transitstation news
From the still quiet of our 10-year sabbatical transitstation prepares to meet a radically changed world. We are ready to embark on another wonderful creative journey with transitstation artists and colleagues, old and new. It will be - it always is - an unforgettable experience of live art.
News from the artists
A series of short articles by transitstation artists and colleagues.
Dr. Lee Campbell
This is an extract from Dr. Campbell’s forthcoming article From the Other Side of the Wall: Zoom, Green Screen and Immersive Storytelling
As an artist/performance maker who loves working with and manipulating the materiality/physicality of objects as part of my practice, by the time I was invited to make a live Zoom performance for transitstation voice #3 in September 2021, like many others, I was really starting to feel Zoom fatigue even though as a platform it holds such a lot of creative potential for me and in actual fact I cannot replicate in any way the visual effects I can on anything else BUT Zoom! As part of SPHERE Festival 2021 shortly before transitstation voice #3, I was asked by host Aritra Chatterjee as part of an artist discussion I took part in, ‘Do you feel sad? Is virtual performance satisfying enough?
Or is it just filling in the blanks right now?’ I remarked that I really missed the physicality/the hapticality of live performance in real life and although during my Zoom performances I do bring in physical props to perform with i.e. the cassette tape recorder in Clever, I was starting to feel that real urge to ‘get back’ to performing in the real word proper.
For transitstation voice #3, part of the poetry I perform talks about the scrapbook I refer to in my film LET RIP: TEENAGE SCRAPBOOK (2022). I printed out digital copies of pages of the scrapbook to use throughout the performance, the first time I had done so. I did not anticipate before the performance started exactly what I would do with them. The moment in the performance where I start to play with the pages of the scrapbook bought an exciting physicality back into the digital space – these pages that conjured up so many (difficult) memories for me.
Pages of the scrapbook appearing digitally on screen as the green screen effect complexified by me engaging with the pages physically. Up to that point, much of the performance in terms of what I said and did, had been rehearsed but this moment with the pages was a breakthrough moment of off-the-cuff improvisation, serendipitous play, of exploring for the first time in front of an audience. I remember co-curator Charles Ryder’s’ comments about how this moment created a different texture within the performance. Up to that moment the audience could hear pages being ripped, they could see images being ripped as part of the green screen (or in actual fact, being smudged out and replaced). The moment in the performance where I then ripped the physical pages seemed (even more) violent but for me it felt like a real moment of emancipation/potentially finally freeing myself from these images/from the memories
— Lee Campbell 2022
Lee Campbell: Still from the Zoom performance Clever at Seeing Without Being Seen 2021
Lee Campbell: Still from the Zoom performance Clever at Seeing Without Being Seen 2021
Lee Campbell: Still from the Zoom performance Clever at Seeing Without Being Seen 2021
Colozzi-Petetskaya
Colozzi-Petetskaya is a collaboration between a visual and performance artist, Katya Petetskaya, and a film director, Patrick Colozzi. The collaboration started in early 2021 and was significantly strengthened during the 2021 Sydney lockdown, which saw the two creatives stuck together for 107 days, culminating in multiple collaborative projects, including ‘Home’.
‘Home’ takes the viewer on a discovery journey of separate parts of Self through the artist's enclosed surroundings of her home, i.e., her extended self. The work draws parallels between two states of occupying one's home and occupying one's body. It investigates the materiality of the body within the home, and the home within the body, in relation to the performer's spiritual, physical, and psychological states.
The work explores the performer’s limitations and abilities in conjunction with the performative capability of the camera’s eye and its direction, defying the use of traditional cinematography techniques.
— Katya Petetskaya and Patrick Colozzi 2022
Colozzi-Petetskaya - 'Home' video performance still shot #1
Colozzi-Petetskaya - 'Home' video performance still shot #2
Colozzi-Petetskaya - 'Home' video performance still shot #3
Sandra Corrigan Breathnach
I am an Interdisciplinary artist working mainly in performance art; my practice includes elements of sculpture, drawing, photography, video and sound.
I am conscious of performance art’s ability to connect, to heighten awareness and communicate through the expression of idea and action. Even if this occurs only on a small scale, or has the ability to impact one person, it can be a powerful means of communication beyond words. This beyond words intuitive communication and the idea of freedom of expression (that is, not at the expense of others) informs my approach.
Following intuitively as a way of being, performance art allows me to tap into an innate primal knowledge.
This intuitive approach flows from and through my life, giving a greater sense of connection and being, which I have found invaluable during the last couple of years, which have been strained to say the least by Covid restrictions. During this locked down period following the initial frustration and angst, performance via Zoom became a life line, out of which a new mode of performance developed, which is still ongoing even as we currently live under less restrictions, widening possibilities of connection and events albeit via digital means. As we are living in a world that is interconnected beyond our understanding there is still a real time connection to be felt in my experience in creating and watching live online performance.
