Rotten Sun, a new performance collaboration at Festival Forte

Added on by Kira O'Reilly.

Towards the end of next week I return to Portugal this time traveling a little north of Lisbon to  Montemor-O-Velho Castle where the outstanding Festival Forte of electronic music and visual arts is held.

I go there at the invitation of experimental DJ Lee Adams to join Rotten Sun, his collaboration with musician Mia Zabelka (e-violin, electronic devices, alien objects) and Kevin Craig (video art) for a project called Art of Mirrors, a 45 minutes improvisation between four artists who have never before worked together. 'A gleaming razors edge, reflecting back the blank stare of the void'. You can read more here.

I'm packing my dancing shoes, the line up of music is incredible.

 

 

 

 

Talk and workshop at LifeSpace, Science Art Research Gallery, Dundee

Added on by Kira O'Reilly.

Tomorrow I participate in lunch time talk concerned with "Doing Science in a Gendered World" at LifeSpace Science Art Research Gallery in the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Scotland, UK along with artists Clara Ursitti and Ker Wallwork. This event has been curated by Cicley Farrer.

The title "doing science in a gendered world" is a quote by mathematical biologist and feminist historian of science Evelyn Fox Keller from the 1980s. She was making a case for the importance of who was identifying areas of scientific research, the gendering of language in scientific processes and the infrastructures that had meant that historically, science was typically a field where men worked. The intention of the quote is to highlight that the discussion isn’t simply about ‘women in science’ but recognising that behaviours and organisational systems can influence who does, or continues to do, science.

Following the seminar I will give a workshop exploring some of the spaces in Dundee’s School of Life Sciences in order to experience and examine how bodies (not just human ones) act in relation to institutions, and the kinds of ideas and knowledges that are produced within and with them. The workshop derives from ongoing research by Kira and her collaborator artist Jennifer Willet on the concept of the laboratory as a site to question the relationship between bodies and productions of knowledges. These ideas will reference the ongoing research and art works made in collaboration with Jennifer Willet.

I have not visited Dundee before, so I am very much looking forward to it, to meeting the other artists, curators and workshop participants, vising LifeSpace and to investigating these ideas in some of the labs of the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Scotland, UK.

Image: Kira O’Reilly and Jennifer Willet. Refolding (Laboratory Architectures). School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham, 2010. Photography by Hugo Glendinning

 

 

 

 

 

Group Exhibition My Monster: The Human Animal Hybrid

Added on by Kira O'Reilly.

Work by Jennifer Willet and I will be included in the exhibition My Monster: The Human Animal Hybrid at RMIT which 'explores our enduring fascination and revulsion with the merging of the human and animal, and coincides with the 200th anniversary year of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.'

Kate Clark, 'And She Meant It' (2010). Medium: Ram hide, apoxie, clay, foam, thread, pins, rubber eyes. Size: 26 x 25 x 21 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist.

 

 

Untitled (slick glittery) redux at Steakhouse Live 2018

Added on by Kira O'Reilly.

This years edition of Steakhouse Live in London promises be an extraordinary event over two days. I'll be revisiting Untitled (slick glittery) as a redux, Eggs, glitter, floor, vulnerability, it has been four years since this work was last made; there has never been very much to say about it, it is a series of textures: a rapidly changing menopausal body, materials that trouble, the smattering of matter.

Photo credit: Carrie Ruckle
Rapid Pulse, Chicago, 2014

 

 

Naturally Postnatural - Catalyst: Jennifer Willet, published

Added on by Kira O'Reilly.

I am so very happy to announce the publication of and my contribution to Naturally Postnatural - Catalyst: Jennifer Willet, edited by Ted Herbert and published by Noxious Sector in their Catalyst book series. I have known Jennifer since we both were artists in residence in SymbioticA back in 2004 or there about. Since then we have shared with one another ideas, supported one another both in art and friendship and made a series of collaborative works that are of great importance to me. Writing a cluster of small vignettes that dance around the myriad threads of these conversations and works was a great pleasure and an immense privilege. Order a copy of the book and download a pdf of it here.

In the 21st century, a humanly-impacted climate is the natural state of planetary affairs: a global environmental disaster but perhaps also an artwork of geological scale. Responding to this idea requires an artistic spirit with an ecological conscience--perfectly espoused by the work of artist Jennifer Willet. From speculations on the genetic future to reflections on the ways that art challenges engagement, interaction and analysis, the contributions in this book share a key concern of Willet's: a recognition of the complexities of artistic engagement in a time when the stakes of technological living have never been higher.

