE venue

Edible Eastside

The Message is a performance and installation by the canal in Birmingham on the Edible Eastside site. It will comprise mounds of chalk evoking an undulating landscape. There will be a sculpture boxed in a wooden crate on top of one the mounds. You are invited to write a message of hope or fear on a piece of paper, which Fornieles will fold and post into a hole in the crate.

She will do this for a week until the crate is full of messages. At the end of the festival the crate will be set on fire and as it burns the sculpture will be revealed.

Eloise Fornieles is represented by Paradise Row gallery.

Following a BA in Fine Art at Kingston University, Fornieles graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2006 with an MFA in Fine Art Media. Her work engages with human interaction, intimacy and the relationship between beauty and violence, using photography and video as an extension of her work in performance and installation. www.eloisefornieles.com

Fierce Thoughts…

I’m intrigued by the tension between Eloise’s esoteric and personally devised ritual, with what promises to be an open garden.

Perhaps this sets the tone for how a truly free and shared environment might function. A public space which doesn’t presume uniformity of behaviour, which finds its tone through the individuality of those who contribute to it rather than the other way round.

– Harun, Fierce Artistic Director

Photo: LuckyPDF

LuckyPDF School of Global Art LuckyPDF (UK) Date

Sun 1 April Enrollment via Festival Hub or www.schoolofglobalart.org, Classes 2 – 5pm price

FREE venue

Heath Mill Studios

LuckyPDF present the School of Global Art, “a revolutionary new correspondence school offering courses in New Media Art [leading to BA, MA & PhD equivalent qualifications]”. As part of the School of Global Art LuckyPDF will be hosting exclusive learning events and expert networking parties at Fierce Festival.

Their recruitment stand will be in the Festival Hub; while the project will have an ongoing presence online.

LuckyPDF is an artists’ group that has been active in Peckham, south-east London, since late 2008. They are: James Early, John Hill, Ollie Hogan and Yuri Pattison (all b. 1986). Working collaboratively with an ever-changing network of emerging artists, they produce online television programmes, internet interventions and live events. Recent projects have been at Frieze (2011), The Conservatory, Barbican Centre (2011); LuckyPDF TV, Nottingham Contemporary (2011) and Auto Italia, London (2010). www.luckypdf.com

Fierce Thoughts…

This group have received a wealth of attention from curators in the last 18 months. Why such interest now – from so many? Their concerns (internet memes, corporate narratives, the rapidity of online culture) have an extraordinary currency. The multiple manifestations of their work often adopt the same online formats they parody, the result has been a hyper-acceleration of the circulation of their output in the art world.

– Harun, Fierce Artistic Director

Photo: Justin Green

Stay Behind the Line Reynir Hutber (UK) Date

Friday 16 March – Sunday 8 April 2012, 12 – 5pm price

FREE venue

Grand Union

Stay Behind the Line is an interactive installation that takes place in a specially constructed cell-like environment. When a visitor enters the space through its narrow doorway, they are confronted by a wall-mounted surveillance monitor directly in front of them. They may now notice a live relay of their feet in the top third of the screen. In the lower portion of the screen there is an anomaly: a superimposed recording of the artist’s twitching, naked body that is no longer physically present in the room. What happens next is down to the visitor…

Hutber’s projects explore and question recurrent concerns in the lineage of performance practice such as endurance, transcendence and transgression – in an era in which the authenticity of a visual document is increasingly hard to verify and appearances are effectively everything. Hutber seeks, as in certain works of artists such as Chris Burden and Marina Abramovich, to pursue risk and to engage his audience in an ethical and aesthetic experiment. He stages open-ended scenarios whose implications are ultimately determined by the audience’s response and interaction.

Presented in association with Grand Union.

www.reynirhutber.blogspot.com

Fierce Thoughts…

Reynir unites two aspects of live art that seemingly obsess the medium; one, the ongoing concern with the body as site, especially the politics of its vulnerability the other, engagement with media technology as a means of altering representation and identity. Here he sets up rules that the work demands the audience break, extending his inquiry into regulation, control and self-negation.

– Harun, Fierce Artistic Director

CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET? WILL YOU GIVE US ONE NIGHT OF YOUR LIFE?

