Eve Stainton (*UK)
The Joystick and The Reins, 2024
Physical movements, digital collages, welded steel and invisible forces such as waves, imagination or drama: these are some of the recurring components in Eve Stainton’s interdisciplinary performances. Stainton is interested in creating situations that are dissonant and psychedelic, challenging habitual notions of normality and perfection. A key theme in their endeavour is the question of how one may artistically and performatively unravel essentialist thinking, directing attention to marginalised people’s experiences with power structures and social conventions such as gender and class. Their new work, The Joystick and The Reins (2024) (with sound by Leisha Thomas), an early iteration of this research, takes it starting point in the phenomenon of re-enactments of historical events and situations, having arisen out of a keen curiosity about their form and function. Mimicking a theatre stage, the work is based on re-enactments of historical wars and crises as well as on episodes of the TV series UK Crime Watch from the 1980s and 90s. By repeating fragments and episodes of different kinds of reality, the artwork examines how we may relate to concepts such as truth and absurdity. The performance presents a range of archetypes from the various historical references used, such as perpetrator and victim, and suggests how they may be connected. The audience are spectators and potential participants in the work’s mise-en-scène. The Joystick and The Reins delves into the problem of who or what can be considered a threat to society and who has the right to make such definitions.
________________________________________________________________________________________
ABOUT EVE STAINTON (UK)
Eve Stainton is an artist and choreographer born in Manchester, living in London, UK. They create multi-disciplinary performance worlds that hold movement practices, welded steel, digital collage, and other invisible forces like waves, imagination and drama. Their research is rooted in community, interested in how differently marginalised people experience and come into relationship with power structures and societal conventions. Often working with codes, tropes and the absurd; staging clunky physical negotiations, or revealing ‘behind the scenes’ mechanisms of working together, as a way to question a moral idea of perfection, seamlessness and elegance. Notable presentations include: ICA (UK), Tramway for Take Me Somewhere (UK), Venice Biennale performance programme in collaboration with Florence Peake (IT), Block Universe (UK), Dampfzentrale (CH), My Wild Flag (SE), Le Guess Who? (NL), Bergen Kunsthall (NO), The Place (UK), Nottingham Contemporary (UK), Crac Occitanie (FR), Sadler’s Wells Lilian Baylis (UK), Close Encounters (CPH), La Becque (CH), LCMF (UK), CCA Glasgow (UK), Tangente (CA).
________________________________________________________________________________________
ARTIFICIAL OPTIMISM PERFORMANCE PROGRAM
Artificial Optimism is an exhibition about the resonances of futurism in contemporary art, which can be experienced at Den Frie Udstillingsbygning from Aug. 24th – Oct. 27th 2024. During the exhibition period, performances and concerts by the exhibiting artists will be regularly held. Performance was central to futurism and the program is inspired by the evenings and afternoons that the futurists held between 1909 and 1914, where they presented combinations of readings, sound art, happenings, etc. Participation in the performance program is free when the ticket to the exhibition has been paid.
The exhibition’s performance program has been developed under the auspices of Toaster, a collaboration between Husets Teater and Den Frie.
