Portrait of a nation and a Merry Christmas

Well, its December and the sound of Christmas bells jingling in the distance… imminent are the gifts, decorations and the general merriment of the season.
Accidental Collective have been busy with the culmination of Portrait of a Nation. We’ve been in Liverpool with white suits and suitcases, bringing 17 cities from around the country to one big celebratory event.
Packed up in 17 suitcases we took; London, Leeds, Belfast, Bradford, Brighton, Bristol, Inverness, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Canterbury, Derby, Norwich, Oxford, Newcastle, Cardiff, Nottingham, all up to St Georges Hall, Liverpool.
What an event!!! We had to find a way to bring the essence of all of these places (some of which we’ve visited, some we haven’t)… no mean feat!
We started with geography, history, slang words, local folk’s thoughts about the place they’re from, our own associations, facts, figures and all sorts… in designing interactive suitcases to be scattered around the, frankly huge and inspiring, building. They were lost around the building so visitors could come across them, play with them, leave or take something. (As was the case with Birmingham, there was a tin of sweets - which went very quickly indeed.)

Donning our white costumes (for the very last time) we became lost travellers… travelling around the building in a group, pairs and on our own… lost? Bemused? Crazed? Or ephemeral figures strolling, talking, playing with the public as they investigate and tour the myriad of events, installations and performances mounted by the above named cities… you can only imagine the mind boggling dizziness of singing, dancing, laughing and wondering…
People wrote messages on luggage labels which we attached to ourselves, our suitcases and even other people - what they love or hate about the place they live… messages to other people from other cities… celebrating where we’re from and where we’re going…
Look at the pics… and you’ll get the idea a little!!!!!
Merry Jingle time From Accidental Collective

Lost in Translation: The Remix - Brought to you by Pablo.

So, December approaches and we are working all steam ahead towards our presentation of Lost in Translation in Liverpool at St. George’s Hall. Since the piece was first shown throughout Canterbury in June it has undergone a number of changes. Back then we traipsed around the city centre, all dressed in white, carrying our white suitcases, and setting up a number of installations to represent various cities: Belfast, Oxford, London, Leeds, Liverpool, and Inverness. Lost in Translation aimed to map these other cities onto Canterbury city centre. However, in preparation to the piece being taken to Liverpool we have had to find a way of transposing this into an indoor environment. Since the venue is the beautiful and historic St. George’s Hall there were a number of practical limitations to take into account: no sticking tape onto the walls, no painting the floor, etc. As a creative exercise this has been a very interesting process. How does a project transform when the setting changes? How can the structure of a piece alter, whilst its spirit remains the same?

So, in answer to these questions, this is what we will be doing in Liverpool.
We will place 17 suitcases, one for each city participating in Portrait of a Nation (www.portraitofanation.net), around St. George’s Hall as if they were lost property (lost property – lost in translation, see, we are a witty bunch). These will all be different suitcases: old, new, trendy, practical…. Each of these suitcases will have a micro installation inside it, or spilling out to its immediate surroundings. Some of these installations will reprise our work for the Canterbury tour this summer (i.e. the a cut-out of the Thames snaking out of a suitcase), others will be completely new. The aim of each of these installations is to work as a mini-interpretation of each city (sometimes concrete, sometimes abstract). How do you fit a city into a suitcase? All suitcases will be interactive. For example, people will be free to rummage through some, whilst they will be able to take something away with them in other cases, or even leave something behind. The way in which the public should ‘relate’ to each suitcase will be clearly indicated in a set of instructions on the inside.
That all begs the question as to what we, as performers, will be doing during the day. We will still have the personas of lost tourists. We will be in our white costumes, with our white suitcases. Walking around the building individually we will directly talk to the public, asking them where they are from, what city they have visited…. Like tourists we will be collecting things. So, we will ask people to five us something from their city (whether it is a train ticket, receipt, or whatever they just happen to be carrying, or we will be able to write something down). We will then cover ourselves with these bits and bops, pinning them to our clothes and suitcases, or even allowing people to write directly on us. So, throughout the day we will become moving, changing, human-installations.

