"Good morrow valentine, change your luck and I’ll change mine. We are ragged and you are fine, so pray give us a valentine."
FoolishPeople present 'A Red Threatening Sky' 11th – 20th February 2010 7:30pm, 8.30pm & 9.30pm Tickets: ClubAethereus.com 07597576075 The Old Abattoir, 187-211 St. John’s St, Clerkenwell, London. EC1V 4LS
I explore my subconscious and beyond through my paintings. It is my tool to know myself or push the boundaries of my dream state reality.
My endless interest in mysteries and my Iranian background often blend in a surreal form and reveal untold stories.
"From the memories , I'm giving birth to a Demon , can't wait to see his face"
http://maryamhashemi.blogspot.com/
http://www.iranian.com/Arts/2006/February/Hashemi
Samm Hain was born in Framingham, Massachusetts during the blizzard of 78'. His interest in the arts, occult and otherwise, were likewise born in Framingham. A writer and visual artist his writing has appeared in three anthologies: 'The Best Of Konton Magazine', 'Magick On The Edge', and Foolish People's 'Terra: Extremitas'. Currently residing in Portland Oregon his photography has been featured in a local Pacific Northwest Travel Guide. A frequent collaborator with Foolish People and part of the artist collective Cell 144 Samm’s work explores the mythic connections between art, life, and anarchy; the stories of what gets built in the ruins of the institutions that have failed us. He is currently writing a novel and illustrating and writing a graphic novel. Much of his work with Cell 144 can be found at flowerofkairos.com
11th – 20th February 2010
7:30pm, 8.30pm & 9.30pm
Tickets: www.ClubAethereus.com 07597576075
The Old Abattoir, 187-211 St. John’s St, Clerkenwell, London. EC1V 4LS
Jules Newman is a London based artist whose fascinations with mythology, dreams, and symbols and interests in theatre and performance have led her to work in a variety of roles including in-crowd performer, model, make up artist, set designer, props maker, and events manager. She also runs an online spell shop called 'The Magic Tree', and makes horned headpieces, masks and wigs as part of another project called 'Ghoulia's Peculiars'.
In all her endeavours Jules seeks to stimulate people to challenge their understanding of normality and to engage with their environment, senses and imagination. This can be manifested through meditation, through physical acts that symbolise catharsis, or by encouraging people to embrace the daydreams, wonder, humour and playfulness that may be considered conventionally unacceptable. She aims to provide disguises that reveal truth and enable an authentic and inspiring experience.
Photo by Yiannis Katsaris
Her animal masks from 'The Abattoir Pages', a previous Foolish People event, are being displayed at The Reading Room, 65-66 Frith Street, Soho, London W1D 3JR from 8th February - 2nd March 2010, as part of the 'Miss Kiki Salon Presents...' exhibition.
Website: www.myspace.com/ghouliaspeculiars
Email: ghoulia@hotmail.co.uk
Tom G Adriani was born in London to Dutch and English parents and graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2005. He has subsequently exhibited in a number of renowned galleries including; The Northern Gallery For Contemporary Art, ' A Modern Bestiary' (2006), The Factory Berlin, 'London Contemporaries' (2007), Wiltons Music Hall, 'Book of Phobias' solo show (2008), The St Pancras Crypt Gallery, where he both exhibited in and curated 'Tales from the Electric Forest' (2009) and Somerset House, 'Academy Hang' (2010).
His work is based on the foundation of storytelling and mark making. He uses these tools to unearth and explore the tales that creep “unannounced” into his imagination. He sees the work he makes as trapped daydreams and is “fascinated by the process of using paint and ink to render thoughts visible and living a life of their own”.
Adriani explains that the characters that “pitch up” in his head seem to unravel their tales before his eyes, all he has to do is keep his pen moving; “My first memories of life were playing with a large collection of toy cars and soldiers. Each one had a name and a very different personality in accordance to it's physique. I realise now that each character reflected a different fragment of my own mind. Like most other young children during play, as a story grows, all awareness of ones body and the outer world disappears. My characters would move deep into lands and scenarios that battled between good and evil, heroism and fear, life and death. To this day, my characters and the stories I watch them in explore the same regions of myself as those of my childhood”.
For more information please visit: www.jotta.com/jotta/viewProjects/adriani
FoolishPeople present 'A Red Threatening Sky'11th – 20th February 2010
7:30pm, 8.30pm & 9.30pm
Tickets: www.ClubAethereus.com
07597576075
The Old Abattoir, 187-211 St. John’s St, Clerkenwell, London. EC1V 4LS
Electro Boy by Tom G Adriani
We are proud to announce our first wave of collaborators for 'A Red Threatening Sky'.
