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Ana Benlloch

Storymaking Dérives

These examples of my work have been chosen to give an overview of previous collaborative storymaking walks, and other uses of chance and fabulation to generate artworks that engage with queer theory, performance fiction, and collective magic.

A central strand of my practice has been utilising and expanding the Situationist International’s use of the Dérive (a drifting exploration of our psychological reactions to a city), and linking this with group designed sigils (symbols created to intensify a magical intention), to produce a playfully ritualistic experience.

This kind of play highlights the overlooked systems and assumptions around us, and allows us to re-frame, subvert and resist them, rather than resigning ourselves to always being shaped by them. Shifting our perception of environments and social structures, re-enchanting and re-weirding spaces allows us to move in unexpected directions.

Antiphonic Multi-Being

Installation and Performance as part of Morphologies of Invisible Agents, SPACE, Hackney, London. 26th April – 28th May 2019

Video from a dérive around the area near the gallery was combined with layered sigils developed out of the discussion, and the audio from a Ganzfeld experiment – where one of us tried to telepathically send an image to the others, who had half ping pong balls over their eyes, in red light, while listening to white noise.

Glitch Dérive

Video shown as part of the GLI.TC/H event curated by Antonio Roberts, VIVID, Birmingham. 19th November 2011.

Process based collective drifting around city centre areas, recorded POV, while listening to pre-recorded drone music. The video footage and drone track were copied to VHS tape, which was unspooled and kicked around the site of the walk. It was then re-spooled and the resulting glitch video captured digitally.

The Nomads

Audio pieces derived from participatory walks in partnership with Castlefield Gallery, Manchester. 4th & 5th September 2010

Using I Ching readings to select a grid section, artists and co-participants explored and occupied randomly selected places in central Manchester, to allow the space to work on us and reveal hidden meanings. Spending an extended period of time in one location can lend it new significance, from this we developed spontaneous games that activated the sites.

The Storytellers

Videos in partnership with the Museums Collections Centre, Birmingham. July 2010

During one-day workshops with school pupils, we invented and developed stories about the museum archives collection, which were combined into dream like narratives, and later re-performed to camera.

Samekhmem

Performance as part of The Event art festival and Supersonic music festival, Minerva Works, Birmingham. 21st October 2011.

This five hour performance was developed from a dérive around the area of the festivals, where symbols were generated, and used as the score for improvised audio. Chance was used to select the order, audience members could choose whether to watch through clear plastic sheeting, or undertake a cleansing ritual and enter the sacred performance space with the band.

As Below

Video and audio produced alongside Hurriers: Poor on the Roll video installation by Anne Robinson. APT Gallery, London. 2nd – 5th December 2021, and Five Years, London. 10th – 18th December 2021

This sigil has overtaken a communication tower, in the fictional world of Underwater, a psychic environment that overlaps with mundane reality. Responding to Folk Horror and Science Fiction, this is part of an extended project reframing sites of trauma into places of rebirth.

Ecstatic Collapse

Included as part of Estuary Magic #7 – Plastique Fantastique: Termite Radio – Magic Against Precarity. 5th February 2022

http://dl.dropbox.com/s/zy1mwe1im5pgqvo/EcstaticCollapseFinal.mp3

Test Broadcasts from The Fields

Performance at lockdown event at The Vicarage, Herne Hill, London. 5th September 2020

http://dl.dropbox.com/s/kn3r71ob11wtddd/vicarage-broadcast.mp3

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