This new version of Lost in Translation will be shown at St. George’s Hall in Liverpool on Monday the 1st of December, from 2pm till 6:30pm, as part of the closing events of the Capital of Culture year.

POST POSTSCRIPT - Rick Reflects

So the dust settles on a new performance. I still have 2 bags of table, desk and bedside lamps in my living room and I only picked up the shoes I left at the venue a couple of days ago.
We’re making to do lists and having planning meetings for the next project we’re delivering.
Feels very much like the post-performance week.
How did the show go?
Well, it sold out days in advance.
Hooray!
Planning and execution smooth and pain free.
Despite the potential havoc posed by a piano, failing light bulbs, and all the other little things that come up in the course of things, the show went smoothly.
Transitions, cues, moves and interruptions - just so.
Oddly enough, as smooth as it felt (and appeared?) it didn’t stop changing and growing until the point of performance. Endings, ways of holding hands, smiling, and shapes, orders all were subject to change until the audience were in.
Two solid days of rehearsal on the weekend prior to the show, we had drawn a solid line under the development of material. Hmm… the best laid plans of mice and men eh?
I think its ok though. It made the piece feel more alive when in its midst.
Site responsive work of the kind that we have made here lends itself to the ephemeral, knowing it is a one-off, a fluke in time, destiny…
In this space a gasp, a laugh, childlike characters in masks or something more sinister scatter and explode like fireworks flashing inconsistently, now near now far.
It won't be quite like that again.
It’ll splinter and reform, maybe to be something very different. For now we have to leave it packed up in bags and car-boots, quietly awaiting a revisit.

An Accidental Collective Lesson in How to Give Good Blog: Don’t be tardy with one’s posts. With apologies… Daisy's POSTSCRIPT rehearsal 29/07/08

How do you feeeeeeel?

I will freely admit that leading this rehearsal was quite nerve-racking. Firstly, I don’t think I am designed for leading – in the traditional sense, I have no interest in directing, and that’s why I like devising. Our process thus far has been all four of us, in a room, and something melding together. This time we have designated these four rehearsals so that we all get a wide-open opportunity to explore the stuff that we want to out into the pot. Which is great and different and potentially incredibly useful. And also very scary. Secondly, the idea behind this bring-anything-to-the-table style starting point of the process was designed to give the project the best possible start. This project was not being created in answer to a commission; it was coming directly from ‘us’ (the motley quartet; the collective ‘us’; the royal ‘us’). Even if the stimuli or exercises did not come from somewhere personal, they involved the personal investment of ‘I want to make something about this. Basically even in these early stages, I think we knew that this project was going to be ‘our baby’ and as such even the dipping of one’s toe into the shallow water of ‘starting points’ seemed vital and important (I acknowledge this should not forgive the use of the over-sentimental term ‘our baby’, but it’s all I’ve got right now…)

Alright, Daisy, but what did you actually do?

I began by making two of us stand in front of the other two and performing an action repeatedly, or continuously. It began with handshaking (and went on to patting, poking etc [This is a bastardised Alison Oddey exercise – she says, “This exercise if about fostering the objective and subjective at the same time. The aim is to work spontaneously and instinctively, rather than thinking and interpreting the ideas of the image” Devising Theatre, Routledge, page 178]). The pair shook hands continuously and the other two had to shout out whatever associations / words / feelings came into their heads when looking at the action. It was an experiment of sorts, but I also wanted to see to what extent we could attempt to not censor our associations (even if they were poo, or aubergine…). This was inevitably harder than anticipated. But it served as an interesting warm up and introduced ideas of free association that I wanted to carry through the rehearsal.

And then?

