What is the time of research and experimentation for you?
Research, experimentation, rehearsal and performance are fluid, porous spacetimes for us: a rehearsal is a performance is a time of research is a failure that feeds a constantly renewing question. In the nature of our rehearsals, we typically use all of the technology and media that we use in performance; there are no separate elements that we add “later.” Navigating media and sound and performative space is a complex choreography between and among the performers and technicians (the performers are the technology, and technology performs too); performative practice gives the company a constantly generative space of ideas.
In what ways is your practice influenced by the space of an artistic residency?
We occupy and position ourselves in response to the built architecture of the space. We document our presence through continuously capturing images and video of spaces we visit; these images may appear in a current performance, or a future work. We inhabit circles of community within a location: the company makes friends and relations in its locales, renews friendships and family connections with the places it visits, and sometimes we invite public participants into our practice. “Big Art Group” itself is a room with all doors: many entrances and exits, so that all can pass easily and without friction over thresholds and borders.
How do care and artistic research interact?
We are interested in the art of the present, and the presentation of contemporary performance. We want to know about the forms, texts, images and thoughts of now. Although our work has (happily) persisted over the last few years, our prime concern is the given moment, and how we (as citizens, as artists) navigate that present moment. In the current political and social climate of the United States, that context feels at least threatening if not outright dangerous for citizens who are female, trans, queer, BIPOC, or othered in any way. As we try to find our own solutions to being in these moments, we also dialog, share, and collaborate with other artists. We seek to give back and pass on to the artistic bloodlines that also nourish ourselves, and we are fed by the constant evolution and transformation of contemporary performers and thinkers.
We are currently preparing a book on the performance history of the company including a section on the performative techniques and practice we originated and refined with “Real Time Film.”
Big Art Group is a New York City performance company founded in 1999 by Caden Manson and Jemma Nelson. The company uses the language of media and blended states of performance in a unique form to build challenging new works. Since its inception, it has toured nationally and internationally and produced critically acclaimed works including CLEARCUT, catastrophe (1999), The Balladeer (2000), Shelf Life (2001), Flicker (2002), House of No More (2004), Dead Set (2006-Serial Project), The People (2007-Serial Project), The Sleep (2007), The Imitation (2008), SOS (2008), Cityrama (2010-Serial Project), Broke House (2012).
Caden Manson is a performance maker, curator (Contemporary Performance and Special Effects Festival) and educator. Through the company Big Art Group, their performance work creates radical queer narrative structures and embodiments to construct and aid transitory generative critical space for participants and audience. Their work is dense, fast, multi-layered, and traverses multiple genres and forms, often using interference, slippage, and disruption strategies. Manson’s work has been presented throughout 14 countries and over 50 cities in Europe, Asia, and North America. Their work has been co-produced by the Vienna Festival, Festival d’Automne a Paris, Hebbel Am Ufer, Rome’s La Vie de Festival, PS122, and Wexner Center for The Arts. Caden is a Foundation For Contemporary Art Fellow, Pew Fellow, and a MacDowell Fellow. Their writing, with Jemma Nelson, can be found in the publications PAJ, Theater Magazine, Theater der Zeit, and Theater Journal. Manson is the Director of The Theatre Program at Sarah Lawrence College, BA, MFA.
www.bigartgroup.com
www.cadenmanson.com
www.contemporaryperformance.com