TO YOU TO YOU TO YOU: Love Letters to a (Post)Europe

7pm both nights. £14/£11 concessions per night or £20/£18 concessions for both.

In the midst of rapid change, polarisation and crises of social imagination locally and globally, small acts of imagination and friendship become radical interventions. TO YOU TO YOU TO YOU is an urgent gathering of love and dissent that seeks to connect, exchange and witness through performance and assembly, and through the action, idea or form of a love letter. 

A critical mass of over twenty artists from the UK, mainland Europe and beyond come together in a programme of performed responses over two evenings including commissioned work with artists travelling from Athens, Paris, Chicago and within the UK to perform. 

toyoutoyoutoyou.com

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Line-up for Friday 5 October

Laura Bridgeman 
Laura will present Letter To My Future Lover & more. It will be dirty.
laurabridgeman.com

Brian Catling and David Tolley – Coiner
A piece exploring the brutality of finance and the Charon of possession. Coiner is the old street name for a confidence trickster, thief or forger. 
briancatling.net/
wolfinthewinter.com/

Tim Etchells (video short) – it’s still touch and go
timetchells.com

Catherine Hoffmann – What ever happened to the Glory Days
On being broke, being a woman, on debt, desire, expectations and the economy.
cathoffmann.com/

Mikhail Karikis (video short) – Invitation
Invitation draws inspiration from political modes of speech and observes the disturbing contradictions in prevailing models of neoliberal masculinity, questioning the performance of ‘maleness’ and exposing the fault-line between machismo, aspiration and masochism.
mikhailkarikis.com

Claire MacDonald – This Table
Claire MacDonald’s response reflects on hospitality, and her friend who came to the Cyclades from Albania in 2003. Gifted beyond the life in which she found herself, her presence was part of Claire’s own history in Greece.

Marikiscrycrycry – He’s Dead
Marikiscrycrycry’s response He’s Dead seeks to create an aesthetics of melancholia for the Black body to move through and beyond. Their entryway into this proposition is asking the question – was Tupac depressed? In an attempt to uncover what cannot be uncovered and looking there for dances and other performance textures.
maliknashadsharpe.com

Ivana Müller – YYYYYYY
A performance taking the form of a conversation in which the artist reflects on the notions of invisible and marginal as potential survival strategies and builds on her first response for the Athens event: XXXXXXX.
ivanamuller.com

Daniel Oliver – Selected Love Letters from the post-neurodivergent fun times revolution chiperlaterartyparty
danieloliverperformance.com

Florence Peake – You Me Us
Florence Peake responds with an empathic preparation for channelling You Me Us, and the initiatory phase of her work for Athens Voicings.
florencepeake.com

Maria Sideri – The Union
Maria Sideri will sing her specially composed and recorded song live for the first time since it was played as a recorded message to the audience in Athens in 2015. The Union addresses Europe as a lover exploring polarisation and the desire to come together.
mariasideri.co

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Line-up for Saturday 6 October

Kate Adams – Μα ποια πάπια
Μα ποια πάπια (or I’m not a pheasant plucker) is a struggle to communicate in a foreign language, an attempt just to say want I want, clearly, and without any mistakes. It is a search for home and a search for voice. The performance is in Greek with English subtitles.
artistheatis.net

Dean Atta
A new poetic work in response to the provocation.
deanatta.com

Reverend Billy and The Stop Shopping Choir as wild anti-consumerist gospel shouters and Earth loving urban activists defending Community, life and imagination and resisting Consumerism and Militarism will be joining us from New York City with an invitation to assemble. 
revbilly.com

Season Butler – After Abendland
A live collage exploring contradictory histories and present identities.
seasonbutler.com

cris cheek – x ox
A video short on having my tongue torn out by the root and dealing with a replacement. Austerity takes many forms.

Robin Deacon 
New video work developing his piece created for Athens Europe Endless that took its name from Kraftwerk’s album Trans-Europe Express, and explored national anthems and cultural contiguities.
robindeacon.com

Lin Hixson and Matthew Goulish – Ledger Lines – A Text for Athens
A performance as a duet involving clothing enhancements.
everyhousehasadoor.org

Brian Lobel – Lehman Brothers And Other Underwhelming Lovers (or, No One Would Fuck Them So They Fucked Everyone)
A response that considers love and trade.
blobelwarming.com

Graeme Miller will respond in a vocal work-cum-rant.

Jenny Moore
Jenny Moore’s response will involve sound, text, herself and may be sung and not necessarily in that order.
jennymoore.co

Erica Scourti (video short) – Symbolic Values (Zero Sums)
Symbolic Values (Zero Sums) records a pattern recognition game, hunting a standard mark, the Greek flag on Greek products. Being half-English, I have my own problems; the flag also indicates the house and the pull of belonging – except the house is polarised, and as the media would put it, unstable.
ericascourti.com

Nikki Tomlinson – FOLLY
FOLLY is an act of accompaniment, seeking a thread between audiences in live and recorded time, a moment of company across space and time. An attempt at transmitting solidarity, however small – now amidst a fragmenting ‘folly’ of another order.
nikkitom.blogspot.com

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On both nights visual artist Kleio Gizeli responds with an intervention presented in collaboration with TO YOU TO YOU TO YOU.

All works up to 15 minutes in length.

This two day programme builds on Love Letters to a (Post)Europe at Bios, Athens in which 26 artists created short works in response to a provocation at the close of 2015. A selection of these works also forms part of the 2018 programme to be witnessed in the UK for the first time and some for the first time as live performance.

Responses span the spectrum of performance and the letter form including dance, text, spoken word, song and experimental hybrid forms.

“Love Letters to a (Post)Europe connects artistic practice and intervention with solidarity, as a mode of visibility.”
– Diana Damian Martin, Exeunt Magazine 2015 

On 4 October, Live Art Development Agency are hosting the launch of the ‘TO YOU TO YOU TO YOU’ book, with an evening of discussion and open letters. Find out more online.

Curation: Lisa Alexander 
Production: Lisa Alexander and Alessandra Cianetti

Supported using public funding by Arts Council England. Supported by Live Art Development Agency, Artsadmin and Counterpoints Arts.

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Please visit our Booking Information page for more information on our venue and our refund policy. You can let us know your access requirements ahead of time by emailing access@artsadmin.co.uk.