I had brought in a huge array of objects to play with (something which had worked well in Laura’s rehearsal and which we had all agreed should be pushed further and in different directions). I lay them out on a table (they included, amongst other things: a glass jar, a compact, a boot, a dress, a teddy bear, a selection of images, cups and saucers, a teapot, books and various other curio). I laid out the chairs in the style of a ‘traditional’ dining room drama (sofa, two chairs straight on to the audience) and asked them each to pick an object and to find a place in the ‘scene’. They were not to pre-determine any factors, but just ‘go’ – which was very unfair of me and they gave it a good go. Accidental Collective improvising (‘faux’) naturalism was never something I thought I would see. When I clapped my hands they had to freeze – in an oppositional, ‘id’ moment where innermost, ambiguous feelings were captured in a moment – and then they had to go back to the improvisation. This carried on and we cut out dialogue from the impro, which seemed difficult, unnecessary and unhelpful. The silent impro interspersed with these dark, funny, surreal freeze-frames was much more interesting. The objects really carried the exercise, as they did not have predetermined characters or personas, rather the object dictated an action or task, which dictated a characteristic and so on. I began to introduce music (I wanted piano music, but in a pre-rehearsal flurry, settled for a Mozart Clarinet Concerto CD…) The exercise/impro became more manic with the music and the freeze came when the music stopped, and then the action continued began again, and we tried it the other way too. It became like some dark, delicious, messed up grown-ups’ game of Musical Statues. In the discussion that followed this, the general consensus was that it was something we had found difficult (I think because of the self-consciousness involved in asking three people who consider themselves ‘non-actors’ to perform a task so associated with ‘acting’), but that was worth revisiting…

And what’s with all these objects?

Finally, we had a little story time. I read this (abridged) extract from Vladimir Nabakov’s Transparent Things, Penguin, pages 12-14. This part of the book involves Hugh Person finding a pencil in a drawer in the Ascot Hotel, in which he is staying. Nabakov then preceeds to tell the elaborate history of this pencil. [This abridged extract does it no justice, go away and read it, it’s dead good. And to The Nabakov Estate - if I’ve made any typos please don’t sue me]…

“It was not a hexagonal beauty of Virginia juniper or African cedar, with the maker’s name imprinted in silver foil, but a very plain, round, technically faceless old pencil of cheap pine, dyed a dingy lilac. It had been mislaid ten years ago by a carpenter who had not finished examining, let alone fixing, the old desk, having gone away for a tool he never found. Now comes the act of attention.

In his shop, and long before that at the village school, the pencil has been worn down to two-thirds of its original length. The bare wood of its tapered end has darkened to plumbeous plum, thus merging in tint with the blunt tip of graphite whose blind gloss alone distinguishes it from the wood. A knife and a brass sharpener have thoroughly worked upon it and if it were necessary we could trace the complicated fate of the shavings, each mauve on one side and tan on the other when fresh, but now reduced to atoms of dust whose wide, wide dispersal is panic catching its breath, but one should be above it, one gets used to it fairly soon (there are worse terrors). On the whole, it whittled sweetly, being of an old-fashioned make. Going back a number of seasons (not as far, though, as Shakespeare’s birth year when pencil lead was discovered) and then picking up the thing’s story in the ‘now’ direction, we see graphite ground very fine, being mixed with moist clay by young girls and old men. This mass, this pressed caviar, is pressed in a metal cylinder which has a blue eye, a sapphire with a hold drilled in it and through this the caviar is forced. It issues in one appetising continuous rodlet (watch for our little friend!), which looks as if it retained the shape of an earthworm’s digestive tract (but watch, watch, do not be deflected). It is now being cut into the length required for these particular pencils (we glimpsed the cutter, old Elias Borrowdale and are about to mouse up his fore arm on a side trip of inspection but we stop, stop and recoil, in our haste to identify the individual segment). See it baked, see it boiled in fat (here a shot of the fleecy-fat-giver being butchered, a shot of the butcher, a shot of the shepherd, a shot of the shepherd’s father, a Mexican) and fitted into the wood.
[…]
Thus the entire little drama, from crystallised carbon and felled pine to this humble implement, to this transparent thing, unfolds in a twinkle. Alas, the solid pencil itself as fingered briefly by Hugh Person still somehow eludes us!”

So I asked everyone to imagine a history for an object and tell us its story. The stories ranged from fantastical to mundane and I found them fascinating, as did everyone else, and they were essentially monologues. No one was sure if they had the full potential for material. Anyhoo, that was my rehearsal – and I survived.

