Block Universe

Block Universe and Tate invite a selection of artists, curators and writers to reflect on contemporary choreographic practice. Responding to the term ‘post-dance’, coined at the MDT conference in Stockholm (2015), the event considers the implications of an expanded notion of choreography.

Our contributors will be asked to issue provocations and responses that consider choreography in artistic practice. Exploring questions around liveness and the embodied labour of dance, join us in discussing what this means for an expanded understanding of contemporary dance and movement-related practices. Invited to present provocations are artists’ Malik Nashad Sharpe, Paul Maheke, Florence Peake & Eve Stainton from the perspective of their collaboration and academic Amanda Øiestad Nilsen. The event will be chaired by Curator of Nottingham Contemporary, Cedric Fauq.

There will be space for group discussion with the audience during the event. Following the event join us for a performance hosted by CAJ COLLAB in the East Room. CAJ COLLAB is a collaborative platform that invites two artists from different disciplines who have never worked together before to create a piece of performance in one day. For more information on this event visit here.

Block Universe and Tate invite a selection of artists, curators and writers to reflect on contemporary choreographic practice. Responding to the term ‘post-dance’, coined at the MDT conference in Stockholm (2015), the event considers the implications of an expanded notion of choreography.

Our contributors will be asked to issue provocations and responses that consider choreography in artistic practice. Exploring questions around liveness and the embodied labour of dance, join us in discussing what this means for an expanded understanding of contemporary dance and movement-related practices. Invited to present provocations are artists’ Malik Nashad Sharpe, Paul Maheke, Florence Peake & Eve Stainton from the perspective of their collaboration and academic Amanda Øiestad Nilsen. The event will be chaired by Curator of Nottingham Contemporary, Cedric Fauq.

There will be space for group discussion with the audience during the event. Following the event join us for a performance hosted by CAJ COLLAB in the East Room. CAJ COLLAB is a collaborative platform that invites two artists from different disciplines who have never worked together before to create a piece of performance in one day. For more information on this event visit here.

Block Universe, London's leading international performance art festival and commissioning body kicks off Frieze Week with Founding Director & Curator Louise O'Kelly in conversation with artist Oliver Beer, known for creating performances focussed on the relationship between sound and space, particularly the voice and architecture.
Listen in on the conversation at The Standard, London's Library Lounge and hear more about Beer's upcoming performances and exhibitions that will be taking place at the Louvre and the Opera Garnier this September. Previous presentations have taken place at the Palais de Tokyo, Fondation Vuitton and Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Galerie Thaddeus Ropac, London amongst others.

Performance and transcendence have always maintained close links. That's why Louise O'Kelly, Founding Director and Curator of Block Universe, London's leading performance art festival, catches up with two artists from the 2019 edition, Paul Maheke and Melika Ngombe Kolongo (Nkisi) for a mystical exchange on the concept of transcendence and performance practice.

For the Block Universe festival in 2019, Paul Maheke and Melika Ngombe Kolongo collaborated to produce Sènsa, a performance using African cosmology from the Bantu-Kongo and creation stories as its source material. A collaboration of music, design and performance, music producer Nkisi provided the soundtrack and Ariel Efraim Ashbel the lighting design, within which Maheke performed. This conversation offers a moment of reflection for the artists on their relationship to spiritual practice, and the impact this collaboration had on their work.