Monday, July 7, 2008

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

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