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. 

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.