SECRET SHOW Date

Thu 5 April, 7.30pm (approximately 2 hours) price

£15 single ticket / £55 ticket for a group of four people together

Can you keep a secret? Will you give us one night of your life? Fierce and Capsule are working in collaboration with some anonymous artists to create a mysterious and memorable experience. When you book a ticket (as an individual or with a small group of friends) you will be asked to leave your email address and mobile phone number. We will arrange to meet you at a location near Birmingham City Centre, where your experience will begin...

Commissioned by Capsule and Fierce Festival. Supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation as part of part of ‘Re-Tracing the City’, a programme of walking-based public artwork within Fierce Festival 2012.

www.wearefierce.org/secretshow

Fierce Thoughts…

I have a passion for collecting extreme experiences. When I heard of this event (and how it had played out in other cities across the world), I knew we had to have it for Fierce, and that Capsule would be brave enough to do it with us. The anonymity of the artists is strictly protected until after the event has taken place, so we can’t say much more.

– Laura, Fierce Artistic Director

Photo: Christy Pessagno

Mermaid Show Ann Liv Young (US) Date

Friday 6th April, 9pm (approx 1 hour) price

£12 / 9 (ticket for Mermaid Show allows free access to Shabba Dabba Dah) venue

Q Club, 18+ only

A bare-breasted woman with long hair, silvery mermaid tail and reptilian contact lenses writhes lasciviously in a plastic basin: Ann Liv Young has a history of re-interpreting fairy tales. This time, she has turned her attention to “The Little Mermaid”.

Rasping Katy Perry’s “Fireworks” into the microphone, she butchers a raw fish and tries to peel herself out of her slippery skin – this New York performance artist is totally uninhibited and unselfconscious. Her show thrives on interaction, provoking the audience with her corporal rather than linguistic dialogue.

Mermaid Show will be performed in the faded grandeur of a deconsecrated cathedral rarely open nowdays and known to a certain generation of Brummies as a legendary club venue.

Previous works have included moments in which she has rolled around in her dog’s ashes, had sex with her co-stars, covered herself in blood, drank urine and attacked a PETA activist. Her shows, which she writes, performs, costume designs, stage designs and produces, genre-bend elements of music video, porn, and fine art. Based in New York, she has presented work at major venues in the US and Europe. She has previously reinterpreted the stories of Snow White, Cinderella, and George and Martha Washington. In 2009 Ann Liv Young performed Solo and The Bagwell in Me at BAC in London – performances much talked about to this day.

Mermaid Show is part of a UK tour in association with The Arches (Glasgow) and Colchester Arts Centre, in transit festival, Black Box Theatre and Avant Garden.

www.annlivyoung.com

Fierce Thoughts…

“One whole spanish mackerel fish (raw, dead) each night (just rinsed please and put in fridge to keep fresh. please do not have fish cleaned).” This is a line from Ann Liv Young’s rider. Significantly for an artist who focuses on pulling apart literary myths and fictions, her reputation continues to acquire a mythic quality of its own. Her work genuinely lives up to the rhetoric around ‘risk’ in live performance.

– Harun, Fierce Artistic Director

Illustration: Lewis Herriot

Curious Sounds in Curious Spaces Date

Saturday 7 April, 12pm – 5pm price

FREE venue

Symphony Hall

Symphony Hall throws open its doors for a special event in partnership with Fierce Festival as part of the world famous venue’s 21st Anniversary celebrations.

Experience the unusual side of sound and music.

Symphony Hall will become a laboratory of ear-opening sound experiments, a chance to discover the mechanisms behind sound and explore areas of Symphony Hall not usually open to the public. Curious Sounds in Curious Spaces will feature music-based performances, installations, educational interactive activities and workshops for all the family.

Highlights include Phil Minton’s Feral Choir, Jem Finer’s Mobile Sinfonia, Stephen Cornford & Bill Leslie, Graeme Miller, Felix’s Machines, Brian Duffy, Ray Lee, Juneau Projects, 8-Bit Lounge and SOUNDkitchen.

