AIT ARTIST TALK #70 "FUTURE BODY TALK"

Top and bottom left: Sacred Repository N.3: THE OPEN SKY HD Film, 2016
Bottom right: Affection is the Best Protection Performance Land Art Live, Flevoland, NL 2015



AIT is pleased to host a talk by the current artist in residence from the Netherlands, Rory Pilgrim on Friday, March 17th. Rory Pilgrim is currently undertaking his residency in Japan from January to March in 2017 with AIT, with the support of The Mondriaan Fonds in the Netherlands.

Pilgrim will make a performative talk that will explore ideas of language, body and technology. In his work, Pilgrim is greatly inspired by the origins of Socially Engaged and Feminist art practice. At a time dominated by the proliferation of the Internet, Pilgrim's work has explored how people come together beyond the screen to voice themselves individually and collectively. Pilgrim composes music as a way to bring people together, enable action and create a collective experience.

Working with a variety of people in contexts including schools, churches, art fairs, public space and television, his work has focused on the need and failure of language to voice ourselves. The largest of his performance works included choreographing the re-opening of the Stedelijk Museum in which he collaborated with a group of teenagers to create an anthem and a series of speeches exploring how they as a generation would give a voice to the museum. From 2013-2016, Pilgrim created a film trilogy entitled 'Sacred Repositories' that focused on the need to find and reclaim words through intergenerational dialogue, as a means to explore how language can still have radical agency.

At the talk, Pilgrim will introduce examples of his work while interweaving a series of simple exercises that think about language and our relationship with the body. Pilgrim will also use these exercises to introduce his current research in Japan which will contribute towards his latest body of work entitled 'Erasure' that focuses on how the voice and body can be used as a site of action at a time of momentous global political change.

We hope that you can join us.

［OUTLINE］
Date and Time: Friday, March 17th 2017, 19:00-21:00 (18:30 Door open)
Venue:AIT Room Daikanyama (Twin Bldg. Daikanyama B-403, 30-8 Sarugaku-cho, Shibuya-ku) [MAP]
Capacity:20
Translation: Satoshi Ikeda
Organizer: Arts Initiative Tokyo, with the support from The Mondriaan Fonds




[ Booking ]
Please send an email with its subject line as "AIT ARTIST TALK #70" at otoiawase＠a-i-t.net, including your name, contact phone number and the category of your admission. (Please input @ in normal-width)

[ Artist Profile ]
Rory Pilgrim（Born in 1988, Bristol, UK)
The work of British artist Rory Pilgrim is based on emancipatory concerns, in which personal and political questions are brought together to explore questions of time and connections between activism, spirituality, music and community. Strongly influenced by the origins of activist, feminist and socially engaged art, Pilgrim works in a wide range of media including live performance, film, text, workshops and musical composition. Pilgrim in particular composes music as a way to bring people together and explore how we use it to challenge, celebrate and voice ourselves.