The Art of Fugue an experimental workshop

This project begins a collaboration between Terry Smith and the Secconi Quartet in collaboration with Ian Dearden

Crossings: An Outdoor Performance

Crossings tells a crucial story rooted in communities affected by the small boat humanitarian crisis on the South Coast, especially in Folkestone. This journey began in 2015 when I explored borders and migrations as the lead artist at the Venice Agendas. Moving to Folkestone in 2016 changed my perspective, but it wasn’t until late 2018 that the small boat arrivals became a significant issue. This once-unfamiliar event is now commonplace for residents, who share personal stories about refugees seeking safety. The presence of temporary accommodations like the Napier Barracks highlights the region's complex relationship with these movements. Folkestone and Dover, the closest landfall from France, are central to this urgent discourse that those impacted must engage with.

“The body as a territory of rebellion” 

COMMON GROUND is a proposition for two performance companies to create a collaborative work that is devised and rehearsed separately but presented together, overlapping on the same ‘stage’

Two performance companies ACCIÓN COLECTIV / AKTION KOLECTIVA in Caracas and workinprogress in Folkestone create a new work together, apart.

BETWEEN WALLS

The series Between Walls is specifically aimed at gallery and museum and non theatrical space.

These performance based-actions could be presented in various settings and with a cohort of performers that could be drawn from the community. This is not community art, this is art that engages the community in the process of creativity and allows them to author and be responsible for their own actions.

I collect material from many different sources, from music, poetry and film. Each of these components feature either within the framework of the piece or form part of the background research, so they may inform the work but not be necessarily evident.

In a dark space, surrounded by the audience, three performers stand at the edge of a harsh circle of light, equal distance from each other facing the centre.

There is a complex soundscape of dreamlike ambient music with hints of the outside world, cars, trains and birdsong among the montage of sounds. The soundtrack is also the cue for a sequence of actions.

The performers ‘play’ one character who is caught is a series of repetitive actions that changes when an ‘outside’ sound interrupts the music. The performers move around the perimeters of the circle of light. In slow precise actions. Gradually and in perceptively the lights dim slowly, even when the lights are almost completely out,  the performers continue to shuffle, an ongoing loop without a narrative, remaining unresolved. It does not end, it just stops.

This piece explores how behaviour seen, and experienced affects how we see the world and how others see us. Smith’s own particular version of OCD – the obsessive checking of the locked  front door to a point sometimes of paralysis is the background to this piece.  One of the main attributes of dance is repetition which is why this work resonates with and plays off, the history of dance performance.

Intersection : interaction forms a live loop of repetitive actions.

However there will be deviations and development of the actions as they repeat, some becoming more complex.  Starting with one performer and increasing at each corner until the full ensemble are walking, moving, bending, singing, speaking, shouting etc

Currently in early research mode, drawing on experiences of dementia and Alzheimer. Examing how memory is always a fragile friend.

A work for multiple screens and a solo performer