Curated by Fierce as part of Symphony Halls 21st Anniversary festival.

http://bit.ly/curious-sounds

Photo: Roshana Rubin-Mayhew

Gifts of the Spirit: Automatic Writing Ron Athey (US) Date

Saturday 7 April, 9pm (1 hour approx) price

£12 / 9 venue

TROVE

A performance installation conceived, scored and directed

by Ron Athey with automatic composition and music performance by Othon Mataragas. As a starting point Ron Athey will read extracts from his memoir, Gifts of the Spirit, which will be processed by the collective unconscious of 16 automatic writers, a hypnotist, a grand piano, 6 typists, 4 cut-up editors, 1 reader, and a glossolalia chorus – to produce the final text. The performance focuses upon notions of channelling through automatic writing and revisiting the selective randomness of cut-up technique. This performance is sited in TROVE, Birmingham’s former science museum and the setting of Dominic Johnson’s Departure at Fierce 2011.

Ron Athey has a rich association with Fierce Festival, notably through his curation of the multi-artform platform Visions of Excess which featured scores of invited artists in Fierce 2003. Athey has been a crucial figure in the development of performance art, body art, club performance; the intersections between punk, queer and alternative cultures. He has explored sexual politics, specifically in relation to queer practices and the politics of HIV/AIDS; alongside the representation of religion and ritual.

Gifts of the Spirit was originally developed during an AIR Project Residency at Queen Mary, University of London.

www.ronatheynews.blogspot.com

Fierce Thoughts…

The sound in this piece is remarkable – percussive tapping of typewriters, a vocal chorus, Othon’s music and spoken episodes from Ron’s life story.

It’s been a privilege to meet him in person finally – he has had a long history with Fierce before our time: Visions (and Revisions) of Excess were some of the most legendary nights the festival has seen…

– Laura, Fierce Artistic Director

Group walk with Hamish Fulton Date

Sunday 8 April, 2.30 – 4.30pm price

Places are FREE but booking is essential by calling IKON on 0121 248 0708. venue

CITY-CENTRE

In 1973, having walked over 1000 miles in 47 days from Duncansby Head to Land’s End, Fulton decided to ‘only make art resulting from the experience of individual walks’. Since then the act of walking has remained central to his artistic practice. He has said ‘If I do not walk, I cannot make a work of art’. Calls for political justice, for Tibet and previously on behalf of Australian Aborigines and North American Indians, also recur in Fulton’s work, corresponding to the individual and artistic freedom embodied within it.

This walk complements Hamish Fulton’s current solo exhibition at Ikon Gallery.

Supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation as part of ‘Re-Tracing the City’, a programme of walking-based public artwork within Fierce Festival 2012. Presented in association with Ikon.

www.hamish-fulton.com

Talks and Workshops Secrets and Lies in Contemporary Art Friday 6 April 3pm Festival Hub, VIVID Panel featuring Ioannis Ioannou from The New Art Gallery Walsall, artist James Webb and writer/theatre-maker Andy Field (as chair).

Hamish Fulton and Jonathan Watkins in Conversation Saturday 7 April, 6.30 – 7.30pm Ikon Gallery Join Hamish Fulton and Jonathan Watkins, Ikon Director, as they discuss a variety of topics relating to the artist’s work including different categories of walks, the Tibet issue and the influence of mountaineering.

Places are free but should be reserved by calling Ikon on 0121 248 0708.

Fierce 2013 Our next festival will be in the autumn of 2013.

It will be Fierce’s 15th Anniversary. We’ll be fully fledged teenagers and will celebrate with a focus on youth. This has partly begun with the launch of the Fierce Press Gang, a Birmingham City Council funded scheme that has allowed the training of 12 young people 16 – 19 years old in various digital online reporting skills. We hope that 2013 will be enriched by these voices in the programming of our next festival.

We are also thrilled to announce a three-year partnership with Next Wave Festival, Melbourne, Australia. We are developing a framework for a long-lasting, sustainable international relationship based around mutual interests, dialogue and exchange.

Our presentation of Bennett Miller’s Dachshund U.N. (originally a Next Wave commission), with the support of the Australia Council for the Arts Hopscotch Initiative and the DCA (Department of Culture and the Arts – Western Australia) is the first step in this journey. Next, Fierce Festival artists LuckyPDF will travel to Australia (after appearing at Fierce) to be one of five collectives in Next Wave’s keynote project, Wake up and wait for the sun to rise: 500 methods for a new beginning. The relationship will also include producer exchanges, critical discourse around each other’s festival programmes and eventually the development of a new international project. We are extremely grateful to the British Council Australia for supporting this initiative.