Pablo's POSTSCRIPT rehearsal 20/08/08

I catch myself, momentarily, out of the corner of my eye. I write. Thinking retrospectively about our last POSTSCRIPT rehearsal, which I led, I am somewhat surprised about the extent to which text played a role. Text and me, that’s something new. As it turned out, the session was divided in two parts: beginning with physical work and then moving onto exploring new approaches to text. Outcomes? It is somewhat difficult to summarise them in just one sentence. Keep reading. Draw your own conclusions.

I suppose I ought to begin at the beginning. Sit. Stand. Walk. Run. Jump. Fall. These simple activities served as a restricted movement vocabulary within which we improvised. The space was cleared with the exception of a table, with a chair behind it, and second chair to a side, on its own. Though initially I had conceived this as merely a warm-up exercise which might get our blood flowing, something else entirely begun to happen. Ebbs and flows. The incessant sound of feet hitting the floor. Follow me. A pattern that is mirrored, copied and then inverted. Suddenly you leave. Where did you go? Somebody falls. Out of nowhere, a burst into running. Then stillness, and on we go. The ten minutes I had planned for this exercise seemed to fly by. We continued nonetheless, happy to let things develop, collapse upon themselves, and rise out of the rubble transformed. At one point I played some music (Mulholland Drive, tracks 9 and 17). Though there was not direct effect, its atmospheric moods seemed to resonate with what we are doing. Of course at the time one does not think, or plan, or analyse. Writing of it now though, the possibility strikes me. Could this simple structure be the starting point from which complexity emerges? As the exercise progressed relationships began to appear, and with them, an array of narratives. Stories that constantly broke up, reach dead ends, or dissipated into thin air. There is a similarity there with previous rehearsals (objects and lights), but I cannot put my finger on it. I also realise that we had not engaged in this kind of uninterrupted play way for quite some time. We seem to work best within these structures: setting rules for ourselves, letting them rearrange themselves as we go along. There was not much time to discuss afterwards, but Daisy says she found some of what happened strangely moving. Remembering her body on the floor, rolling away slowly as I walk towards her, I agree.
Next, I proposed a cycle. We began around the central table and chair. The rules: walk slowly towards it (museum pace); when you reach the chair, sit down; perform a single gesture or a brief action, as melodramatic or as subtle as you want, but without making a noise; as the next person slowly approaches the table, get up; walk around the table in a rectangle and repeat the cycle. Though at first it was a little bit difficult to get into this pattern, we soon got the hang of it and the activity came into its own. After a while I played a track on repeat (Ghosts of love by David Lynch). Whilst its repetitively hypnotic chords suited our slow walking perfectly, Lynch’s distorted voice gave our gestures and actions an unsettlingly eerie quality. Laura’s silent laugh was terrifying and seductive. Suddenly I realise the exercise can be taken a step further. I quickly set out a further three tables and chairs. Breaking the rectangular cycle around the central table we began to move freely between them. It worked, opening up the challenge of not knowing who would go to which table next. Again, disrupted narratives and glimpses of half-formed characters tie this to our previous explorations. We work in small units, pushing them, repeating them, turning them on their heads.
