Category: Artist Studios

Interview with artist, Nadine Mckenzie

by nadine-mckenzie

Jamie Wyld (Vital Capacities’ director): Thanks for being part of the Vital Capacities residency programme. Can you say a little about yourself and your work, perhaps in relation to what you’re thinking about doing during the residency?

I’m a dancer with a disability from South Africa. I have been working professionally for the past 14 years. I am also a teacher in inclusive dance and have received training from Alito Alessi. My interest for integrated work started after I saw an inclusive dance production when I was a student and this shifted how I see disability and dance. What stood out most was at some point during that performance I stopped seeing the wheelchair and I saw the artist, and in that moment I realised this is how I wish society could see persons who live with disabilities.

During this residency I wish to explore my relationship to my chair. What this means to me and how it has impacted my life. This is something that I’ve realised in my own journey; something that I, a lot of times, have not paid attention to. How much I rely on it, need it, and, at times, forget about it.

JW: One of the aims of Vital Capacities is to create an accessible site (so more people can use it) – how do you think this will be an opportunity to develop your way of working?

Accessibility has always been something very close to my heart. There is always room for growth and improvement. How I think this will be an opportunity to develop how I work. To start with I am very interested and feel very passionate about creating work that is accessible for persons with visual impairments. Although I do not have experience in how to go about creating this access I am open and ready to explore and look into this.

JW: What would you like to achieve through the residency? Is there a particular project you’ll be focusing on?

What I wish to achieve? I’d like to see this exploration come to life with a short video presentation. With this my hope is to shift how we see wheelchairs, or any assistive devices  and the fear attached to it, or that we as people have placed on it. To leave us with something to think and talk about and have more room for acceptance of the unknown.

JW: How do you see the next few weeks unfolding? Where would you like it to take you?

At this point, to be honest, I would like to learn as much as possible from everyone I meet and am excited to be in a creative space again. Find out how these ideas and conversations take shape and unfold in creation.

Intro

by nadine-mckenzie

My name is Nadine Mckenzie and I am a dancer/ performing artist living with a disability from Cape Town South Africa. I have been working in the Inclusive dance field for the past 14 years. For the past 7 years I have been working with inclusive dance company Unmute Dance Theatre which I co-founded with 3 colleagues. What interests me is telling stories, lived experiences, finding creative ways to communicate these stories and bring awareness and open dialogue around various topics. Be it my own experiences /stories or that of people and my environment around me.

During this residency I would like to explore the relationship I have with my wheelchair, why?

For the past 29 years i have been using a wheelchair after being involved in a car accident. For many years I have gone through several phases of what my chair means to the world around me and how it is perceived, and the influence this has had on me as an individual. What my relationship to my wheelchair is and has meant over the years. How this has changed / shifted as I grew older and in particular in the different spaces and environment I’ve found myself in.

I have learnt through my environment and society that my chair is not seen as something positive, beautiful, empowering on the contrary quite the opposite. Although it has carried me for 29 years, given me mobility and freedom.

What I wish to explore? Beauty of my chair, the trust it has taught me. Strength, reliance. It is more than just a chair, it is part of me. Shift the misconception and negative connotation that is attached to it.

Please feel free to check in from time to time as I will be sharing my journey of this exploration with you through images, text and videos.

Hope you enjoy my sharing and I look forward to any questions and/ or exchange..

Nadine

Intro

by kruse

Hello, I am …kruse, welcome to my studio. 

Let me introduce myself; I am a neurodivergent (non-typically brained) being. I consider myself to be a multitude rather than a singular entity. The three dots before my name stand in for the beings who help form ‘me,’ but whom I do not know – the microbes, fungi and yeasts, all living beings, who make up my physical self. When you read my name the three dots invite you to take a small inward pause, a minute moment of silence. It is my gift to you in this busy, noisy world.

I will use this Vital Capacities residency to explore my interest in paths and walking. I will be using video, photography, drawing and writing to try and understand a bit more about my love for tracks and trails. 

Three years ago, I was on a day walk through the Warwickshire countryside when I had a sudden vision of a female being, a cyborg, walking the same path but in the far future. That vision has never left me and has become a huge, multidisciplinary project, called The AuTCRONE Chronicle.