Finally, as well as looking to the future, we are looking into the past. Since its founding by Mark Ball in 1998, Fierce has produced some of the most iconic performances Birmingham has ever seen; we are making plans to open up and share the treasure of Fierce’s history as an active resource. At the moment we are researching both academic and performative engagements with our festival archive, and are in conversations about a publication celebrating 15 years of Fierce Festival, to appear in 2013.

How to support us to make this happen…

If you are interested in supporting or donating to Fierce please contact artisticdirectors@wearefierce.org Donate by text message by sending FIER12 £5 to 70070 or donate to us online at Just Giving www.justgiving.com/fiercefestival

Elsewhere in Birmingham during Fierce Eastside Projects YANGJIANG GROUP – After Dinner Shu Fa Cricket Pavilion Mar 17 – May 5 Private view Friday 16 March, 6pm – 8pm Yangjiang Group will produce a performative installation – post-planning social food calligraphy meets a cricket pavilion.

This project is co-commissioned with Grizedale Arts (UK) and Vitamin Creative Space (Guangzhou/Beijing).

DAVID ROWAN – Pacha Kuti X Mar 17 – May 5 Private view Fri Mar 16 6pm – 8pm David Rowan, who was awarded the inaugural ESP members solo show, will present new moving image works which explore the lesser-known sub-infrastructure of the Birmingham and Black Country region. www.eastsideprojects.org Ikon Gallery Hamish Fulton now – 22nd April This exhibition, a major collaboration between Ikon and Turner Contemporary, Margate is the first museum show for British artist Hamish Fulton since his retrospective at Tate Britain in 2002.

Fulton describes himself as a ‘walking artist’, with his work joining the two separate disciplines of walking and art.

Sarah Browne now – 22nd April Ikon presents the first UK solo exhibition

by Dublin-based artist Sarah Browne, a survey of film and sculptural works, including the artist’s entry for the 2009 Venice Biennale. www.ikon-gallery.co.uk 48SHEET 48SHEET will transform Birmingham into a unique urban gallery throughout April 2012 by utilising up to 100 advertising billboards across the city. www.48sheet.com Still Walking 15 March – 1st April A festival of walking taking place across Birmingham: artists, architects, historians, lovers and urban planners will take you beyond the tourist trail Supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation as part of part of ‘Re-Tracing the City’, a programme of walking-based public artwork within Fierce Festival 2012.

www.stillwalking.org

Flatpack Festival 14 – 18 March Birmingham’s annual jamboree of films, projections, installations, parties and other unusual happenings related to the silver screen. Loving mix tape programming like no other. www.flatpackfestival.org

Team Fierce

Web programming Nik Grinkevitch

Joint Artistic Directors Laura McDermott & Harun Morrison

Documentors Kate Rowles & Jaskirt Dhaliwal

Festival Coordinator Laura Coult

Fierce Festival Board of Directors Alan Rivett (Warwick Arts Centre – chair) Matthew Austin (MAYK and Mayfest) Deborah Kermode (IKON) Dr Cath Lambert (The University of Warwick) Richard Moulton (Treasurer) Alexandra Tomkinson (CBSO)

Participation Coordinator Nicola Lowery Project Manager (Fierce Press Gang – Next Generation) Amy Martin Project Manager (Gifts of the Spirit) Lisa Newman Freelance administration Sadie Newman Production Manager Matthew Higginbottom / Queen and Crawford Production Assistant Matthew Moore Intern (university placement – Birmingham City University) Laoura Nicolaou Intern (university placement – De Montfort University) Megan Vaughan Festival flaneur (social media) Aaron Wright Accountancy Gary & Sue Brookes Regional Press and PR Helen Stallard and Annabel Clarke National Press and PR Emma Pettit, Sophie Stott and Stephanie Knox at Margaret PR Graphic Design (Fierce Identity, Brochure & Website) Julie Kim Additional Graphic design Cody Lee Barbour Graphic Patterns Josef Musil