With contributions from by Warren Cariou, Louise Chance-Baxter& and IAIN BAXTER&, George Gessert, George Gessert & Beth Franks, Christian Kuras, Marta de Menezes, Natasha Myers, Kira O'Reilly, Melentie Pandilovski, Paul Vanouse, Amanda White & Alana Bartol and Robert Zwijnenberg. Catalyst Book Series Volume 03. 254 pages.

 

Book launches for Kira O'Reilly: Untitled (Bodies)

Added on by Kira O'Reilly.

There will be book launches in:

Helsinki on 15th November, details here

Dublin on 5th December, details here

London on 6th December, details here

Please do join us if you can.

At each launch will editor Harriet Curtis will introduce the book, followed by a round table discussion between Kira and special guests from the arts and sciences.

cover design by David Caines, photography by Nada Zgank

Quite Frankly: It's a Monster Conference, Call for papers,

Added on by Kira O'Reilly.

“I find no shame in acknowledging my egalitarian relationship with non-human material Being; everything emerges from the same matrix of possibilities”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

2017-08-30-Quite-Frankly-web-banner-900x300.jpg

I am delighted to have accepted an invitation to give a key note at this fascinating symposium. I first read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at the graveside of her parents in St Pancras Churchyard in London.

University Club of Western Australia, 18-19 October 2018,

2018 marks 200 years since the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. Shelley’s “Creature” is usually conceived as a human creation, the stitched-together, tragic victim of scientific and technological experimentation. We rupture these stitches, revealing that the Creature is more than the sum of its parts. SymbioticA and Somatechnics join forces to present Quite Frankly: It’s a Monster Conference. We invite you to explore the dynamic ecosystems evolving within and from the gaps between the Creature’s fragments.

Life has become a raw material for re-assembling organisms, tools and consumer products. We are firmly entrenched in a “[bio]informatics of efficiency,” where both biology and technology are subjected to control, optimisation, computation and surveillance at ever decreasing and increasing scales. In light of current ecological and bio-political devastation, we induce extinction.
Keep calm and contaminate. There is hope, there is resistance; the Creature offers the potential to escape control and fight back. 
Quite Frankly invites explorations that (re)form kinships and provide niches of refuge and asylum for explorations at the limits of precarity. We encourage liberations of Frankenstein’s Creature from its anthropocentric singularity to an intra-active entanglement; from the living-dead to the compost-able. We revel in re-craftings of biotechnical industrialisations and commodifications and managerial aesthetics. As Karen Barad reminds us, “the political potential does not stop with regeneration, for there are other wild dimensions within and without that rage with possibilities.”

Join us to unpick the Creature’s stitches and liberate its companion species - we are calling for all voices to provide critical re-examinations of diverse re-creation stories.

Blood Counts

Added on by Kira O'Reilly.

Coming up at the Copeland Gallery in October as part of Blood:Life Uncut, LADA are curating a series of events and a screening programme, Blood Counts that includes short films and documentation of performance works by Franko B, Marisa Carnesky, Ron Athey, Kira O'Reilly, Regina Jose Galindo, La Ribot, Martin O'Brien, jamie lewis hadley, Ernst Fischer & Nicola Hunter, and Rocio Boliver.a screening of short films and documentation of performance works by Franko B, Marisa Carnesky, Ron Athey, Kira O'Reilly, Regina Jose Galindo, La Ribot, Martin O'Brien, jamie lewis hadley, Ernst Fischer & Nicola Hunter, and Rocio Boliver.

 

Wake Festival ]performance space[

Added on by Kira O'Reilly.

I am currently working on a performance that will take place over three days in three locations in Folkestone as part of Wake Festival, 8th, 9th, 10th September. Working along side artists I hold long respect and admiration for: Carlos Martiel, Dominic Thorpe, hancock & kelly who will also be making site based works, as well as looking forward to artists performing in at the ]performance space[ each evening.

W A K E Festival is a three day festival of contemporary time-based/performance art in Folkestone (Kent), UK. The festival consists of site specific, durational works which unfold in and around Folkestone, across the 8th, 9th & 10th of September. In addition to the site based works, each evening (7pm-10pm) a more condense series of performances take place at ]performance s p a c e [.

Taken at "6th Inter-format symposium on Hybrid Natures at Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts, 2016".

We're making a book

Added on by Kira O'Reilly.

Designer David Caines is currently in Helsinki working on a forthcoming publication on my work, Kira O'Reilly: Untitled (Bodies) which will be published this autumn by Live Art Development Agency and Intellect Books as part of their Intellect Live series. It is being edited by Harriet Curtis and Martin Hargreaves and has been supported by CARP the Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme.