I am Co-Chairperson of the performance art organisation Bbeyond, I initiated and organised a new Bbeyond video performance event R-A-W (Recorded Action Web-Exhibition) in which 40 recorded performance’s were exhibited online in 2021. I am currently working with Alastair MacLennan on an upcoming collaborative performance installation.
— Sandra Corrigan Breathnach, 2022
Sandra Corrigan Breathnach - Livestock Bare Mart Gallery - Dublin - Photography Garry Hobbert - 2018
Sandra Corrigan Breathnach in collaboration with Alastair MacLennan - Flux In Flow - Golden Thread Gallery - Belfast - Photography Jordan Hutchings - 2019
Sandra Corrigan Breathnach - Severance III - The MAC - Belfast - Photography Jordan Hutchings - 2021
M.U.R.T.A.
The global contingency of the pandemic forced us to remain isolated and we had to experiment with new ways of contacting each other, transmitting ideas and meeting. Artists have had to adapt our face, skin, voice and visual work to virtual systems in order to continue provoking the viewer, to continue telling stories, experiences, in short, to continue making art.
Artists from different parts of the world gathered at the transitstation Voice #3 webinars, as a wonderful possibility for this virtual connection where we can be together, show and learn about other proposals, propose and discuss in a parallel and utopian real time, although in places where for each artist it is the dawning or the dark night.
Clearly it is not the same as feeling the energies of the presence, but it seems to me an interesting way to make the art network grow silently, essential for the human being.
In Voice #3 the artists had the possibility in addition to using video images interacting with our action and at the same time transmitting on a screen. Despite all the restrictions that the world situation has imposed on us, technology and platforms such as transitstation have opened doors to us for infinite possibilities in artistic experimentation.
— Karren Labbé (M.U.R.T.A) December 2021
M.U.R.T.A. Tea Time 3 - photo Sebastian Burgos
M.U.R.T.A. - Tea Time 6 - photo Sebastian Burgos
M.U.R.T.A. - Tirameloshuevos - photo - Daniel Sampieri
transitstation future cities :: London 2023
Photo: Diliff, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
2023 marks the 20th anniversary of transitstation.
To mark the occasion we are planning to present the first fully live, in-person transitstation exhibition-as-event following the double impact on the cultural landscape of Brexit and Covid-19.
transitstation future cities :: Dhaka, Bangladesh 2024
Photo: Abidhasan00, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
We are in preliminary discussions with host partner Back ART Foundation in Dhaka, Bangladesh, for the next transitstation project.
Back ART Foundation
Back ART Foundation “was formed in 2013 as an endeavour to link heritage with modern culture, combine diverse forces and develop activity which would open up the city’s art scene, providing emerging contemporary artists opportunities to expand their practice, and exhibit their experimental and performative work deemed too ambitious for conventional institutions. Believing in the transformative power of art, the group promotes new languages for art within Bangladesh by developing a variety of programmes ranging from exhibitions, workshops, and to the recent international performance art festival, Dhaka Live Art Biennale (D’LAB).”
Believing in the transformative power of art, the group promotes new languages for art within Bangladesh by developing a variety of programmes ranging from exhibitions, workshops, and to the recent international performance art festival, Dhaka Live Art Biennale (D’LAB).
The name Back ART derives from the group’s university days when the founding members would carry their belongings in backpacks. In this bag all their arts equipment and ideas would be stored, almost like a portable studio. The name also has connotations with ‘bringing back’ native art, including folklore and traditional art forms, to the contemporary art scene: a theme explored in one of the group’s main programme strands, Native Myth; it is a yearly short term artist in residency project in rural areas. Back ART Foundation envisions bringing art to the public; and it has already organised several public art projects, where many emerging and young artists were promoted to allow them flourish and help them reaching their full potential.
Back ART creates innovative art project on diverse fields including mythology & rural lifestyle, urbanisation, refugee & migration, memories, and language & performance, where artists incorporate various disciplines of art and science both. – Back ART Projects: BIO-NET-WORK, an online based art exhibition, started during COVID 19 Nature vs Nature, a research based project to address climate change Dhaka Live Art Biennale (D’LAB), a bi-annual performance event Native MYTH, a short term artist in residency in rural areas Urban HOURS, a public Art project on Urbanization ART&SCIENCE, workshop with school student SONGLAAP, Performative workshop.
Back ART Organizing Team
President Shubho O Saha
Secretary Uma Mandal
Treasurer Mahmuda Siddika
Research and Planning Chhobi Zulfiqure, Minhaz Mahmud
Advisory Director Biplab Biprodas
CoFounders Biplob Biprodas, Shubho O Saha, Chhobi Zulfiqure, Uma Mandal.
