Although I was unable to attend myself, I saw photos from the brilliant ‘Markings’ festival in July and knew I had to share them on my blog! To accompany the pictures, I asked Charlotte Hodes, LCF’s Professor in Fine Art and one of the event managers, to write a guest piece for me. All photos come courtesy of Marie-Therese Hildenbrandt.
Summer 2016 culminated in University of the Arts London’s ambitious Illustration and Performance Festival ‘Markings’. UAL collaborated with the House of Illustration to launch the Festival, which looked at the relationship between illustration and performance over a two day period, 8-9 July.
The Festival theme was addressed in a number of forms including performance, film, interactive workshops and an academic symposium. The programme took place at Central Saint Martins’ Lethaby Gallery and Crossing, the Granary Square and at the House of Illustration.
‘Untitled’
It featured contributions from students, researchers and academics from across the Colleges and UAL alumni, as well as international artists and academics.
The Festival invited illustrators to think beyond the surface to consider how performance can be used to invigorate the form and to capture lived experience; it asked performers how illustration might be incorporated into a live time- based process; and for artists, how the process of drawing can be considered performative?
‘This is Not a Mirror’
Highlights from LCF’s MA Costume for Performance students included recent graduate Ester Mangas’s dramatic costume design performance in which the garment becomes stained with paint ‘Untitled’; ‘This is Not a Mirror’, an innovative interactive live performance and film (designed and conceived by Isabella Bruno, Chloe Gervais, Veronica Toppino, digital design: Dimitrios Coumados, music: Jules Barre); and ‘Falling Apart’, a specially created pop up performance for Granary Square, (designed and conceived by Li Xiong, Su Yu Chen, Yung Chi Lin, Xiaolin Jiao, Yi Zhang) in which delicate geometric structures containing dancers dissolved under water sprinklers. This drew a huge crowd.
‘Falling Apart’
‘Markings on Screen’, curated by LCF’s Nilgin Yusuf represented 22 films which addressed the theme in a multiplicity of ways, including ‘The Violet Hour’ curated by LCF’s Professor Amy de La Haye, contributions from our researcher colleagues at RMIT, Melbourne and films selected from open submission by students from across UAL.
‘Life is a Performance, Drawing Class’
The symposium, convened by Roger Sabin, featured artists’ talks and research presentations by leading practitioners and scholars that tested the boundaries of existing definitions of illustration. Themes included relationship between illustration and rehearsal, illustrated books as mini-theatres, and the cognitive processes involved in recognising pictures when we watch them being produced.
You can find out more about the festival here and in this film created by LCF :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOl2_3IseWs
We also have a lovely film created by one of our MA Fashion Media Production students documenting the festival itself, which I hope to post soon. Stay tuned!