The AuTCRONE walks. She walks endlessly, for hundreds of years. What is it about walking, and particularly walking a given track or path, that fascinates me so? That is the research question I will be exploring here. 

Have you ever played the game Myst? In that game you ‘walk’ along twisting paths, in beautiful, deserted landscapes to strange buildings where you solve puzzles. To me, walking along in that game is the best bit! The landscapes and visuals in Myst are really beautiful and slightly otherworldly. I hope to create some Myst inspired visuals during this residency, maybe even play with a bit of animation.

I hope you enjoy hanging out in my studio here. Do you have any other walking games you think I should check out? Do you love to walk yourself? Is there some special path in the UK I should try and walk during my residency? I’d love to hear from you so please do leave comments, or get in touch with me via social media.

I will say goodbye with a blessing; Not all those who wander are lost, but if you are, may you be on a beautiful path and find a warm welcome at day’s end.          …kruse

Intro

by Rebekah Ubuntu

Transcript-video-introduction-Rebekah-Ubuntu-2021Download

Hi there,

My name is Rebekah Ubuntu. I am a multidisciplinary artist, musician and university lecturer. My practice explores speculative fiction through a range of disciplines, particularly, sound art, performance, the moving image and mixed reality.

PROJECTS YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN

My work ‘Despair Hope and Healing: Three Movements for Climate Justice’ is available to experience in augmented reality app Unfolding Shrines which you can find here. 

My audio art project ‘Autism and the City: a Sonic Diary’ is due to launch on the BBC next month so I’ll post that here once it’s ready.

You are warmly welcomed to my studio. 

HOW I HOPE TO USE MY RESIDENCY

I’m hoping to use my residency to REFLECT.

I’ll be reflecting on my:

  1. work to date
  2. practice before and during the pandemic

WHY REFLECTION?

My life and creative practice have undergone some major pivots since 2020. My last in-person commission before the pandemic was at Tate Modern in December 2019. I performed my work ‘Despair, Hope and Healing: Three Movements for Climate Justice’ and gave a talk about this work, which featured an excerpt from an interview in the 90s with Black science fiction writer Octavia Butler discussing the speculative impacts of climate change in the 2020s. Now nearly two years into this decade, I am feeling a need to process.

Looking back, I can see that 2020 and the years preceding didn’t leave much room for respite. This residency provides an opportunity for me to reorient my time and energy towards self-reflection, self-nurturance and self-celebration.

I’ll be pausing to be with the themes in my work, particularly belonging, healing and queering as well as disability and climate justice. I’ll be sitting with the scores, texts, and projects that have been on my heart and giving them the time I’ve not had until now.

It feels good to be here, sharing space and reflecting for a month. Please feel welcome to look around my studio and get in touch using comments if you’d like.

Hope you enjoy your visit,

Rebekah

Intro

by Siphenati Mayekiso

Greetings everyone!

My name is Siphenathi Mayekiso, welcome to my studio. I am a trained physical theatre performer/actor and an integrated dancer/choreographer. 

I regard myself as a storyteller and poetic mover. I draw my creative inspiration from different aspects of life, abstract images, philosophy, ideologies and history at large. I am fascinated by objects in space in relation to the body and the inclusivity of what is not part of the body to move as one while telling a story. As an artist I am at a place where I use my body as a catalyst in negotiating dialogues around inclusivity and body politics which circles the notion of being differently-able.

Being part of Vital Capacities residency is an extremely good opportunity for me to expand my knowledge in creating a virtual performance that seeks to be inclusive and accessible. There are a number of concepts/research that I wish to interrogate during the residency while weaving together the narrative using body in relation to objects. For instance, what does the phrase “being-in-the-closet” mean?

Please feel welcomed to look around my studio and the work I will be posting. Spoiler alert: It will be a collage of different images, audios and videos. 

Please leave a comment or questions for me in the comments section (below) for us to engage. 

I hope that you’ll enjoy your visit.

