P09
Photos by Lisa Attard
Choreography and Sculpture - Florence Peake
Performance - LaLaLa collective (Martina Georgina, Zoe Camilleri & Florinda Camilleri)
Sound design & Live sound performance - Niels Plotard
Assistants to the choreographer - Karl Azzopardi, Fatima A.M.
Curators - Elyse Tonna, Sarah Chircop
‘Interior Pull’ is a site-specific performance by choreographer Florence Peake. Performers and clay co-constitute a sculpture, negotiating needs and desires through corpo-material engagement. The scaffold of the performance is a cyclic extraction and burial of fleshy bodies, foregrounding the materiality of the human body and its entanglement with land. As a non-human agent, the clay modulates the performers’ movements, at times calling for gentle, sensual touch and other times, demanding effort and exertion. The inevitable entanglement with water as a medium which keeps the clay pliable, affords a plethora of sonic possibilities whilst forcing performers to engage cautiously with the clay body due to the risk of slipping. “How” the clay is touched becomes a choice not only for the performers, but an enactment of agency by the clay itself, producing a multisensory dialogue across human and more-than-human bodies.
Contact microphones are embedded in the clay, capturing and modulating exchanges of touch. The sound of the clay becomes yet another agent of composition. Using microphones and a looping pedal voice transformer, the perfomers overlay sound, textual material, and rhythm, emphasizing the discursive element of this material practice. The clay body of 2 tonnes lives on in the exhibition space as a scultural work for the duration of the exhibition.
‘Interior Pull’ is part of DREAM [of] LAND, a project created and curated by Elyse Tonna and Sarah Chircop, commissioned by Spazju Kreattiv, supported by Arts Council Malta, the Italian Cultural Institute in Malta and Culture Moves Europe - a project funded by the European Union.
LaLaLa collective (LLLc) is formed by artistic, ritualistic and domestic collaborators Zoe, Florinda and Martina Georgina. They explore realms of the feminine through performance, seeking to problematize the female stereotypes which dominate contemporary Maltese culture. LLLc reveal more complex feminine narratives through various media, including movement, sound, video and costume, with their bodies at the core of their multidisciplinary practice. Drawing from historical data, social media material, personal experiences and collective speculation, they weave together playful yet poignant performances which aim to be, at least a little bit, uncomfortable. @kollettivlalala