Acknowledgements & Thank you’s Andy Field, Bobbie Gardner, Elly Clarke, Helen Walker, all our parents, Yasmeen Baig Clifford, Marian Hall at VIVID; Manzils for late night dinners; We Are Eastside (7Inch / Flatpack, Capsule / Supersonic, Eastside Projects, Grand Union, Ikon and VIVID); Aldgate Press; Gerv at Mission Print; Dan Whitehouse and Amanda Roberts at mac; Paul Keene, Nick Loveland, Crispin Hdges at Symphony Hall; Raidene Carter and Gerard Swift at Birmingham Repertory Theatre; Katie Roberts and Sophie Brady at BAC; Charlie Levine at TROVE; Charlotte Martin and all at Stan’s Cafe; Jackie Wylie and Louise Irwin at The Arches; Cathy Wade and Jayne Bradley at Urban Grain; Gavin Wade at Eastside Projects; Cheryl Jones at Grand Union; Sandra Hall at Friction Arts; Anthony Roberts at Colchester Arts Centre; Mark Godber at Artsadmin; Lara Hickey at Playgroup; Kate McGrath, Christina Elliot, Roz Wynn, Stuart Heyes and Kris Snaddon at Fuel; Alison Gagen, Mike Kaloski Naylor and Ros Robins at Arts Council England; Shonagh Manson and Jon Opie at Jerwood Charitable Foundation; Emily Sexton at Next Wave festival; Kirsten Freeman at British Council Australia; Ellie Rance and Tim Manson at Marketing Birmingham; Behidza Vejzovic at Moseley Friends Institute; Chris Moriarty at Brum Notes; Stick Up Media; Impact; Mark Ball; David Jubb (and Rich and Kate) for starting this madness, James Smith from This Is Tomorrow and Jonty Harrison from BEAST. Fierce Festival are grateful to JA Productions for their ongoing support.

About Graphic Patterns The Graphic patterns feed off the energy of Fierce.

Generated by a multi agent system processing each of the artists’ images, the dots create their own journeys through the festival programme. Gathering and colliding, scattering and packing around events and performances, they catch the changes in tempo and mood as they race around absorbing the festival buzz.

Funders:

Partners:

_ WARWICK BAR DIGBETH BIRMINGHAM

Media Partners:

Fierce Festival Programme Schedule Thursday 29 March

Venue

Times

PILOT

mac

7.30pm

Reynir Hutber, Stay Behind the Line

Grand Union

12pm – 5pm

Friday 30 March

Venue

Times

Subject to_change, Cupid

mac

6.00pm & 8.30pm

Uninvited Guests, Make Better Please

Moseley Friends Institute

7pm

Mehmet Sander, IMPACT

AE Harris

9pm

Mette Edvardsen, THFAITAS*

Central Library

10.30am – 5pm

Playgroup, BERLIN LOVE TOUR

Meet outside The Crescent Theatre

6.30pm

Reynir Hutber, Stay Behind the Line

Grand Union

12pm – 5pm

Grouper, Violet Replacement

The Garage (Festival Hub) – VIVID

8pm & afterparty, 10.30pm

Saturday 31 March

Venue

Times

Subject to_change, Cupid

mac

6.00pm & 8.30pm

Uninvited Guests, Make Better Please

Moseley Friends Institute

6pm

Graeme Miller, Track

Gravelly Hill, Under Spaghetti Junction

11am – 5pm

Mette Edvardsen, THFAITAS*

Central Library

10.30am – 4pm

Playgroup, BERLIN LOVE TOUR

Meet outside The Crescent Theatre

6.30pm

Uninvited Guests, Love Letters…**

TROVE

9.30pm

Bennett Miller, Dachshund UN

Oozells Square (outside IKON)

1pm

Monica Ross & co-recitors, Acts of Memory

St Philip’s Square (outside Cathedral)

