Performance part of Meetings on Art, 58th Venice Biennale, 2019

A presence in the peripheral
Sustained in the gloaming.
Climbing into the sex appeal of materialising,
I collected something for you, a dom, a rubble.
Arrangements are peculiar under here.

Florence Peake & Eve Stainton propose an apparition as a mutable Actant upon the auditorium. As extinction is immanent Apparition and Apparition take centre stage; A queer Actant, mistaken for a sci-fi horror, but lingering for intimate potential/prospects. Held in the spectacle of being, both in this moment right now, but mainly in the vacuum between avalanche and landslide. Apparition and Apparition occupy slips and wells with reckless care. Dissolving planetary mass. Tooling and transforming.

Movement 1
The Apparition and The Apparition are conjured, invoked, fully equipped.
Movement 2
The veil parts and Apparition Apparition manifest rocky and rubbling. They collapse and re-form in perpetual becoming.

Movement 3
Resigned and reflective, Apparition and Apparition dissolve back to the peripheral or prepare for the next wave, full and empty of before.

Eve Stainton and Florence Peake explore notions of materiality and simultaneously the energetic transparent nature of our physical selves/bodies within the frame of ecological devastation. They are proposing a ‘dig’ as a site for manifestation, reflection and activity, and excavation as a releasing of apparitional states. Time slides queerly through tenses. The world unfolds as Florence and Eve prepare to become and embody The Apparitions and step into their altered territory, perhaps a dystopian projection, or someones subconscious. Peake and Stainton are interested in different ways of being with the context of Earths erosion, here their intimate relationship in real life acts again as a vehicle to discuss the larger stakes.The performance programme is commissioned by Arts Council England and devised by Ralph Rugoff, Artistic Director of the 58th Venice Biennale of Art, and Aaron Cezar, Director of Delfina Foundation. With special thanks to Bosse & Baum.

Sound design by Beatrice Dillon, featuring bells score by Cassiel
Lighting design by Sorcha Stott-Strzala
Digital Collage film by Eve Stainton
Ceramic sculptures by Florence Peake
Produced by Bosse and Baum

Frieze