Working with Harriet and David is a joy, this week is one of particular quickening as we're delving into my archive and boxes, working back into the first draft of the design with more materials, some of which has not been seen previously or not for a great many years. I am hoping that the book will perform some of the many links and spindle like connections that span across the arts, the sciences, art contexts, and the many threads of lineages that weave into the doings and makings of an art practice. 

You can read more about it here

Current Group Exhibitions

Added on by Kira O'Reilly.

Trust Me I'm An Artist, 13th May - 23rd June, Zone 2 Source, het Glazen Huis, Amsterdam.

The group exhibition of Trust Me, I'm An Artist opened on 13th May in Zone 2 Source, het Glazen Huis in Amstel Park, Amsterdam. It features works and documentation by many of the artists involved in the project, exploring of the ethicals of art and science. Photographic works and performance artifacts by Jennifer Willet and I from the previous evenings performance lecture, Be-wildering and ethics committee review at the Waag Society are one of the displays.

Splice Re-Examining Nature, 20th May - 12th November, Oulu Art Museum.

Splice Re-Examining Nature is curated by Nina Czegledy and the Bioart Society in partnership with Oulu Art Museum and presents artistic perspectives on our changing environment and relationship to Nature. The exhibition presents crossover works from contemporary perspectives, revealing current interpretations of the world we live in. Remains from the performance Be-wilderment (Nature Drag), presented as part of the opening event are in the exhibition.

 

 

Defiant Embodiments in Theatre, Sport, and Performance, 29th April 2017

Added on by Kira O'Reilly.

I am very much looking forward to presenting at this symposium this Saturday at Brunel University:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/defiant-embodiments-in-theatre-sport-and-performance-registration-33487464909

This symposium explores the concept of defiant embodiment in theatre, sport, and performance. It aims to consider artistic interventions into the practices of sport and physical culture (Cassils Becoming an Image, PanicLab’s Rite of Spring, Franko B’s Milk+Blood) as well as performances of defiant embodiment in the world of sport (Caster Semenya’s record breaking speed, Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s raised-fist gesture at the 1968 Olympics, Colin Kaepernick’s sat protests against the Star-Spangled Banner).'

  • How might the multiple defiant embodiments in theatre, sport, and performance intervene in and challenge discourses of identity and value constructed through regimes of gesture and movement?
  • What new and innovative research methods might we use to study such defiant embodiments?
  • What dangers and threats accompany the performance of defiant embodiment?

Taking place at Brunel University London’s Indoor Athletic Centre, Defiant Embodiments will explore research at the intersection of practice and theory, and will include a workshop in Olympic Weightlifting from Kristian McPhee (British Champion 77kg 2016) and a performance lecture from artist and scholar Kira O'Reilly.

I will present:

muscle/pause/poesis

A series of contemplations of muscular embodiments across scale and duration, invoking gyms and laboratories and crashing on mats in the desert. A performance lecture of a body in muscular pause, enacting endocrine worldings of aging, specifically the thresholding of female middle aging.

The New Normal, Beirut and Istanbul

Added on by Kira O'Reilly.

The New Normal is an exhibition organized by artists Murat Adash and Hiba Farhat. The inaugural exhibition will take place in Beirut from March 10-12, 2017, followed by a second iteration in Istanbul from May 5-7, 2017.

I was invited to contribute a one page document along with other artists, writers, thinkers . . .

As seemingly distant and unlike things are remarkably linked into one another, the new rapidly evolves resembling the familiar as the familiar seems more and more ambiguous. What is most normal is also most strange and horrific. Although these propositions may appear mutually exclusive, in fact they might as well be mutually constitutive.

In response to the current social order that has implanted itself through recent global events into the new normal reality – the participants in the exhibition will critically investigate, document, identify, etc. what is the abnormal that has become commonplace. The New Normal invited contributions from around 200 international artists, composers, filmmakers, choreographers, writers, scholars, thinkers and individuals from a variety of other disciplines to each create a one-page paper document, which will be on view during the exhibitions.

Through drawings, sketches, notes, text, manifestos, scripts, recipes, maps, scores among other formats, this show proposes a revision and re-imagining of some of the narratives of the everyday, from an environmental, economic, social and creative perspective.

