Entanglements: Studies in Flowing, Following, Falling

Image Credit: Marie-Chantal Hamrock

How can we move from making studies of the world to learning with the world? Entanglements takes a creative approach to learning and teaching, exploring the educational potential of collaborative art making. The event will entangle human and aquatic worlds, moving between freshwater and the deep ocean, learning through performance, video, music, poetry and song. Falling, flowing and following offer different models for an entangled education.

To draw, to write with words, to sculpt, to design, to compose music or dance, to collaborate with others in the making of performance and all other forms that art can take, all require that we study our subject, with our bodies, with our eyes, with our minds, with our hearts. The learning process makes the artwork; the art of making is an act of learning.

To teach these ways of making is also to learn. This holds true not only in the preparation for teaching but in the event of teaching itself which brings new insight through the interaction with other minds asking questions or making observations from other points of view.

This event will gently entangle a number of collaborative projects, and include a post-show discussion.

Karen Christopher, Tara Fatehi and Jemima Yong will share material from their new collaborative performance Skywater, Facewater, Underwater Waltz, which explores the movement of time in the deep sea via conversation, connectedness, durational work, and song-like structures.

David Overend (artistic researcher and EFI’s lecturer in interdisciplinary studies) and Matthew Whiteside (composer) will share their collaboration with the Waterways Collective of artists and scientists, in an exploration of a journey from river to sea, inspired by their time following Atlantic salmon.

Rhubaba Choir will present work developed for an entangled collaboration with Marie-Chantal Hamrock and Noah Tomson. Rhubaba invite artists to make works for and with the voices of the choir.

Award-winning poet, playwright and performer Hannah Lavery will respond creatively to the event’s theme and contents. Hannah was appointed Edinburgh Makar (city poet) in 2021.

Related workshops will be offered by Karen Christopher and Rhubaba Choir.

Entry will be via the Edinburgh Futures Institute south entrance on Porters Walk (opposite Tribe Yoga).

This event will be photographed/recorded, and may be used for future marketing, promotional or archive purposes. If you would prefer not to be photographed/recorded, please let us know at the event.

Karen Christopher

Karen Christopher is a collaborative performance maker, performer and teacher. Her company, Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects, is devoted to collaborative processes, listening for the unnoticed, the almost invisible, and the very quiet, paying attention as an act of social cooperation. Recent works engage with interconnectivity: the entanglement between people and of people with their environments, other living beings, and the vibrant matter with which we interact. She was a member of Chicago-based Goat Island performance group for 20 years until they disbanded in 2009. Karen is based in Faversham, Kent. http://www.karenchristopher.co.uk/

Tara Fatehi

Tara Fatehi is a performance maker, performer and writer. She creates poetic-political pieces playing with ambiguity, mistranslation, disjunction and unfinishedness. Tara has performed at the V&A Museum, Royal Academy of Arts, Nottdance, Chapter, Julidans, Montpellier Danse, Dansens Hus, Alkantara and Rosendal Teater among others. Her ongoing projects include Mishandled Archive (dispersing a family archive in public space through dance and photography) and From the Lips to the Moon (an unusual music and poetry night). Tara is currently performing in pieces by Hooman Sharifi (Norway) and Teatr O Bando (Portugal). In 2021, Tara was the first ever resident artist at the United Nations Archives at Geneva. Tara is based in London. www.tarafatehi.com

Jemima Yong

Jemima Yong is a performance maker and photographer. She is Sarawakian, born in Singapore, and has developed her artistic practice in London, UK, where she is based. Collaboration and experimentation are central to her work. Recent performances include Something in Your Voice with Emergency Chorus and Marathon with JAMS, which received the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award 2018 and was presented by the Barbican Centre. Jemima’s photography has been featured by the BBC, Time Out, The Guardian, Swazi Observer and The Straits Times. She is an associate artist at Forest Fringe and is one fifth of DARC (Documentation Action Research Collective). Jemima is an alumni of United World Colleges, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and The Curious School of Puppetry. https://jemimayong.format.com/

Matthew Whiteside

Matthew Whiteside, composer and Artistic Director of The Night With…. His music is lauded as "Effective and Unsettling" by BBC Music Magazine and "post-minimalist bold sparseness" by the Herald. He won the SMIA Award for Creative Programming at the Scottish Awards for New Music in 2020 and was named One to Watch by the Scotsman. Recent works include commissions from the United Strings of Europe, Scottish Opera Connect, Glasgow Barons and Crash Ensemble.Alongside his artistic work, Matthew is passionate about supporting the DIY community through education work such as publishing “The Guidebook to Self-Releasing Your Music”.

Hannah Lavery

Hannah Lavery is a Scottish poet and playwright. She was selected by Owen Sheers’ as one of his Ten Writers Asking Questions That Will Shape Our Future. Her debut poetry collection Blood Salt Spring (Polygon) was nominated for a Saltire Prize in 2022, her second collection Unwritten Woman was published by Polygon in August 2024. Hannah is the current Makar (poet laureate) for the City of Edinburgh, co-host of feminist arts podcast QuineCast and an Associate Artist at National Theatre Scotland (NTS) her plays for NTS The Drift and Lament for Sheku Bayoh and The Protest have toured extensively. She has written for a wide range of Theatre companies, broadcasters and publications including BBC Radio 4 and the Guardian. Hannah lives, breathes and dreams on the beaches and cliffs of Scotland’s East Coast, with her dreaming often taking her back to the streets and closes of Edinburgh.

Rhubaba Choir

Rhubaba Choir was founded in 2013 by committee members of Rhubaba, an Edinburgh artist-run organisation. It acts as a commissioning platform for new works, intended to provide invited artists, musicians and writers with the resource of collective voices as a material. Rhubaba invites artists to make works for and with the voices of the choir, whether through traditional means or by using the voice in other, more experimental ways. In its lifetime, the Rhubaba Choir has sung in many places, including underpasses, on canal boats, up Calton Hill, and worked with many artists including Shona Macnaughton, Sion Parkinson, Kathryn Elkin, Hannan Jones, Serena Korda and Tessa Lynch.

Chair: David Overend

David Overend is a researcher in interdisciplinary education, art and performance. He is currently working with Edinburgh Futures Institute as Programme Director of the MA(hons) Interdisciplinary Futures. As a theatre director, David has worked for the National Theatre of Great Britain and has toured internationally with award-winning shows. Productions include Rob Drummond’s Bullet Catch and The Majority. In 2023-24, he made a series of Entanglements with Karen Christopher. Books include Performance in the Field: Interdisciplinary practice-as-research (Palgrave Macmillan 2023), Making Routes: Journeys in performance 2010-2020, co-authored with Laura Bissell (Triarchy Press 2021), and an edited collection, Rob Drummond: Plays with participation (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2021). davidoverend.net

Host or Publisher Edinburgh Futures Institute