ebb and flow of stubborn matter

Residency of Isabel Rocamora and Camila Valenzuela

A public experiment exploring the convergences of (anti)-gravity performance, movement and media.

'The first corporeal form which some call corporeity is in my opinion light.' - Robert Grosseteste, 'On light or the beginning of forms'

This informal gathering is organised as a closure of the artist-residency of two aerialists/anti-gravity artists Isabel Rocamora and Camila Valenzuela at FoAM, within the 'illumine' programme. The two artists in residence are joined by Stevie Wishart and several FoAM collaborators in a jam-session with matter and media.

The experiment is conceived as an open studio, where the audience is invited to meet the artists, exchange ideas and experiences, spawn new collaborations or simply slow down, transported into a dense, charged, luminescent sphere. Throughout the evening the public can witness small experiments in which the boundaries of choreography are nibbled on by media systems, suspended bodies move through costumes designed as minuscule wearable spaces, live improvised sounds converse with computer generated media in a 'camera obscura', where gravity seems reversible and the architecture turns into illuminated walkways.

Anti-Gravity Artists: Isabel Rocamora and Camila Valenzuela
Live Sound Improvisation: Stevie Wishart
Media Designers: FoAM / Nik Gaffney, Maja Kuzmanovic
Costume Designers: FoAM / Cocky Eek, Lina Kusaite

Artists in residence biographies:

Isabel Rocamora is an anti-gravity artist based in London. Her background is in theatre, dance, physical performance, aerial skills and film (training: Jacques Lecoq, Masaki Iwana, CNDD (Netherlands), Circus Space and Bristol University). In 93 she co-formed Momentary Fusion Aerial Dance Theatre with the aim to explore the body1s defiance of gravity pull. The company1s theatre and site-specific work toured extensively to sell out audiences in the U.K and worldwide. Since 2000 she works as an independent artist, having founded Infinito, home to the meeting point between performance, video and new technology. Three main areas have driven the work: The dialogue between the hanging body and architecture has been at the heart of her investigations over the last 10 years. Recent site-specific commissions include: "The Rapture of matter" (Architecture Week/ V&A), "Inpermanence" (Greenwich and Docklands Festival) and "Passage" (Colchester Arts Centre). Aerial choreography for film and television has lead to a series of diverse collaborations including: "Fairy Tale" (dir. Charles Sturridge, Paramount Pictures, General Release), "Chocolate Acrobat" (dir. Tessa Sheridan, Channel Four), "Karmacoma" (dir. Jonathan Glazer, General Release) and "Passage" (Dir. Marcus Behrens, Arte TV, Germany/ France, dance film - highest viewer rating of the season). Currently preparing "Nomad", an anti-gravity on film, to be shot in Summer 04. The meeting point of the anti-gravity body, science and technology has recently opened up new collaborative potential and methodologies. Research and production over the last 18 months has allowed for an investigation into areas of neuroscience, medical research, classical physics, motion capture, sensor and wearable technology and their transposition into the performance field. Commissioned works include: "Fluctuation" (Tate Britain), "Memory Release" (Future Physical/ Essex Dance), " Requiem and Deliverance" (Queen Mary Medical Library, Retroscreen Virology) and "The ebb and flow of stubborn matter" (Foam, Belgium). Isabel is an Associate Artist at dance.tech (essex dance, UK), she is also First Flight Officer of the International Necronauts Society (necronauts.org).

Originally from Peru, Camila Valenzuela was brought up in Chile. She studied Biology in the Universidad de Chile, Circus Skills and Physical Theatre in Circomedia, Bristol and Corporeal Mime in London. Camila works as a Performing artist specialising in Aerial Dance. She has previously performed her solo pieces at the Matucana 100 (Chile), Area 10 (London), Glastonbury Festival and others. In the past year, she collaborated with the anti-gravity artist Isabel Rocamora, performing site-specific aerial works in internationally renown venues, such as V&A museum of London, Greenwich and Dockland Festival and Queen Mary Medical Library. Camila is interested in the body as an abode for life, the moving body as an instrument of expression and the suspended body as a metaphor of human transcendence.