The complete list of participants are:

Mohamed Abdelkarim, Stephanie Acosta, Yesim Akdeniz, Karam Al Hamad, Mohamed Al Mufti, Hiba Ali, Ayad Almissouri, Ash Aravena, Rajee Aryal, James Gregory Atkinson, David Ayala-Alfonso, Kendall Martin Babl, Joëlle Bacchetta, Stephanie Bailey, Noah Barker, Daniel Barroca, Jeremy Bessoff, Blitz Theatre Group, Irina Botea, Halida Boughriet, Fiona Bryson, Jon Cates, Juliana Cerqueira Leite, Fares Chalabi, Musquiqui Chihying, Youngbin Choi, Christos Chrissopoulos, Eric D. Clark, Louisa Clement, Tarren Johnson & Joel Cocks, Laura Cooper, Maja Čule, Chelsea Culprit, Zuzanna Czebatul, Gina D'Orio, Angharad Davies, Marlin De Haan, Divya Dhar, Maurin Dietrich, Distruktur, Anastasia Douka, Sofia Duchovny, Övül Durmuşoğlu, Ambra Pittoni & Paul-Flavian Enriquez-Sarano, Elif Erkan, Hannah Feldman, Karin Ferrari, Francesca Fini, Born in Flamez, Arianne Foks, Forensic Architecture (Goldsmiths, University of London), Holly Fowler, Anastasia Freygang, Eric Bell & Kristoffer Frick, Kevin B Lee & Chloé Galibert-Lainé, Hadia Gana, Rainer Ganahl, Mohamed A. Gawad, Leyla Gediz, Rami George, Ramy Ghanem, Ingo Giezendanner (GRRR), Ian Giles, Mohamed Gohar, Veronica Gonzalez Peña, Alireza Goudarzi, Jared Gradinger, Katya Grokhovsky, Nazli Gurlek, Gordon Hall, Hanayo, Claudia Hart, Gloria Hasnay, Dafna Maimon & Ethan Hayes-Chute, Alisa Heil (aka Abraham Winterstein), David Helbich, Marietta Auras & Anja Henckel, Kurt Hentschlager, Ly Hoang Ly, Robert Hotchkiss Thomson, Etab Hrieb, Amal Issa, Khaled Jarrar, Jane Jerardi, Lara Kamhi, Areej Kaoud, Mine Kaplangı, Elana Katz, Helene Kazan, Sami Khatib, Amahl Raphaël Khouri, Jinjoo Kim, Raoul Klooker, Juljan Krause, Margaret Krawecka, Cara Krebs, Göksu Kunak, Stephen Kwok, Mehdi-George Lahlou, Lindsay Lawson, Dani Leder, Tómas Lemarquis, Kamin Lertchaiprasert, Jennifer Locke, Melissa Logan, Ghassan Maasri, Heather MacKenzie, Louis Mallozzi, Markues, Fabian Marti, Xavier Mazzarol, Eduardo Menz, Ahmad Mhidi, Nadine Milde, Zoë Claire Miller, Lin Mingyan, Hani Moustafa, Marlie Mul, Aya Nakamura, Sadaf H Nava, Nile Sunset Annex, Johannes E. Nowak, Kira O'Reilly, Julie Oh, Roger Outa, Chantal Partamian, Mary Patten, Manuel Pelmus, Alexis Blair Penney, Claire Pentecost, Mario Pfeifer, Rivers Plasketes, Natasha Pradhan, Kinana Qaddour, Anahita Razmi, Elliot J. Reichert, Wissam Saade, Walid Sadek, Mitsu Salmon, Fred Schmidt-Arenales, Wieland Schoenfelder, Chloe Seibert, Aram Han Sifuentes, Hayley Silverman, Blunt x Skensved, Alex Smith, Sheida Soleimani, Beatrice Steimer, Antoinette Suiter, Larin Sullivan, Frederika Tevebring, Keijaun Thomas, Robert Hotchkiss Thomson, Jan Tichy, Oxana Timofeeva, Petros Touloudis, Devdutt Trivedi, Colleen Tuite, Masha Tupitsyn, Tricia Van Eck, Amanda Van Valkenburg, Mark Van Yetter, Voin de Voin, Mark Von Shlegell, Calum Walter, Sama Waly, Arlene Wandera, Sarah Wang, Hsinyen Wei, Mikka Wellner, Jasmin Werner, Christoph Westermeier, Olav Westphalen, Yaloo, Nine Yamamoto-Masson, Zhiyuan Yang, Atalay Yavuz, Jiyoung Yoon, Mi You, Lena Youkhana, Chen Chen Yu, Snow Yunxue Fu, Bahar Yürükoğlu, Tobias Zielony, Pablo Zuleta Zahr

'Have you been an audience member / participant in Kira O’Reilly’s work? Can you contribute to a text?' By Rebecca French

Added on by Kira O'Reilly.

