Phoebe Collings-James and Last Yearz Interesting Negro – Sound as Weapon, Sounds 4 Survival

Charting psycho-emotional landscapes and mapping them on to the physical, Phoebe Collings-James and Jamila Johnson-Small work with their multi-dimensional bodies as the primary technology and source material for a collaborative live performance, Sound as Weapon, Sounds 4 Survival (30 min), which is embodied through a symbiotic relationship between dance, music and sculpture. The group forms a chorus centred around a conceptual deconstruction of ‘percussion’ as it functions instrumentally and also as a radical proposition to the various ways you could think about the power of ‘striking an object’ and the impact of the sonic as resonating frequencies and vibrations. Their bodies navigate the sensory labour of being ‘played’. For each performance of this work, Phoebe Collings-James and Jamila Johnson-Small a.k.a. Last Yearz Interesting Negro are joined by a different cast of three other artists. Sound as Weapon, Sounds 4 Survival was presented at Paradiso, Amsterdam, as part of Sonic Acts Festival 2019. Commissioned by Bergen Kunsthall and Sonic Acts as part of Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. Based on work developed in residency at Wysing Arts Centre. Phoebe Collings-James is a multidisciplinary artist, working in a variety of media including sculpture, painting and video. Collings-James was born in 1987, London, UK where she lives and works after graduating from Goldsmiths in 2009. Her work deeply explores the notions of violence, sexuality, desire, and beauty and she further explores feminism and contemporary art through her web project/platform Cunt Today. Last Yearz Interesting Negro is an alias of Jamila Johnson-Small. Trained in dance, the artist works through questions of presence, visibility, responsibility and pleasure, building atmospheric landscapes through a live process of unfolding tensions between things that produce meaning. Often using things that are already present, the artist rearranges them in an effort to produce combinations that resonate with the horror, discomfort, cringe, confusion and sensuality of the contemporary moment. www.jamilajohnsonsmall.wordpress.com Presentations Sonic Acts Festival 2019 22 February 2019 Paradiso Amsterdam www.sonicacts.com Borealis Festival 8 March 2019 Bergen, Norway www.borealisfestival.no

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