FP are extremely excited to be working with such a talented group of artists and writers. We recommend you visit their sites to see what they have in store for you.
We'll be profiling each of the artists here in the next two weeks and the second wave of artists will be announced early next week.
Tom G Adriani
jotta.com/jotta/viewProjects/adriani
Maryam Hashemi
maryamhashemi.blogspot.com
iranian.com/arts/2006/february/hashemi
Jules Newman AKA Ghoulia's Peculiars
misskikisalonpresents.co.uk/collection7.html
myspace.com/ghouliaspeculiars
myspace.com/themagictree
Ioanna Pantaz
ioannapantaz.com
Samm Hain
flowerofkairos.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – LONDON 04.01.2010
FoolishPeople present
A Red Threatening Sky
Written and directed by John Harrigan
Thurs 11th - Sat 20th February 2010
Press night: Saturday 13th February 7.30pm
FoolishPeople present A Red Threatening Sky; an immersive Valentine’s event combining performance, art installation and investigative interaction to create Club Aethereus; a strange and surreal underworld of Gnostic Noir. A place where crime, passion, the sacred and profane all cast one shadow.
Synopsis
The Valentinian. Harry wakes with no memory of how he arrived inside the club. He has been contracted to find a missing person. Pearl.
The Hotel room. Her hands and feet are bound and a hood hides her face. Teddy boy philosopher Roy Boutling watches the prize for the club’s owner. Sebastian Qyain.
The Aviary. The birds song has become distressed. The ornithologist Miss Moreau waits for her lover, a man whose face she has never seen.
The Dance Floor. The showgirls receive a letter from Sebastian Qyain. It contains the revised ending of the Valentine’s show at Club Aetherus, directing them in a horrifying act.
Opening hour approaches under a red threatening sky.
You are invited to enter and investigate the mystery of love’s final destination, in a unique experience honouring the earliest traditions and rituals of courtship, jealousy, union and lust. A Red Threatening Sky examines the nature of love, an unrelenting force which pervades all our lives from the moment we are born until the day we die.
It follows FoolishPeople's sell-out run of The Abattoir Pages, where they partnered with Guerrilla Zoo for their third open-source meta event at the Old Abattoir, and the critically acclaimed Cirxus, which was performed at The Arcola.
Poster Art & Design P. Emerson Williams
Notes to editors:
Not suitable for people of a nervous disposition.
For further information, please contact: Lucy Allin FoolishPeople lucena@foolishpeople.org
ClubAthereus.com
Foolishpeople.org
FoolishPeople present A Red Threatening Sky; an immersive Valentine’s event combining performance, art installation and investigative interaction to create Club Aethereus; a strange and surreal underworld of Gnostic Noir. A place where crime, passion, the sacred and profane all cast one shadow.
The Valentinian. Harry wakes with no memory of how he arrived inside the club. He has been contracted to find a missing person. Pearl.
The Hotel room. Her hands and feet are bound and a hood hides her face. Teddy boy philosopher Roy Boutling watches the prize for the club’s owner. Sebastian Qyain.
The Aviary. The birds song has become distressed. The ornithologist Miss Moreau waits for her lover, a man whose face she has never seen. The Dance Floor.
The showgirls receive a letter from Sebastian Qyain. It contains the revised ending of the Valentine’s show at Club Aetherus, directing them in a horrifying act.
Opening hour approaches under a red threatening sky.
You are invited to enter and investigate the mystery of love’s final destination, in a unique experience honoring the earliest traditions and rituals of courtship, jealousy, union and lust.
A Red Threatening Sky examines the nature of love, an unrelenting force which pervades all our lives from the moment we are born until the day we die.
It follows FoolishPeople's sell-out run of The Abattoir Pages, where they partnered with Guerrilla Zoo for their third open source meta event at the Old Abattoir, and the critically acclaimed Cirxus, which was performed at The Arcola.
Tickets are on sale now for A Red Threatening Sky.
Poster Art & Design P. Emerson Williams
Creative Team
John Harrigan
P. Emerson Williams
Lucy Allin
Tereza Kamenicka
Ruth Middleton
Hannah Druckes
Emma Tompkins
Abbie Yaxley
Listings Information:
11 February - 20 February 2010
7.30pm, 8.30pm & 9.30pm entrance times.
Tickets: £16 Online ClubAethereus.com £19 on door, email tickets@clubaethereus.com, 07597576075.
The Old Abattoir, 187-211 St. John’s St, Clerkenwell, London, EC1V 4LS
“The Abattoir Pages” brings together characters, ideas, images, sounds, smells and senses from the old stories of long ago to give guests of this extraordinary experience the opportunity to understand what lies behind the myths and the people who helped create them. In so doing the authentic and true roots of Halloween are honoured.
