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Starting Out in a Pandemic

Sinéad Hargan Shereen Zoumot

Left: Shereen Zoumot. Photo by H.D.; Right: Sinéad Hargan. Photo by Julia Bauer.

Join us as we share the work of BANNER artists Shereen Zoumot and Sinéad Hargan, two young artists working in contemporary performance and theatre in Jordan and Scotland.

Since October 2019, Shereen and Sinéad have taken part in BANNER, Artsadmin’s scheme to support exceptional recent graduates in their first year out of formal studies.  

In this online conversation and sharing, we’ll share a bit of what these artists have been working on this year and discuss what it means to establish an artistic practice that focuses on live encounters during a pandemic. The discussion is chaired by Michael Norton, Producer, Artists’ Support, at Artsadmin.

What is the role of young artists in a quickly shifting cultural space? How does an emerging practice respond to challenging circumstances like lockdown and social restrictions? How do we rest and take care of ourselves?

Sinéad Hargan is a Scottish artist and recent graduate of B.A. (Hons) Contemporary Performance Practice from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She works primarily in live performance, movement, vocal scores and moving image. Her work is centred around acts of collective grieving. She explores the romanticisation and fetishisation of grief, isolation and wild places. Deeply rooted in her practice is the desire to explore our relationship with the land in the midst of spiralling ecological devastation. She has presented performances at Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh and Into The New Festival, The Pearce Institute, Glasgow, and has shown film work at Embassy Gallery, Paper Mountain as part of Fringe World Festival 2019 in Perth, Australia, Central Scotland Documentary Festival 2019 and Cardiff Dance Festival. She was due to present her degree show piece, ‘I Just Go On and On and On’ as part of Cryptic Nights 2020 (postponed) at the CCA with support from Cryptic’s Cove Park Residency. Sinéad has been awarded the Bruce Miller Graduate Fellowship from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland for a year-long research project focused on feminist ecological approaches to performance making in and around Scottish tidal sites.

Shereen Zoumot is a feminist Jordanian theatre-maker and facilitator. She graduated in 2019 with an MA in Performance Making from Goldsmiths University and has worked on several projects in the UK and internationally. Shereen was the associate director for ‘Queens of Syria’, which toured the UK in 2016. She wrote a play, titled ‘Angels Don’t Crave Cigarettes’, where she collected stories of queer Jordanian women and performed it in Lebanon, Palestine, London, and Jordan. Over the past year, Shereen has been experimenting with new dynamics in the fields of theatre and performance as a reaction to being an artist in lockdown during the pandemic. In collaboration with a diverse group of Jordanian artists, intimacy is the main issue being resolved. Given the restrictions on audiences and methods of distributing artworks in this age, the question of how we can portray intimacy in new ways by merging film, theatre, and video art is the main exploration in her current project.

Over the past year, these two extraordinary artists have waited, shifted, isolated, stalled, rebooted and reimagined their work with exceptional resilience and care. It’s such a joy to share their work and ideas with the public, particularly at this moment of isolation.

Michael Norton, producer of the BANNER programme

BANNER is supported by Goldsmiths University, Royal Conservatoire Scotland and Live Art Development Agency.

Access

  • This event is captioned with Otter.ai
  • BSL interpretation is available on request. When you book, please book a ‘BSL user’ ticket so we know if BSL is required.
  • The event takes place on Zoom. We recommend that you download Zoom on to your device prior to the event. Please see this easy read guide to Zoom put together by our friends Access All Areas.
  • We will have a guardian in the call at all times, so if you ever feel unwell or unsafe, they will be able to support you.
  • Please email access@artsadmin.co.uk if you have any further access requests

Date and time

4 February 2021
6.30–8pm
Free, booking required
BSL interpreted on request (Please book a 'BSL user ticket' at least one week in advance)
AI captioned

Please note
This is now a past event.

Venue

Online

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