Now the text. First, Laura’s speech. As homework I had asked her to write a paragraph which a performer might address to an audience. From the beginning of the project we had decided that this would be, primarily, an image-based piece. I was interested in finding ways to disrupt the natural flow of a text. So, I asked her to write each work on a single piece of paper. (At the time I did not fully realise the time and effort this would take, so, Laura darling, thank you very much!) Rather than having Laura read the speech herself we gave the stack of prompt cards to Rick who read One. Word. At. A. Time. Not. Knowing. What. Word. Might. Come Next. The result was both comical and thrilling. As people who did not know the text either (an audience), Daisy and I sat at the edge of our seats Waiting. To. See. How. Each. Sentence. Would. Resolve. Itself. As Rick began to familiarise himself with this difficult process, he started to play with rhythm, reading a few words in quick succession, then allowing the pauses between them to be longer. The sense of anticipation was very effective. Moreover, there were points where Rick would intone a sentence which would suddenly change direction, so that he had to readjust constantly his delivery. In a way, the experience for the listener was similar to that achieved by certain editing techniques. Frame. Cut. Frame. Cut. Frame. At each point a surprise, sometimes a disappointment. Of course, the effect was heightened by the fact that Rick did not know the speech himself. This was confirmed when Laura, who had written it, read the text Word. By. Word. In this case, the quality was an altogether different one. That. Is. It. I Now Remember. Where. This. Idea. Came. From. A couple of years ago I read Mark Danielewski’s House of leaves (a terrific story). As the narrative progresses, the words on the pages begin to arrange themselves in unconventional ways. A paragraph there, another upside down, forcing the reader to physically turn the book around. At one point of particularly heightened tension the crowded pages give way to just one word per page. I. Now. Remember. The. Cinematic. Effect. This. Produced. And. How. Turning. The. Pages. Frantically. I. Was Lost. Within. Them.
More text. In this case I had asked Rick and Daisy to write a short dialogue each, except they would have to be the internal monologues of two people sat, silently, next to each other. I gave them free reign regarding the nature of the text. As it was, both Daisy and Rick’s writing sketched actual characters (with a history etc.). On the one hand, what interested me most about Rick’s was the way it was structured: one extract mirroring the previous one, but diverting from it (is this a coda?). On the other hand, Daisy’s text offered great opportunities for physical actions. I myself has also written an internal monologue, but one which was deliberately abstract (thoughts piled up next to each other). Now to the experiment. Rick and Daisy read their texts, each taking on ‘character’. Laura and I read various fragments from my writing. We captured all this on my old tape recorder (the undying charm of defunct technologies). Then, we all sat around a table just as our audience will do; and we took it in turn to press play and improvise a series of actions around the recorded text. What was interesting here was the juxtaposition of the disembodied voice and the performer: actions that preempt the text, actions that respond to it abstractly, or with minute realistic details. Because this was the end of the session we did not have enough time to delve too deep, but the possibilities seem very attractive, particularly when we begun rewinding and fast forwarding the tape, repeating, re-, rep-, repeating small extracts in an almost obsessive manner. As in our previous experiment with words, this was a strategy primarily aimed at subverting the use of text. In a way, I guess I was trying to adapt the internal narration often used in films (I had recently watched the Coen brother’s The Man Who Wasn’t There, which is full of wonderful examples). At the same time I wonder whether this idea was a subconscious adaptation/interpretation of Katie Mitchell’s work in Waves and …some trace of her; certainly our aesthetics are similarly D.I.Y. Not relying on a sound system for this will give us more flexibility in our movements, but also is more in keeping with the intimate character that POSTSCRIPT seems to be developing. Starting points. Starting points.

