Shake It Up Baby: Robert Pacitti on SPILL Festival 2016
Now recognised as one of the world’s premier artist-led festivals of radical live work, the largest SPILL Festival to date runs from this Wednesday to Sunday. Having previously taken place at venues including the Barbican, Southbank and National Theatre, its home is now in Ipswich. Here festival creator and curator Robert Pacitti tells us why you don’t want to miss it.
The SPILL Festival of Performance is in a state of deliberate shake up. An international festival of live art, activism and performance presenting the work of exceptional artists from around the globe, it returns this week with EN MASSE - a programme that re-evaluates what a festival of radical body based practice might do and who it can be for.
Now in its eighth edition, the festival has presented work by some of the most prominent makers in the world of performance and cross-genre radical practice (Karen Finley, Diamanada Galas, Ron Athey, Romeo Castellucci, Jan Fabre, Ryoji Ikeda) alongside that of early makers and those whose practices may have been overlooked. Half of SPILL is the live programme and the other half is contextualizing activity: SPILL Think Tank initiatives, SPILL Salons, SPILL TV, SPILL Writing, SPILL Thinking and more.
For our eighth edition we are back in Ipswich and across five days in October we are unleashing a big friendly beast of a programme - over 100 events spanning live performance, installation, gigs, film, discussions, parties and more. You don’t have to be an art expert to enjoy SPILL, plus with all tickets £10 or £5, a range of amazing value passes and over a third of the festival completely free, it’s super easy to get involved.
In the programme are exciting SPILL Commissions made especially for the festival, plus lots of world premieres and works showing in the UK for the first time. There are participatory events for the adventurous and fantastic performances that take place onstage. 35 works in the festival form the SPILL National Platform, presented by early makers supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation. The programme includes works addressing issues of colonialism, contemporary sexual identities, what it means to live or die in todays climate of increasing state control, and at least one man is going to have his bollocks stapled to his own leg.
But I am also interested in serving the maximum number of people possible, without watering anything down, seeking mainstream assimilation, or apologising for any of it. Presenting at 22 locations across the town, which is more than ever before, we also have exciting projects for Kids + Families and an expanded focus on Sound + Music. Our new Heritage + Place strand presents homegrown projects that celebrate Ipswich. Some of these take place outdoors, others in the local museum and there are treats to be had in the town’s main park.
In addition, we are also presenting the SPILL Dome – a big temporary structure bringing the festival to the street in an exciting new way and offering a daily programme of art, music and more. Each evening features talented local performers, bands and DJs and all events in the SPILL Dome are free.
In recent years I have really been thinking about Ipswich and Suffolk: how the area is, what might engage people, how SPILL could play its part in the story of turning Ipswich’s fortunes – and actually its sense of self – round a bit. Many of the politics that are pertinent locally are also commonplace around the country: attracting more business, improving transport infrastructure, prioritising jobs, housing, health and education. Ipswich has a long history of becoming home to migrants and settlers, some of whom find it a friendly place and others who unfortunately do not. And a recent study found that manufacturing growth across 2015 outstripped that of London. So, like many places, the area is one of mixed fortunes.
Hyper-locally, there are some currents specific to the area that are worth us acknowledging. There is an increasingly urgent need to attract more reputable businesses to the high street, particularly those that can offer the town centre an enhanced night time economy. There is a bit of a schism between Ipswich and the rest of the County, which in turn perpetuates some class divide within the arts – Ipswich Borough Council is Labour controlled and Suffolk County Council sits with the Conservatives. There is a real need for the still young University of Suffolk to succeed, becoming aspirational for students from out of town and for graduate retention post-qualifying. There is an agenda to find ways of meaningfully link areas of the town like the heavily invested-in Waterfront to the commercial centre. And there continues to be a focus on major redevelopment across the town. I see every one of these issues as a specific opportunity for SPILL.
I am now working outside of my known models. I see many other festivals around the world that present more traditional work and then work out how ‘left field’ they dare to go by presenting one or two quirkier projects. And I see a growing number of performance festivals presenting their programmes to the same people (literally, the same people) over and over again. Both of these bore me. The first model is incredibly conservative, whilst the second is self-serving and elite.
What SPILL is now attempting then is to continue from a place of radical practice sitting firmly front and centre, and using the energy generated by that to extend its offer outwards, through an additional more accessible programme and with considerably further reach. I may yet be run out of town by flaming pitchfork wielding townsfolk, but I very much doubt it. The buzz around the festival this year is widespread and palpable. Ipswich feels like the future right now, and all that is really missing, is you.
