Confluence
Artists and thinkers explore the ever-changing landscape of Bristol city centre in new residency programme, Confluence.
Water dances through Bristol.
The city was built on the confluence of rivers – where the Avon and the Frome meet and begin their rush towards the sea. Smaller streams flow through each neighbourhood, often unseen in channels hidden by concrete.
Bristol is a place of change, with new ideas washing in and through – often very fast.
In a city that is constantly evolving, how do we find a moment to pause and reflect on this place? How do we make a little space for listening, for dreaming? What are the stories we can tell each other of what it’s like to live here, or to have lived here, or to imagine living here in the future?
Confluence (Part 1)
For the first phase of Confluence in late 2023 saw four exceptional artists – Asmaa Jama, Verity Standen, Travis Alabanza and Ryan Convery-Moroney – navigate the evolving currents of Bristol and develop new ideas that reflect on this fascinating city.
At the beginning of December 2023, we shared what emerged from these explorations. Myth-making met romance met counter-culture met shopping. Combining film, performance, photography and installation, this weekend event invited audience to delve into the personal experiences of people who call Bristol home, and to leave their mark on a collective vision for our city’s future.
Confluence (Part 1) was a production by MAYK, commissioned by Ginkgo Projects for The Glassworks with the support of Fresh.
Confluence (Part 2)
Bringing together brilliant artists and thinkers into a programme of work that will unfold over the next twelve months, this next phase of Confluence will see us continuing to explore the unheard and unseen in our changing city. Confluence will invite you to engage in person and online as we open up the project at key moments throughout the year.
And it all starts at Mayfest 2024, where children run wild in urban forests, an arch made of ice helps us think about the systems we imagine, build, and come to rely on, and where we open up a conversation about how art can help us navigate a changing city.
Confluence (Part 2) is a production by MAYK, commissioned by Ginkgo Projects for The Glassworks with the support of Grainger Plc.
From the Blog
Asmaa Jama – A Song for the Slippages
I am thinking about converging tales in the city. I am exploring slippages, and glitches in the built environment. Rooting this tale in Stapleton Road, in a soundscape and performance, I am exploring the idea of a hidden or parallel world and the stories communities have carried with them. Using the magic realism of urban myths, this tale will reveal how porous our worlds are.
Asmaa is a multidisciplinary artist, writer and filmmaker based in Bristol. Their solo exhibition Except this time nothing returns from the ashes, made in collaboration with Gouled Ahmed, was presented at Spike Island, Bristol in 2023.
Jama's first film work Before We Disappear (2021), was an interactive moving image piece commissioned by BBC Arts, followed by The Season of Burning Things (2021), also made in collaboration with Ahmed, was commissioned by the Bristol Old Vic (2021).
Their work has also been presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale in collaboration with the Goethe Institute and Theatre Neumarkt’s 100 Ways to Say We Programme (2021), and was the official selection at Blackstar Film Festival, Aesthetica Film Festival and Sharjah Film Platform 5 (2022).
Jama’s writing has been commissioned by Jerwood Arts, Hayward Gallery, Arnolfini and Ifa Gallery, Berlin. Their written works have been published in places like The Poetry Review, Nataal and Magma. In theatre, they have written for, and are performing in, Dorothee Munyaneza’s Mailles, and have written for Radouan Mrziga’s Akal. They were a Film London FLAMIN fellow (2022); a resident artist at Somerset House Studios and a Barbican Young Poet.
Ryan Convery-Moroney – Playful Opportunists
My work explores the city’s urban counter-culture, most specifically the skater community who occupy ‘unloved’ spaces such as the Cumberland Basin and M32 underpass. Using film to document and interview the people who use those spaces, my project delves into self-governance, transience and how people help shape the city’s landscape.
Ryan is a Bristol-based young portrait and documentary photographer working with still and moving imagery. The foundation of his practice stems from an inherent connection to space and urban planning. He is interested in social structure, psychogeography, spatial practices and the multifaceted use of space. Particularly, Convery-Morony is interested in understanding how we observe, feel, act and behave accordingly to space due to our individual or collective knowledge, intentions and interests.
He was first drawn to photography through riding BMX where he also developed an appreciation of concrete, urban space and architecture. He went on to study photography at Portsmouth and has since relocated to Bristol, and was Artist in Residence with MAYK in 2021-22.
Travis Alabanza – Since We Last Kissed
I grew up in Bristol. Hillfields to be exact. A forgotten estate on the outskirts of the city. I discovered so many new parts of Bristol at the same time as discovering my queerness. New partners, serious ones or serious one-night-stands, would lead me to new alley ways, or clubs or parks. When I recently moved back to Bristol, it felt like everything had changed, and also had stayed the same. It felt so familiar yet distant. So, I reached out to some people I have kissed, and we recreated that kiss at a spot of Bristol we cared about, and I asked them: “how has Bristol changed since we last kissed?”
Travis Alabanza is an award-winning writer, performer and theatre maker. Born in Bristol and recently relocated back to the city, Travis is fascinated by how the city is changing and about the things that will never change. Their work is often focused on live interaction, untraditional participants within art, and queerness.
Their writing has appeared in the BBC, Guardian, Vice, Gal-Dem, in numerous anthologies including Black and Gay In the UK, and previously had a fortnightly column in the metro. After being the youngest recipient of the artist in residency program at Tate Galleries, Alabanza debut show Burgerz toured internationally to sold out shows in Southbank Centre, Sao Paulo Brazil, HAU Berlin and won the Edinburgh Fringe Total Theatre award in 2019. In 2020 their theatre show Overflow debuted at the Bush Theatre to widespread acclaim and later streamed online in over 22 countries, and most recently their new show Sound of the Underground was staged by the Royal Court in London last year. Their work surrounding gender, trans identity and race has been noted internationally, giving talks at universities including Oxford, Harvard, Bristol and more.
Noted for their distinct voice, in 2019 the Evening Standard listed them as one of the 25 most influential under 25-year-olds, as well as being listed in the Dazed100, guardian asking if 'they are the future of theatre' and recently being listed on the Forbes30Under30List.
Verity Standen – There You Go, Lovely
I have been working in residence at The Galleries shopping centre: getting to know the people who work there and pass through; recording interviews with shopworkers, cleaners, security guards and visitors; digging into the history of the shops and how they have changed over time. I have begun weaving these conversations into music – layering people's words and historical information about the shop units (along with a handful of tripadviser reviews) into a set of vocal pieces.
Verity Standen is an artist, composer and choir leader. Her work focuses on the human voice - gathering people together to sing, and exploring different ways that people can experience music. She likes to play with voices in ways that ask us to listen differently. Her projects take a range of forms – concerts, theatre pieces, films, installations, community events – but they always start with the voice.
A lot of Verity's work explores the relationship between live music and intimacy, such as HUG (2013), Symphony (2016) and Undersong (2018). For Mayfest 2022 she created polyphony, a swirling sound installation featuring recorded voices of people across the country. Verity also works in partnership with communities to create projects for specific environments, including Island Duets (2023, with singers on the Isle of Mull), Voices of Worle (2019, with community elders in Weston-super-Mare) and Refrain (2017, with male choirs in sites connected to conscientious objection).
Photography by Paul Blakemore. Film by Helm Films
As Bristol enters a period of significant regeneration, how can we collectively reimagine what the provision of public art looks like in the future? How can artists playfully disrupt and create thrilling new place-based work that is non-permanent and has deeper, more rich community engagement.