2.30pm

Reynir Hutber, Stay Behind the Line

Grand Union

12pm – 5pm

Harminder Judge & Fierce, Holy Mountain Party

Club PST

9pm

The Haircut Before the Party

The Garage (Festival Hub) – VIVID

12pm – 7pm

Sunday 1 April

Venue

Times

Subject to_change, Cupid

mac

6.00pm & 8.30pm

Uninvited Guests, Make Better Please

Moseley Friends Institute

6pm

Graeme Miller, Track

Gravelly Hill, Under Spaghetti Junction

11am – 5pm

Uninvited Guests, Love Letters…**

TROVE

9.30pm

Reynir Hutber, Stay Behind the Line

Grand Union

12pm – 5pm

Opening of Edible Eastside/ Eloise Fornieles, The Message

Edible Eastside

12pm – 5pm

The Haircut Before the Party

The Garage (Festival Hub) – VIVID

12pm – 7pm

LuckyPDF, LuckyPDF School of Global Art

Heath Milll Studios

2 – 5pm

Monday 2 April

Venue

Times

THFAITAS*

Central Library

11am – 5pm

Playgroup, BERLIN LOVE TOUR

Meet outside The Crescent Theatre

6.30pm

Reynir Hutber, Stay Behind the Line

Grand Union

12pm – 5pm

Eloise Fornieles, The Message

Edible Eastside, at the rear of 122 Fazeley Street

12pm – 5pm

* The full title of this show is: Time Has Fallen Asleep in the Afternoon Sunshine, by Mette Edvardsen ** The full title of this show is: Love Letters Straight From Your Heart, by Uninvited Guests

Tuesday 3 April

Venue

Times

Subject to_change, Cupid

mac

7.30pm

Mette Edvardsen, THFAITAS*

Central Library

10.30am – 5pm

Playgroup, BERLIN LOVE TOUR

Meet outside The Crescent Theatre

6.30pm

Reynir Hutber, Stay Behind the Line

Grand Union

12pm – 5pm

Eloise Fornieles, The Message

Edible Eastside, at the rear of 122 Fazeley Street

12pm – 5pm

Wednesday 4 April

Venue

Times

Subject to_change, Cupid

mac

7.30pm

Mette Edvardsen, THFAITAS*

Central Library

10.30am – 5pm

Playgroup, BERLIN LOVE TOUR

Meet outside The Crescent Theatre

6.30pm

Reynir Hutber, Stay Behind the Line

Grand Union

12pm – 5pm

Eloise Fornieles, The Message

Edible Eastside, at the rear of 122 Fazeley Street

12pm – 5pm

Thursday 5 April

Venue

Times

Subject to_change, Cupid

mac

7.30pm

Mette Edvardsen, THFAITAS*

Central Library

10.30am – 5pm

Playgroup, BERLIN LOVE TOUR

Meet outside The Crescent Theatre

6.30pm

Reynir Hutber, Stay Behind the Line

Grand Union

12pm – 5pm

Eloise Fornieles, The Message

Edible Eastside, at the rear of 122 Fazeley Street

12pm – 5pm

SECRET SHOW

City Centre location

7.30pm

Friday 6 April

Venue

Times

Subject to_change, Cupid

mac

6.00pm & 8.30pm

Playgroup, BERLIN LOVE TOUR

Meet outside The Crescent Theatre

6.30pm

Ann Liv Young, Mermaid Show

Q Club

9pm

Daniel Lismore, Shabba Dabba Dah

Q Club

9.30pm

Reynir Hutber, Stay Behind the Line

Grand Union

12pm – 5pm

Eloise Fornieles, The Message

Edible Eastside, at the rear of 122 Fazeley Street

12pm – 5pm

Talk: Secrets and Lies in Contemporary Art

The Garage (Festival Hub) – VIVID

3pm

Helen Cole, Collecting Fireworks

The Garage (Festival Hub) – VIVID

12 – 7pm

Saturday 7 April

Venue

Times

Subject to_change, Cupid

mac

6.00pm & 8.30pm

Mette Edvardsen, THFAITAS*

Central Library

10.30am – 5pm

Playgroup, BERLIN LOVE TOUR

Meet outside The Crescent Theatre

6.30pm

Ron Athey, Gifts of the Spirit

TROVE

9pm

Fierce Festival, Curious Sounds in Curious Spaces

Symphony Hall

12pm – 5pm

Hamish Fulton in Conversation with Jonathan Watkins

IKON gallery

6.30 – 7.30pm

Reynir Hutber, Stay Behind the Line

Grand Union

12pm – 5pm

Eloise Fornieles, The Message – final burning ceremony

Edible Eastside

7.45pm

Helen Cole, Collecting Fireworks

The Garage (Festival Hub) – VIVID

12 – 7pm

Sunday 8 April

Venue

Times

Subject to_change, Cupid

mac

6.00pm & 8.30pm

Playgroup, BERLIN LOVE TOUR

Meet outside The Crescent Theatre

6.30pm

Reynir Hutber, Stay Behind the Line

Grand Union

12pm – 5pm

Hamish Fulton – public group walk

City Centre Location

2.30pm – 4.30pm

Feaster

The Garage (Festival Hub) – VIVID

5pm

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