SPILL Festival of Performance runs at various venues across Ipswich from Wednesday 26 October until Sunday 30 October.
Tickets can be bought at the SPILL website and you can follow all the action using #SPILL2016.
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 2016 SPILL FESTIVAL PROGRAMME
World Premiere / SPILL Commission
Thursday 27 – Saturday 29 October
In rainschemes for insomniacs, Caton works with organic river fetishes, and items loaned from Ipswich Museum collections. He evokes dark, supernatural, fractured histories through an experimental approach to shadow play.
World Premiere / SPILL Commission
A performance installation, alongside a series of different interventions in the site of the Museum, as Artist-in-residence for both SPILL plus Colchester and Ipswich Museums.
World Premiere / SPILL Commission
Willis Building, Friars Street, IP1 1TD
Built around an album of original songs that explores our fundamental relationship to the moon; this immersive 3D spatial soundscape combines atmospheric electronics with traditional instruments, arresting visuals and live performance created in collaboration with a host of local people.
MARTIN O’BRIEN + SHEREE ROSE (UK/USA)
World Premiere / SPILL Commission
In this durational site specific performance at St Clement’s Church, Martin O’Brien and Sheree Rose create their own sanctuary of sickness. This is a place for freaks, monsters and weirdos. It’s a place of pain, sacrifice and submission in order to survive and you are invited to join them. Take cover from the chaos of the outside world and let’s claim sanctuary together.
Thursday 27 – Sunday 30 October
Christchurch Park (Outdoor Classroom)
SoundHide Ipswich is a sited installation in the outdoor classroom in Christchurch Park. It will feature recordings made in the green spaces of Ipswich and aims to connect people with their environment. SoundHide Ipswich provides a den in which people can rest and listen in an immersing, safe place to the wildlife sounds gathered from their local environment. The experience often invokes memories, sensations and a feeling of calm, security and wellbeing. Local people get all of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to experience SoundHide before the festival opens!
Ipswich Unitarian Meeting House
In this representation of the work Mitchener focuses on the names enslaved Africans were forced to take. By removing their birth names this was a deliberately cruel and decisive effort to rob them of their identity and humanity. Taking a contemporary viewpoint on this period, [NAMES] tests and explores ways of confronting and feeling a past that continues to groan and shift restlessly in our present.
LATAI TAUMOEPEAU (AUSTRALIA/TONGA)
A woman, 500kg of ice, a shovel, and the steady walk from point A to point B. Back and forth, she works the open-cut mines of the past into the future of climate change; excavating the solid white rock into invisibility.
Thursday 27 – Saturday 29 October
Inspired by the imagination of young people, Beastie is an innovative participatory performance for children aged 6 – 10. The kids share a jaw-dropping secret and take charge as they create their own stories and explore their surroundings hand-in hand with a very special new friend. The result is a playful, active and engaging experience for small groups of children and one big surprise for adults!
JUSTIN HOPPER + SCANNER (US/UK)
Thursday 27 – Saturday 29 October
Public Record is a recorded audio tour of Ipswich Museum, guiding the listener through unseen connections and subtle hauntings. New poetry and music created from the Museum’s own archives and collections takes the listener in tangential directions, resurrecting forgotten lives through texts and objects.
ELAINE MITCHENER + DAVID TOOP + BARRY LEWIS + DAM VAN HUYNH (UK)
A contemporary opera that intricately melds music, sound art, image and movement to explore space inviting audiences into a unique and intimate realm of disturbing beauty.
DEAD RAT ORCHESTRA + SHE SHANTIES + CATH & PHIL TYLER + DOCUMENTS + MACGILLIVRAY
From unadorned voices to sonic rapture, join us at St. Clement's Church for an night of musical magic. This event is presented in partnership with Colchester Arts Centre and programmed jointly by Stafford Glover, Robert Pacitti & Anthony Roberts.
Using minimal lights and sound and no set, three exceptional performers have just themselves to rely on. This is physical theatre of the very highest order, by turns laugh out loud funny, profound and urgent. This show is quite simply unmissable.
DAVID HOYLE + VERY SPECIAL GUESTS + HOUSE BAND SNAPPED ANKLES
Saturday Pump & Grind SPILL Party
The sensational anti-drag queen David Hoyle presents a very special performance made for SPILL. Expect polemic, pathos, provocative politicking and high comedy. Come and celebrate spill festival in full-on party mode style.