Siphenathi Mayrkiso

Care Work with Melissandre Varin

by Laura Lulika

Thinking about the ways that we formed ideas about our bodies and who had influence, especially in relation to our identities, is always a headfuck. Doing this project has been a reminder of this so I wanted to try to include an action that felt more nourishing, gentle and caring than my other research.

I asked a new friend, Melissandre Varin, who I had met through an online performance workshop, if they would have a conversation with me about these body topics. I had attended Mel’s artist talk and I find the way that Mel speaks about bodies and their own personal experiences to be very candidly honest and at the same time generous and kind.

A white background with black braided hair of different thicknesses overlaid and layered over each other.
Image from Melissandre’s Installation Work
Continue reading “Care Work with Melissandre Varin”

Break Time… in resistance of professional hyperability

by Laura Lulika

A meme of a huge muscly videogame monster from the videogame Diablo. The monster has rams horns on it's head and a bald round head with spiky slimy teeth and tusks coming out of the sides of it's open mouth. It's wearing some kind of tight leather wrestler style unitard and it#s holding a staff in it's right hand made of bones with a ram's head on top, in the left hand there is a scithe made of a horn and a metal chain wrapped around the arm. The monster's skin is covered in bulging muscles and veins, there are cuts across it's body with large metal staples in them. The skin is greyish yellow. There is a fiery glow around the monster and a silhouette of a creatur'es body barely visible hanging upsidedown on the top left. Overlaid is some white text with a red glow around it that says 'YES I TAKE MY VIDEO ART VERY SERIOUSLY... THAT'S WHY I POST IT ON...' Below that is the 'Vimeo' logo in blue and on the bottom left is a Vimeo Staff Pick logo which is a black circle with a white leaf wreath border and the text in the middle 'vimeo STAFF PICK', it has been edited so that it is distorted and wavy.
I’m a professional video artist and my favourite videogame is Diablo.

I have really enjoyed occupying this digital studio space and having a dedicated period of time working on a single project. The support from vital Capacities and Film London has been amazing and I am excited to develop all of my research and tests into something to present as part of the exhibition later this month.

I am battling my own internal ableist voices which are telling me that I could have done MORE, posted more, worked more.. I have been resisting the urge to be professionally hyperable.. (yuck). And in many ways I have failed because I am exhausted.

So now it’s breaktime! If anyone needs me I’ll be in a static caravan on the Yorkshire coast for the week and you can speak to my out-of-office autoresponse until then.

It’s coming home?

by Laura Lulika

BTS of me and Hang Linton recording The Champs

A little BTS of the recording of the Champs cover we did a couple weeks ago. A treat to celebrate England getting to the finals tonight! Enjoy the game!

video description: Hang Linton sits in a home music studio with dark grey soundproofing foam on the white walls and white and yellow speakers in the background, wearing black headphones, a white tshirt and black twists in his hair. In the background is a wide but small window with cream curtains, it looks sunny outside. On the window sill there is a gold lucky waving cat. Hang sings with a twisted pained look on his face, sweating from the heat, the camera zooming into his face.

[2]

by Seo Hye Lee

Black screen with white font subtitle at the bottom [sound of subtitles]
Screen capture of [sound of subtitles]
Black screen with white font subtitle at the bottom [music and sound fades]
Screen capture of [sound of subtitles]

These two images are the beginning and the end of the video work titled [sound of subtitles].

Fandom

by Laura Lulika

Two people stood outside of a large footy stadium shot slightly from below so that the stadium looms over them like an ominous space ship. It's shadowy in front of a cloudy sky. The two people are brightly lit and gaze upwards, both visible from the waist up. The person on the left has a black bob haircut and they are wearing a green and red footy shirt. The person on the right has short brown hair and head band across their forehead and a blue footy shirt with white details. They both have their hands in their pockets, they look slightly pensive like they have seen something in the sky that is about fall down in front of them.
GAA MAAD Theatre Work by Aine O’Hara and Vickey Curtis

I recently discovered Aine O’Hara’s work online. Their theatre piece pictured above, GAA MAAD, is all about being a queer footy fan in Ireland and the rejection and abuse that comes with that.

