The New Forms Festival and SWARM present Performative – roots+wires and Free Daily :: September 4, 2008; 8:00 pm – September 5, 2008; 1:00 am :: Open Studios, 252 East 1st, Vancouver, BC.

Performative explores differing approaches to new media integration within interdisciplinary contexts. Stemming from research in the fields of dance, lecture, and installation, the works utilize disparate new media technologies to not only accent and augment performance techniques, but to entirely pollinate the creation and presentation of the work.

roots + wires is a series of integrated dance / sound / media experiments inspired by the writing of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. It is a decentralized, anarchistic and (perhaps) never-ending work in progress. Using movement, media, and a modular performance dynamic, roots + wires aims to integrate critical discourse with a non-didactic, interactive, thought provoking form of experimental performance that draws upon many different mediums and styles of presentation.

The current iteration of roots+wires is a playful and speculative investigation into what a ‘Deleuzian’ concept of identity might entail. Borrowing from film, video, dance, business presentations and other time-based forms of presentation, it navigates between an essentialist notions of identity and identity conceived of as a continual process of change, as that which will eventually come to differ from itself. Various incarnations of roots + wires have been shown at Salaam Salon V, Mascall Dance, and Making New Tracks in Vancouver, and the Rhubarb Festival in Toronto.

Free Daily is an interactive dance installation that brings to life various news articles found in some of Vancouver’s free daily newspapers. Created by Amanda Sheather and Arliss Renwick, the space is set up much like a display case at a museum, the dancers ‘rest’ on one of three stages. For 45 minutes the audience is invited to push a button found in front of the stages that randomly selects then projects one of the found articles. With each selection a short sound and dance vignette follow, bringing to life the article’s content. Through this mediation, Free Daily contemplates the power dynamic between performer and media, the illusion of choice, and the effects of juxtaposition. Free Daily has been shown at 12 Minutes Max in Vancouver and Seattle.