Design for Performance Research Hub and UAL Performance Research Network presents:

Problematising Body & Space with Gavin Krastin & Alan Parker

Gavin Krastin and Alan Parker are South African collaborating performance artists, choreographers and scenographers who will be discussing the problematisation of the body and space in relation to design and choreography in their practice. Often working on the periphery, in unconventional sites and with ‘difficult’ costuming, the two propose a strategy based on actively emphasising the inherent ‘problems’ and inscriptions of body, space and performance design as a means to arrive at creative expressions that other processes may not favour. Through generating ‘problems’ an awareness and attention is brought to the ephemerality of the performing body, the architecture and function of space and the materiality of costume design, in which new directions may be found. What this process encourages is a complication and re-assessment of the relationships, hierarchies and experiences between space and performer, designer and choreographer, audience and artwork, artist and consumer, memory and archive.

Gavin Krastin and Alan Parker are South African collaborating performance artists, theatre-makers, choreographers and designer-scenographers with an interest in the body’s representation, limitation and operation in alternative, layered spaces. Their work is inspired by their immediate South African environment and the history embedded in its shifting socio-political climate. Apart from operating within the conventional theatre context, they advocate the migration towards unconventional spaces where unknown risk factors are imminent. The social underpinnings and philosophies of space intrigue them and inspire a questioning of operational systems, thresholds, proximities and the politics of boundary-crossings and transgressions (and the myth making thereof) in their work.

This UAL Performance Research Network presentation will be followed by drinks.