If you have been an audience member or participant in my work, do consider sending some thoughts and reflections to Rebecca French, who's putting together a piece for the forthcoming book on my work, 'Kira O'Reilly: Untitled (Bodies)'.

Co/editor Harriet Curtis explains, 'we're aiming to get a broad range of responses from audience members across the globe - share this post widely! Please send contributions to Rebecca (details below) - the deadline now extended until 1st August.'

Needless to say this book project is a significant and extraordinary project that I am very delighted to see come about.

Rebecca French writes:

'As you may know, the forthcoming monograph on Kira O’Reilly’s work, co-edited by Harriet Curtis and Martin Hargreaves, will be published in 2017 by Intellect Live, together with the Live Art Development Agency.

Kira has asked me to write a text for her book. Kira and I were at art school together in the mid-1990s and we have a 20-year friendship and relationship with each other’s work.

With my ongoing interest in participation and engagement, I have proposed inviting contributions from people who have had direct experience of Kira’s work – as viewer and/or participant – and editing these audience responses into a fabric of words, which complicate, compliment, interrogate, critique, laud and unpick Kira’s distinctive practice. A key characteristic of this text will be its deliberate aim to combine diverse responses from a great many audience members, who have experienced Kira’s work over the last 20 years.

I am inviting contributions to this text. You could contribute a word, several words, a sentence, a paragraph, an anecdote, a snapshot, a feeling, a response, from you as an audience/participant in Kira’s artwork. It could have been written at the time or just now, previously published or not.

I intend to credit all contributors to the text in the footnotes, away from the main text, which means that your name will be printed, but not linked to the actual text you contribute, so please feel free to write whatever you feel will add to a diverse viewpoint of Kira’s work. (It is also possible to not print your name at all if you prefer – so please let me know if you would like to contribute anonymously.)

Please email your words to me at info@frenchmottershead.com, with KIRA BOOK as the subject heading. Please include how you would like to be credited – your full name, anonymously etc.'

Ingenious and Fearless Companions at BOM

Added on by Kira O'Reilly.

I am really delighted to be part of this exhibition and project with Melissa Grant, Oliver De Peyer, Paul Shepherd, Anna Dumitriu, Alex May. The others have done the lions share but have been incredibly generous in allowing my enthusiasm for their work to form a contribution which will be in the form of an autopsy of the crumpled HAB (HIgh Altitude Bioprospecting ) device which was a research project initiated by biochemist Dr Melissa Grant from the School of Dentistry at the University of Birmingham, lab robotics researcher Oliver de Preyer and mathematician Paul Shepherd, they have searched for microorganisms adapted to life in space in order to consider their novel uses in biotechnology. Artists Anna Dumitriu and Alex May have been collaborating to produce a series of artworks that re-live the excitement of the original rocket launch in the Nevada Desert, the horror of a failed parachute and the despair of a crushed robot.

The exhibition also incorporates video-mapped archive films and sculpturally altered relics of the original launch, such as weather balloons, environmental samples from the black rock desert and extremophile bacteria.

You can read more about the entire project here and here

crashed-robot-1100x600.jpg

Preview at BOM onThursday 31 March 18:00 – 20:00pm

Revisiting Genesis by Oreet Ashery

Added on by Kira O'Reilly.

Revisiting Genesis is an artist web series written and directed by Oreet Ashery. It features a nurse who creates biographical slideshows for those actively preparing for death, and Genesis, an artist who is dying symbolically and otherwise. Revisiting Genesis responds to a diverse range of influences including feminist art practices and reincarnations, outsider politics, the loss of meaningful social structures under neoliberalism, the need for collective forms of self-organisation in caring for others, and the development of post death digital art legacies. Revisiting Genesis investigates the philosophical, political, practical and emotional implications of the processes surrounding death.

And I was fortunate enough to be one of the cast as Friend 4. Probably my most pivotal art making experiences come from either being in other peoples art works or from some kind of collaborative relationship and this was no different. I haven't seen the series yet, but the process of acting in it and being part of the community that Oreet created was catalytic to an entire cascade of creative thoughts in regard to my own practice that I've now musing on very happily. Plus I am now devotee of consciencious colour blocking.

The opening event will be Stanley Picker Gallery, Wednesday 13 April, 6pm-8.30pm

Commissioned by the Stanley Picker Fellowships at Kingston University and supported by a Wellcome Trust Arts Award, public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, Tyneside Cinema, Goldsmiths University of London, and waterside contemporary.