I’m really interested in fandom, the way we attach ourselves to specific teams, players, fighters etc but I especially love the way crowds move and ripple and thrash about together. It was strange and surreal to see a mass of static cardboard cutouts or screens of fans at home during the pandemic, as well as the fake crowd noise.

A sea of footy fans, almost all of them have their arms raised up and almost all of them are wearing red and white footy outfits. Many have large England flags which are a white rectangle with a red cross which they have added their hometown names, their own names or their own slogans to such as 'Tommo', 'Bollocks' and 'Redhill', which they have hung off the edge of the stands.
England fans in Germany in 2006

I also like it when they do close ups on the telly of disappointed and sad fans when their team is losing, even better if they are really dressed up for the occasion with face paint, a comedy hat and a flag wrapped around them, decorating their downturned face.

Football fans in blue and yellow sat in the stands of the stadium. Central is someone in a full body blue and yellow morph suit with a flag wrapped around their neck with their head in the hands, all the fans around them look sad and fed up too/
Three football fans all dressed in orange with spiky orange, blue and white hats on with 'Holland' written on them, orange sunglasses on their heads and orange bracelets and lipsticks, leaning on a blue pole at the edge of the stand in the stadium looking sad and fed up.

Body Builder – costume test and music teaser

by Laura Lulika

An improvised film test of the muscle costume and PE kit made for me by Max Allen with a new song that I’m making with Hang Linton. A million points to anyone who can figure out where the sample in the song is from or who it is.. I just tried out some different poses and gestures from my research, some different lighting and filmed it on a phone on my studio bed.

Visual Description: I’m wearing a sheer mesh muscle suit, long sleeved top and trousers, and a shiny blonde mullet wig, my own naked body is visible underneath. I am washed in orange light, stood on a white platform in a white room with a dark coloured floor. I pose and flex like a body builder and pull strained open mouthed faces. I am wearing a footy tabard over the top of the muscle suit, it has ‘FORGOT ME PE KIT’ and ‘Ladette’ written on it, it’s blue and red. I’m washed in a bright green light. I lift a footy banner or scarf that says ‘BUGGER OFF’ on it, it has tassles hanging from it, I’m swaying from side to side, I drop it to the floor and direct my right arm out to the side as if declaring something. I am back to wearing just the muscle suit and wig, this time washed in a gentle blue light and lying down on the bed, flexing and posing and pulling strained open mouthed faces.

Audio Description: An electronic bassline track that sounds a little bit like Prodigy with some trip-hop spacey tones thrown in. It features a repeated sample of a middle aged person with a strong accent that is probably from Essex or the East End of London saying in an irritated voice, ‘A loada rubbish, them lot up in the Houses of Parliament, terrible’.

[1]

by Seo Hye Lee

Screen capture of video with white font subtitle with black background. All 3 stills of video from videos are identical and are placed side by side. They are black and white images of clay covered hands shaping a round shaped pottery on wheel. The person is wearing long sleeved shirt that is rolled up at lower arms. The images have different subtitles. On the left image it reads [turning], middle image reads [sound of remembering fondly], the right image reads [soaring orchestra music].
Screen capture of 3 video with white font subtitle with black background
Screen capture of video with white font subtitle with black background. All 3 stills of video from videos are identical and are placed side by side. They are coloured images of clay covered hands shaping pottery on a wheel. These images have different subtitles. On the left video it reads [holding], middle video reads [sound of listening inward], the right video reads [♪♪♪].
Screen capture of 3 video with white font subtitle with black background
Screen capture of video with white font subtitle with black background. All 3 stills of video from videos are identical and are placed side by side. They are coloured images of clay covered hands shaping brown pottery on wheel. The images have different subtitles. On the left it reads [shaping], the middle video reads [sound of emptiness in the room], and the right reads [mysterious string music].
Screen capture of 3 video with white font subtitle with black background

[turning] [sound of remembering fondly] [soaring orchestra music] [holding] [sound of listening inward] [♪♪♪] [shaping] [sound of emptiness in the room] [mysterious string music]

Audio will be silent in my piece for the final outcome of this residency- I aim for the subtitles to show the endless possibilities of what the words would sound like for the viewers.

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