Mayfest Radio
Running alongside the live festival programme, Mayest Radio brings you a bespoke offering of audio insights, conversations and reflections. This particular year, we dipped into our archive to uncover some aural gems for your listening pleasure, as well as creating a smattering of brand new content especially for that moment. Completely free and available online to listen to wherever you are.
Horizontal Conversations with Raquel Meseguer Zafe
Raquel first tried out the idea of hosting Horizontal Conversations back at Mayfest 2018.
Do you remember the Mayfest hub downstairs at the Arnolfini reading room? With the thick grey carpet, rostra and lamp? If you saw two people lying down together, deep in conversation, that was probably Raquel and a visiting artist talking about the role horizontality might play in creative practice.
This Mayfest we are delighted to be able to share three Horizontal Conversations recorded with Bristol based creative producer Roseanna Dias, visiting artist James Leadbitter AKA the vacuum cleaner, and Bristol based creative leader Anna Starkey.
The premise of the Horizontal Conversation is that lying down together makes for a different kind of conversation, most likely a more intimate or a dreamer conversation. The conversations are part of Raquel’s interest in horizontality as process, site of spectatorship and a different way of being together in public. They have grown out of her project A Crash Course in Cloudspotting which invites the audience to lie down together to experience an audio installation and performance about people’s attempts to rest in public and that traces the connections between us.
Listen to the conversations in the playlist, and click the title of each show for show notes.
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Read a transcript of this conversation here.
In this first conversation Raquel and Roseanna Dias talk about how they have both come to work with rest and rest as methodology. Roseanna also talks about her experience entering care in her work as a creative producer, about her research project Spaces of Care and the Creativity and Care Programme she is developing with Josephine Gyasi at Knowle West Media Centre.* Please note Raquel misrepresented Khensani De Klerk as an architect, they are an artist who has written for the Architectural Review.
* Crip is a term used in disability art and scholarship to challenge ideas of normalcy and as a provocation to create non normative spaces, processes, and art. The term has been brought into usage by people like Alison Kafer in their book Feminist, Queer, Crip.
For Roseanna’s blog on Spaces of Care click here
More info on the Creativity & Care Programme click here
For Roseanna’s conversation with Euella Jackson: Resourcing Rest click here
Jae Tallawah and Care Co-ordinators
Khensani de Klerk’s essay A Place of Safety was published in the Architectural Review November 2021 edition entitled Where do we go from here?
For more information about Towards a Restful City visit:
uncharteredcollective.com/bristol
uncharteredcollective.com/bristol-bookclub
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Read a transcript of this conversation here.
This horizontal conversation with James Leadbitter, aka the vacuum cleaner was recorded for Mayfest 2022. We talk about how James works with care in the making of his work and how he thinks about care in relationship to audience experience, we also talk about the politics of rest and care.Please note Crip is a term used in disability art and scholarship to challenge ideas of normalcy and as a provocation to create non normative spaces, processes, and art. The term has been brought into more mainstream usage by people like Alison Kafer in their book Queer, Feminist, Crip.
James Leadbitter
http://www.thevacuumcleaner.co.uk/about/
http://www.thevacuumcleaner.co.uk/exposure/
http://www.thevacuumcleaner.co.uk/madlove-a-designer-asylum/
Sascha Gilmour, designer and co-performer of Exposure https://www.saschagilmour.com
Raquel Meseguer Zafe
https://uncharteredcollective.com/cafe-bookclub
https://uncharteredcollective.com/cloudspotting-mayfest-2022
Sins Invalid Manifesto: https://www.sinsinvalid.org/blog/10-principles-of-disability-justice
Roseanna Dias’s Creativity + Care project
https://kwmc.org.uk/creativity-x-care-research-development/
Touretteshero and their Relaxed Methodology
https://www.touretteshero.com/2016/03/16/relaxed-performances-the-faqs/
https://bac.org.uk/relaxed-venue/
Joon Lyn Goh
https://www.joonlynngoh.net
http://migrantsinculture.com
Rhiannon Armstrong
https://www.rhiannonarmstrong.net
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Read a transcription of this conversation here.
”We are sharing a transcript of this conversation with Anna Starkey, as we had some technical problems with the audio recording (the main one being I forgot to turn one of the microphones on - I’m on a steep learning curve, believe me!).So think of this as an introduction to Anna and I, and to the projects we are alive with right now, namely Anna’s thought experiment ‘The Imaginary Museum’ and the notion of Long Time. And we’ll do a follow on horizontal conversation in summer 2022.
To give the conversation a little context - this was an experiment for both of us to come together in ‘not knowing’ what we would talk about, and to come together when we were both navigating pain and fatigue, to see if we could be in conversation in a state that might normally absent us from conversation and company. Our conversation is fittingly expansive and daydreamy at times, and we hope you can embrace this different way of ‘knowing’ and ‘being together’.
We hope you enjoy the conversation.”
– Raquel Meseguer Zafe
Thought Residencies
Short, informal insights into artists’ ideas, feelings and practice. The form is short, but the thinking expansive.
Unwind over a brief interlude with some of our most interesting performance creators. Completely free and digitally intimate.
For this series of Thought Residencies, we invited each artist to select the next, creating a chain from Monika Truong to Noncedo Gxekwa.
Monika Truong
Monika Truong is a sinologist, sociologist and theatre professional based in Zurich. She is performing Be Part Of at Mayfest 2022.
Ntando Cele
Ntando Cele is a theatre-maker who was born in South Africa and is based in Bern, Switzerland. She recently performed her work BLACK OFF at the Pro Helvetia Swiss Showcase at Brixton House in London.
Khanyisile Mbongwa
Khanyisile Mbongwa is a Cape Town-based independent curator, award-winning artist, and sociologist. She is Curator for Liverpool Biennial 2023
Noncedo Gxekwa
Noncedo is an artist currently living in Cape Town. Her practice engages will collaborative forms of photography, individuals and nature.
Explore the voices of polyphony
Last year Verity Standen and a group of fellow artist-interviewers gathered recordings from people in Bristol, Liverpool, London, Middlesbrough, Stoke-on-Trent, Cumbria and Somerset. Verity and co-composer Yas Clarke have layered and spliced these recordings into a rich auditory tapestry, which audiences can experience in person at Mayfest 2022.
In this online playlist, you can spend some time with each voice individually. Each of these conversations began with questions about the voice, but followed its own path into personal histories and surprising anecdotes.
Thought Residencies
Short, informal insights into artists’ ideas, feelings and practice. The form is short, but the thinking expansive.
Unwind over a brief interlude with some of our most interesting performance creators. Completely free and digitally intimate.
For this series of Thought Residencies, we invited each artist to select the next, creating a chain from Monika Truong to Noncedo Gxekwa.
Monika Truong
Monika Truong is a sinologist, sociologist and theatre professional based in Zurich. She is performing Be Part Of at Mayfest 2022.
Ntando Cele
Ntando Cele is a theatre-maker who was born in South Africa and is based in Bern, Switzerland. She recently performed her work BLACK OFF at the Pro Helvetia Swiss Showcase at Brixton House in London.
Khanyisile Mbongwa
Khanyisile Mbongwa is a Cape Town-based independent curator, award-winning artist, and sociologist. She is Curator for Liverpool Biennial 2023
Noncedo Gxekwa
Noncedo is an artist currently living in Cape Town. Her practice engages will collaborative forms of photography, individuals and nature.