JO BANNON

Sleight of Hand

Sleight of Hand is a tactile installation for curious fingers and unbelieving eyes.

Integrating audio description, tactile design, choreography and ASMR, this sumptuous work invites audiences to participate in a series of touch encounters with unknown objects, materials and matter. Subverting the format of a touch tour, Sleight of Hand explores what we can discover if we loosen our grip on the known visual world and let our senses wander…

As always, Jo’s work is guided by her offbeat humour and ongoing fascination with objects, visual perception and how strange the ordinary world really is. Sleight of Hand premiered at Mayfest 2024 and has since toured to The Festival Theaterformen in Braunschweig, Unlimited Festival at Southbank Centre and Wellcome Collection.

Sleight of Hand is part of BLIND MAGIC: A triptych of artworks exploring the performativity of visual impairment. A film Passing, an installation Sleight of Hand and live performance The Dirty Work.

About Jo Bannon

Jo Bannon is a UK based artist working in performance, choreography and live art. Her work is concerned with identity, sensory perception, and human encounter and explores how our physical bodies experience the world around us and how this sensory experience can or cannot be conveyed. Her work is informed by her identity as a disabled woman with albinism and attempts to unpick the ways we look, hear and sense our immediate environment in order to rethink or make unfamiliar these intrinsic human behaviours. Bannon’s work is led by form and so manifests in various mediums including intimate encounters designed for single or small audiences, staged performance, dance, film and installation.

Jo has presented work in the UK, Europe, South America, USA, China, South Korea and Australia. Jo also works as a dramaturg, educator and writer and is a founder member of artist collective Residence. Recent work includes Feeling Thing (2021), Kitchen Alba (2021), Absent Tense (2020), We Are Fucked (2018), Alba (2015), Dead Line (2013) and Exposure (2011).

Credits

Created by Jo Bannon

Sound Design by Julie Rose Bower

Sound Engineering by Joe Cusack

Set and Costume Design by Katherina Radeva

Set and Costume Made by Rositza Radeva

Production Management by Froud

Lighting Design by Josh Krysiak

Performed and Hosted by Kit Hall and Hannah Sullivan

Audio Description by Laura Dannequin

Developed in collaboration with Augusto Corrieri and Sindri Runudde

Dramaturgy by Gemma Paintin

Produced by MAYK

Performances

Participatory Installation | Duration 60 mins

MAYFEST, Bristol, UK

THEATERFORMEN, Braunschweig, Germany

UNLIMITED FESTIVAL, Southbank Centre, London, UK

Partners

An Unlimited UK Partner Award 2023 commission with Wellcome Collection made possible thanks to funding from Arts Council England.

BLIND MAGIC has been commissioned by Unlimited, Wellcome Collection, The Space, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Cambridge Junction, The Place & Tramway. With additional support from Fabric and Horizon. Supported using public funds through Arts Council England.

For more information on the project and presenting it, email the Lead Producer Josephine Gyasi: josephine@mayk.org.uk.

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Passing