Rick's POSTSCRIPT rehearsal 13/08/08

Well it’s always nice to come away from a rehearsal (especially when its for a stage show) feeling like you are a step closer to the final product. Or at least, understanding a little more what the final product is going to feel and look like. Today there occurred a moment when all those little lights in your head start to pop and sparkle… fitting as you’ll see.
I was a little intimidated at the thought of leading a rehearsal. In typical style I had a kind of end point in mind but was not able to pre-fabricate exercises and games to help it develop. So I turned up, homework in hand, praying for the best and trusting that we‘d grope onwards and upwards.
The homework I’d set the four of us consisted of asking everyone to watch a black and white film and bring a five line synopsis and a favourite quote. In addition I’d asked everyone to pay close attention to the scene transitions in their film to see if we could look for filmic ways of hanging material together.
I watched “Ed Wood“, a Tim Burton Film; Daisy had watched “Jules and Jim”, a Francois Truffaut film, Pablo offered up The Cohen Brothers new classic “The man who wasn’t there” and Laura the all time classic “Casablanca”.
I’d brought some table lamps of varying types along and placed them on tables around the space. We tried simply sitting at a table/lamp and talking about the films we’d chosen… given that we are trying to avoid text wherever possible we quickly changed tack.
More conductive was when we tried one person “narrating” their film to the others who sat at a table and used their lamp, turning them on and off, and exploring actions to, in some small way, “perform” the section pertaining to them.
We tried Casablanca with Pablo as Rick, Daisy as Elsa and Laura as Victor. I tried narrating the film and allowed the performers to light themselves and perform when they saw fit.
What were nice were the small actions, performed in the light of one lamp. So when I said Rick was a hard man who took no risks for anyone, Pablo did nothing more than lace his fingers and lean forward towards the lamp. This was the first eureka moment I guess. It was finding a form that suited and in some way reflected the ability of film to exist in close up, sharp focus on details of movement and express an attitude, thought, idea….
We tried some of the other films in the same way but it developed onwards when Daisy asked to re-run her narration of “Jules and Jim” as she had read it the first time out and she had missed our actions… then in amongst the ensuing conversation about pace we wondered about introducing rules to do with the lamps and when they were to be lit. So in addition to the performers reacting when the narrated plot seemed to call them to action we agreed that only one performer should be lit at a time…
Quickly this developed into games where narrative description melted away and we simply had images alternately lit by two “non-performing” performers.
As soon as we started to play with this we saw the endless possibilities of rules we could start imposing here. Performers being only allowed to move in the dark, performers not moving but the “non-performers” moving and changing the light sources, their regularity, clarity…
There also became this interesting third performer who was one of the “non-performers” who was simply waiting for it to be their turn to light. Their relation to the vignettes of scenes caught in freeze frame, in the light, became as interesting as the vignettes themselves. I found myself peering around; searching them out each time the scene became lit.
Suddenly it was half past nine and we realised we had been at it for two and a half hours and we ought to be getting on home. Sometimes you do really wish some rich patron would come along and offer to pay us all to have days and days of rehearsals so we can carry on and on when we get the bit between our teeth on material development…
Sad times.
Still in terms of a method for slotting together, unifying and differentiating material we seem to have hit upon something that has plenty of meat on the bone.I’m just glad my rehearsal groped its way somewhere…

Laura's POSTSCRIPT rehearsal 22/07/08

I was the designated leader of the first rehearsal for POSTSCRIPT. Having had a previous ‘Ideas Session’, I selected a few things that we wanted to try out and experiment with. There was a focus on the use of props and the presence of these props in the space. I chose props to bring to the rehearsal and these included: a rose; wine glass; wine bottle; scarf; a painting; a knife; pen; paper and a jewellery stand in the shape of a woman. Each of these props could be used in a variety of settings to tell many stories but also allowed for individual interpretation depending on the placing and use of the prop within a moment.

We played games with a set number of props being chosen to create a ‘freeze’ moment or image, individually and in pairs. This then progressed to include movement or to change from one still image to another. The most interesting moments that were created through this exercise were ones that were filled with ambiguity or the possibility of many different interpretations. This happened in particular happened with the framed painting (of a couple dancing) when it was held in front of a face. Daisy and myself did this at different points and both had a different effect and meaning. At one point Pablo sat down and took the pen drawing a line down his face and body as if he was splitting in two, then Rick immediately repeated the action once Pablo had finished. Although a very simple action which was obviously being repeated there was something uncertain in it, which created an interesting tension for the performer and the spectator.

When working in pairs Pablo and Daisy were using the scarf and created a ‘scene’ where Pablo was sat on the chair and Daisy on his knee and both of their faces were wrapped up in the scarf. It was eerie yet subtle. Daisy and I then tried it with Rick and Pablo directing us to escape from the scarf which ended up with me and Daisy finding each other under the scarf saying ‘Hello…hello’ and screaming on the discovery of the other. As a performer it was exhilarating as it happened purely by chance and for Rick and Pablo watching it was completely unexpected.

In the last exercise in the rehearsal all the props were placed to one side of a table and then we took it in turns to sit down at the table and use the props to tell a story but we were not allowed to speak. Each of the four stories were completely different and there seemed to be a contrast between a few small moments connected and a fluid constant change in the movement of objects to create an epic. After each story we all said what we thought it had been about and what was exciting was the variety of interpretations we took from each one. What this kind of work allows for is the audience to create their own narrative that comes from watching the detail versus the abstract use of the props. We all agreed that these ‘scenes’ were like six word stories, but in silence (Ernest Hemingway’s six word story is the most famous: 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.'). The small and intimate nature of these stories, which I think would work well at the tables in Bramley’s, created energy and captivated each of us. When we come back to work on material generated through these initial rehearsals this is something we really want to play with and see how we can develop and develop this way of story telling.

