Led by Phoebe Davies in collaboration with Kunstnernes Hus
Residency dates: 13 October - 10 November 2018
All struggles
Are essentially
power struggles,
And most
are no more intellectual
than two rams knocking their heads together.
From the Parable of the Sower, Octavia E Butler
Taking Hold – The Double Bridge will explore and question the ways that solidarity, competition and antagonism find physical expression in social relationships.
Developed and led by Phoebe Davies, the residency will use performance for camera as a tool to test the spoken and unspoken rules of public bodily contact: for instance, in greetings, contact sports or on the dance floor. The process will be underpinned by Davies’ personal research into power dynamics, plus her collaborative enquiry into the concept of ‘pack mentalities’ and intersectional perspectives with performer and choreographer Nandi Bhebhe, as Bhebhe&Davies.
Working alongside Davies, a community of internationally and locally based practitioners will be selected to develop self-led projects; participate in group activities, visits, and discussions. The residency will start with introductions, group discussion and the identification of individual and collective goals and working methods: these will include staged performances, off-site filming, critical discussions, listening sessions, film screenings, zine making, group walks, and movement workshops. Davies’s collaborator Nandi Bhebhe will join the group to co-lead a research weekend investigating the politics and dynamics surrounding how we physically occupy social space.
A series of public events will function as focus points for the residency while also opening up its dialogues to a wider audience.
About Phoebe Davies
Phoebe Davies is a Welsh artist and researcher, presently based at Somerset House Studios in London. Her practice investigates people’s perceptions of their social framing, and she frequently uses collaboration, collective action and Do It Together strategies to make work with individuals, groups and communities.
Through her work Davies often finds herself referencing and exploring collaborative models of working across different social and cultural sectors. Recently, she has investigated ideas taken from areas as disparate as basketball, feminist organisation, science fiction and methods of organic farming.
Recent projects have led her to work with sex educators, secondary school students, elderly residents in care homes, sports teams and DJs as well as art spaces and institutions, including Tate Britain and Tate Modern (London), Whitechapel Gallery (London), Arnolfini (Bristol), Fierce Festival (Birmingham), South London Gallery (London), Wysing Arts Centre (London), Steirischer Herbst (Graz, AUT), Assembly (Portland, USA) and SA-UK SEASONS 2015 (Johannesburg, ZA).
The final forms of Davies’s work are project dependent, and have included live performances, video, audio, print works and constructed social spaces. She currently co-facilitates three research groups: Bedfellows, a radical sex re-education research project; Synaptic Island, a London-based womxn and non-binary DJ collective; and Art is Action, a UK-based social practice research group. In 2015 she was awarded the British Council’s Social Practice Fellowship for the International Cultural Exchange U.S.Program, and she is currently supported by Syllabus III, an UK-wide alternative peer-led learning programme for artists.
About Kunstnernes Hus
Events for this residency are held in collaboration with Kunstnernes Hus. Established in 1930, it is Norway's largest gallery under the direction of artists. Kunstnernes Hus serves as major center for exhibitions of Norwegian and international contemporary art.
The Residents
Events
From the Residency
Meet the residents - introducing practices.
Positive Touching: Contact, Intimacy and Empowerment - Phoebe Davies screens and discusses work and influences.
Bhebhe&Davies Weekend Intensive movement workshop
Open studio sharing of work in progress
Collective workshops, film screenings, discussions, meals and other activities.
PRAKSIS would like to offer its sincere gratitude to Dana Høegh for her support of this residency.
