In October 08 You and Your Work was back for the fifth time bigger, better and on the move! Stretching over 2 days YAYW5 showcased innovative contemporary performance, site-specific work, live art, installation and dance from the most promising emerging artists from the South west, UK and Europe.
Taking place on Friday 3rd Oct and Sat 4th Oct this free festival played host to eight companies and solo artists as they created work both within the community centre and in the surrounding streets, focusing on notions of identity, place and belonging. The results of an artist-led participatory project with a local Polish group commissioned by YAYW, also was debuted at the platform.
Amongst the line up was intimate dance-theatre performance Chi Chi Bunichi, where Ladino folksong (Judea–Hispanic oral language) meets contemporary choreography in a nomadic journey from Sarajevo to Jerusalem.
Kings of England performers Simon Bowes and his elderly father Peter Bowes took to the stage to deliver ‘Where we live and what we live for,’ a tender, comic and vibrant collaboration revealing the duos absolute alikeness and unfamiliarity.
Artist Mark Greenwood was showing the outcome of his month-long collaboration with a local Polish group. The resulting installation 'Confessions' combined text, sound, video, photography and painting around ideas of immigration and work.
Katrina Horne took to the streets of Easton as she created her blend of time-based art and ephemeral sculpture, using natural materials to trace our changing landscape.
Pennyblack, a young performance duo, brought their site-specific show ‘Postbox BS5 181’ to neighbouring St. Mark’s Rd. The work, centering on the adventures made possible by letters and the postal system, captured the attention of both dedicated audience and passer-by.
Bristol-based artist Jo Bannon debuted her new work ‘Claim to Fame,’ an interactive enquiry based around the one to one meeting of artist and audience member. Asking what it is to know someone and questioning our attitudes to familiarity and intimacy the work attempted to build a community of strangers linked solely by their brushes with stardom.
Muddled State, performance company of Finnish artist Saini Manninen, wove live performance and video to create two intimate works, one based around the mythical, actual and cultural implications of snow and the second being a demonstration of coping strategies used to combat homesickness.
Katherina Radeva's performance 'Birds Behind Bars' has its roots in the sudden release of the six innocent Bulgarian Nuns who were held captive in a Libyan prison from 1999 to 2007. The piece looked at the elements that define what it is to be in ‘exile’ and how these elements impart on the individual and the collective from which he/she is a part.
With its emphasis on social as well as artistic exchange YAYW5 also played host to live music and sets from Polish DJ Katapulto. BRAN, Bristol Refugee and Asylum Network cooked and served delicious Congolese and Zimbabwean food which contributed to a cheerful and relaxed atmosphere.
YAYW5 was funded by Groundwork UK South West and Quartet Community Foundation (Express Programme)
