Cat Radford and Volkhardt Müller a performative feedback loop exploring the tensions between what has been and what can be

3-7pm June 18th Programmes Office Dartington Festival

‘Shaking hands with ghosts' Part 3 Curated and devised by Melanie Thompson was a 3-day site-specific event to say goodbye to the estate where Dartington College has been based for 48 years. Every part of the estate holds important traces of people and work made through the history of the College. Every ex student or tutor has memories not only of work made in studios but site specific works created as a direct response to the extraordinary environment of the estate.

From 11am - 5pm on Friday 18 and Saturday 19 June, and from 11am - 3pm on Sunday 20 June, ten artists presented interventions in response to the estate surrounding the College. Visitors to the work were given a map with times, places and thoughts each day at the library. All the artists were either currently teaching at the College, have taught in the past or are ex students. The works reflected the strong multidisciplinary strand practiced at the College over many years, but also spoke of each artist's own practice, ranging from text-based work, visual art, sound, theatre and dance.The final event at 3.30pm outside the Great Hall on Sunday afternoon was a closing action involving all the artists and the public, to mark the College leaving Dartington. Specially made programmes were available, made for 'Shaking hands with ghosts' as mementoes throughout the festival. View programme

Performers: Paula Crutchlow, Heiko Fischer, Volkhardt Müller, Cat Radford

We are distanced from our physical surroundings not only by our treatment of them as 'merely' physical, but also by our alienation from our own experiences and our own wishes and fears about those surroundings.                                                                      Karen A Frank - Drawing the Dreams, Built and Felt

Global Player was developed in response to the increasing corporate ownership of city centre space in Britain, and the changing sense of what is permissible and acceptable behaviour in a range of public environments.  The idea of public space as an inclusive theatre of surpise and community construction is only sometimes achieved by town planners, developers and architects. Modern purpose built urban landscapes tend to limit what’s off purpose and it is in that sense that public access and community ownership are two entirely different concepts. Global Player constructs temporary places of trade and competition that attempt to move beyond the limits of consumerist culture and business. Made with associate artists Augusto Corrieri and Tim Dollimore. Full project details on the Global Player site.

you'd be surprised at what happens right under your noseBlind Ditch are involved in running View from Here - a rural film festival with a strong regional voice based in Newton Abbot and surrounding Devon villages.

Deadline for film submissions is postmark Nov 9th.

Visit View from Here to download a submission form and find out more about Documentary Strategies - a professional development day for early to mid career documentary makers.

Eudaimonia (from the Aristotelian concept) is a sculpture-installation for two performers using the idea of the daimonic to play on the idealisation and deconstruction of the human body. The live body is surrounded by a set of cameras connected to monitors, magnifying, fragmenting and re-framing it. Electroacoustic feedback emanates between camera mics and TVs. It is altered by the movements of the performer in the centre, who in turn responds to the electroacoustic environment. Feedback is perpetual as well as static in the way a sculpture or a painting would be. Moments of ephemeral beauty give way to drastic and sometimes pornographic images, failure follows achievement and embrace follows collision between the soft machine of the body and the dependant hardware. Working between choreographic score, projected text and tone recognition software the performance of Eudaimonia is a self-contained system in which digital technology appears part of an extended nervous system, both contradicting and supporting the human effort at its centre. 

"it has the freshness of a question mark so fitting to the subject and of its treatment by this innovative multi media company."
Simon Persighetti, tEXt Festivals

An ongoing investigation into the defining moments that make us long to be more.

This work has so far been manifested in two parts. The initial performance of this work in studio theatre environment presented the audience with a kind of engine room of ideas as if the material of the performance was being excavated from an archive of ephemera. The performance space: part reference library, part kinetic sculpture, part techno science lab, became an ever-changing arena for an exposition on Heroism.

'It was the best media thing I've done in ages...'  Jeremy, 16

VANLAND  mobile media project  explores issues of place and identity through the making and exhibiting of creative digital video. Initially conceived as a three year programme for young people in rural Teignbridge, VANLAND  now works with a range of communities, arts organizations and media professionals across South West England. Celebrated as best practice by the EU LEADER + programme, VANLAND films have won awards at regional film festivals and the caravan was shortlisted for the exhibition cateogory PMP Media Innovation Awards 2007. VANLAND  events and workshops are generated by Blind Ditch in partnership with local communities and are also available for commission. Visit the VANLAND site for full details.

“There is an elusive, eliding quality about the whole performance which skillfully collides nostalgic tourism, contemporary rural like and personal history. It is an atmospheric, touching and thought provoking piece, a quiet moment of reflection and intimacy.

The audience is left with fragments of lives and landscapes; past holidays and future fears. Blind Ditch have a light touch and something to say. A rare and valuable combination."

Barbara Bridger, Bloodaxe Writer of the Year, May 2003

“What a wonderful experience, thumbing through a beautiful book, listening to some interesting people. Well done everyone who was involved.”
Ishbel Ramsey, (Former) Arts Officer for South Hams District Council

The Travelling Guest Book Selected views of the South Hams in late summer A document of opinions offered between 14th August 2002 and this very moment as you are adding yours…

‘A promising enterprise...charming anecdotes, beautiful images and engaging texts.'
Frankfurter Rundschau, 12th Dec 2001

Commissioned by Theatre at Dartington College of Arts and developed for the Plateaux Festival 2001 during a residency at Kunstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt.

Small Possessions Daily is a series of choreographed dialogues influenced by the English Baroque suite Consort in Fower Parts by Exeter Composer Matthew Locke. Experimenting with use of Locke’s ‘bundles of movements’ and his strong use of Rubato, the piece mixes themes of psychoanalysis and hysteria with images reminiscent of surrealist film.