To describe this piece as simply a performance seems incorrect, even though there are actors who perform throughout. Neither is it just an exhibition, even though works of art hang upon the walls, nor is it only an installation despite the interactive and sensory nature of the work. “The Abattoir Pages” is something to experience, to feel, and to react to. Artistic Director, John Harrigan has brought together artists working in a wonderful variety of forms, and their work is displayed throughout the venue. Guests are told that these pieces constitute the archive of Helen Mayer, a tortured writer whose work is inspired and shaped by the infamous Abattoir Pages and the information therein. There is a mystery to solve, and a space to explore in order to uncover what these pages may contain, and only through piecing together snippets of information is it possible to fully realise the thrall Ms Mayer casts her readers into. To describe too much more would be both unfair and inaccurate however, as it would be simply impossible for any guest at this strange party to have the same experience as any other. Each hears, sees and feels completely different things, that become personal and which strangely grow in the dark for several nights afterwards.
When we meet Helen Mayer in person, we find that she is in Gwyllt, and it is this state that provides the horror… The expanse of one’s creative mind, wherein people and events that have been constructed overlap with the real, and the space between the imaginary and factual overlaps. This interlocking and interdependence of truth with fact long ago provided the basis of the myths and fables contained within “The Abattoir Pages”. One of the most striking relationships that I reacted to, although other visitors may not even hear or meet them, are a mutually destructive pair of lovers being slowly driven mad by their need for each other and their strange revulsion at themselves. This pairing is based on the true story of a young man around 600 AD who was forced to eat the heart of his lover by his enemy, and who then went mad with guilt, and fled to the woods to live in solitude. The woods, whether mythic, imaginary or real have long provided shelter for those the rest of the world does not or cannot understand, and it is those that have found refuge there that move around “The Abattoir Pages”.
Finding ways to share the story of Helen Mayer’s work has been an ambition of Foolish People’s founder and Artistic Director, John Harrigan, for some time. “The Abattoir Pages” in fact serves as a prologue to Helen Mayer’s final work, “Pleasure” that Harrigan is working towards realising in a similar form. However, “Pleasure” is a full novel, and in breathing life into the four pages that provide the basis for “The Abattoir Pages” Harrigan enlisted nearly 60 artists, performers and designers. “Pleasure” therefore will undoubtedly be his most ambitious project to date.
For that project, John also hopes to renew the mutually respectful collaboration with James Elphick of Guerilla Zoo, who have facilitated the creative realisation of this piece, enabling Foolish People’s Producer Lucy Allin, and John Harrigan to bring “The Abattoir Pages” to the Old Abattoir in Farringdon.
Amongst the work of the twenty-one artists involved in this project are commissioned works, such as the sensational paintings by P Emerson Williams, and intricate masks by Jules Newman as well as pieces that somehow seem to have been waiting for this project in order to find their natural home, such as the dizzying collection of jars provided by Lorraine Clarke.
And although the Old Abattoir is an absolute dream of a place for experimental theatre, it provides its own incredible challenges for anyone attempting to create an atmosphere that doesn’t immediately terrify, but in fact seduces and intrigues through the dark and damp. That this piece achieves that is certainly in part down to the skilful sound design, again by P Emerson Williams, joined by Victoria Karlsson and Atoine Bertin.
When I met John Harrigan the morning after my own experience of The Abattoir Pages, I found that he would not be drawn on how “real” Helen Mayer and her work are, except to confirm that they do exist. There is a mystical force apparent in this work and in Harrigan himself - perhaps heightened by the fact our meeting was held in the abattoir itself, which is no less atmospheric in the daytime.
As an artist he is immersed in his work, and this passion has been gleefully absorbed by his cast of performers who, despite his concerns about their cold toes, insist on performing for over 3 hours in bare feet on stone floors in order to feel more authentically part of the work. This intangible intensity finds itself infecting guests to the piece also, as John tells me of a person who, on seeing John’s vulnerable mute character alone in the dark, felt compelled to stay and hold his hand for over half an hour.
If you are looking for the jumps and squeals of Hollywood horror, then you will not find them in “The Abattoir Pages”. However, a visit may uncover more than you expect or even wish as you wander through the chambers of this most fascinating space. To be given the opportunity to exist even for a short time in these powerful rooms stained with emotion, pain, suffering, and the very basest natures of life is a privilege, and “The Abattoir Pages” brings the voices and spirits contained within those walls out to play. Expectations, desires and preconceptions should be released as you walk through the doorway, and only then may their many mysteries be revealed to you this Halloween.
Article and Review originally appeared at Notes From The Underground.
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