BIKINI State

STAY ALERT!

Accidental Collective presents its latest piece, BIKINI
State as part of Hazard Festival. Saturday 12th of July, Manchester, Exchange Square, from 13:00 until 16:00.

Picture the scene: Kent. The Garden of England. The home of hops, orchards, twin-sets and pearls … Oh, and Accidental Collective, an innovative performance company interested in creating innovative live events that hybridise art forms and explore new territories.
Straddling live art and performance, Accidental Collective caters for audiences living in an age of microwave meals, Internet and reality TV. Using unorthodox strategies for performance making, the company explore the limits of ‘theatre’. Accidental Collective seeks to engage with audiences in a provocative way, interrogating their role within the live event.

Since its formation in 2006, Accidental Collective has been disrupting The Kentish Idyll with interventions in the public sphere. Now they are braving the North-South odyssey to deliver BIKINI State to Manchester, as part of Hazard Festival.

‘BIKINI State’ is the name for the system used by the Ministry of Defence to indicate the level of non-specific forms of terrorist activity. Established in 1970, it predates the newer, more publicised and general 'UK Threat Levels' (in use since 2006).

You have seen it before: rifles, balaclavas, hazard tape, gasmasks, men in white protective gear. Drawing on images deeply embedded in the nation's consciousness, BIKINI State introduces a cast of exaggerated personas in a series of independent yet thematically linked vignettes. A bizarre mix of live art, comedy and activism, BIKINI State subversively tackles some of the issues related to expressions that have recently gained so much currency, such as 'the reign of terror' and 'fear culture'.

On Saturday 12th July 2008, between 13:00 and 16:00, BIKINI State will be unleashed upon Exchange Square in Manchester, an area redeveloped after the 1996 IRA bomb attack. Through this playful and provocative intervention, Accidental Collective aims to perform a sort of communal catharsis. BIKINI State aims to puncture your experience of the everyday, challenge your assumptions and your deepest fears. In the grand tradition of Great British satire BIKINI State intends to explore a potentially explosive issue with tongue in cheek. ‘BIKINI State’ is currently set on 'Black Special'. The current 'UK Threat Level' is 'Severe'. Stay alert!

BIKINI State has been produced by hÅb and greenroom as part of the one-day-festival Hazard.

For more information email info@accidentalcollective.co.uk

http://www.habarts.org/archives/category/now/hazard
http://www.greenroomarts.org

LOST IN TRANSLATION

Saturday 21st June from 1 - 4 pm in and around Canterbury City Centre.

Cambo with another normal Saturday? What’s the craic? Come down to Canterbury city centre on the 21st June and discover something nang!

Discover British cities mapped over Canterbury; which cities will you find where? How do we understand our city and how do others understand theirs? And what gets lost in translation?

Kent’s premier performance company, Accidental Collective reveal their new work, Lost in Translation, on Saturday 21st June in their home city of Canterbury. Accidental Collective has performed in shop windows, beaches, and bars, and now this up and coming young company are taking to the streets.

Accidental Collective has collected slang words from young people in a number of cities across the U.K. Lost in Translation will span eight sites and include seven cities, including Canterbury, Manchester and Inverness, amongst others. The slang words collected have helped to create a series of small performances and installations that will be unpacked and performed at various points from Westgate up to St. George’s clock tower (opposite Fenwick). Accidental Collective will unveil Oxford outside the Library and create the Thames along Guildhall Street…

Lost in Translation is part of Canterbury City Council’s 'Summer in the City’ programme and is one of the works that will be representing Canterbury in The Capital Of Culture's 'Portrait of a Nation' project in December in Liverpool. Lost in Translation is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and made with the kind support of Canterbury City Council.