INTERFACE

REVIEW

Map 07

Tullie House, Carlisle
26-29 April

Reviewed by: Paul Taylor »

Matrix Arts Projects (Map) brought together major performance artists from Israel, Croatia, Poland and the UK to present new work in Carlisle over three days, in the pristine environment of Tullie House Art Gallery and the funkier spaces of the Source Café. As internationally significant performance festivals don’t seem to fall within the remit of anyone’s day job in Carlisle, this was an event born of dogged tenacity and love, and no one was going away without at least being offered the opportunity to be changed by it. The festival was about context and process as well as performance, with a view to creating a sustainable environment where work of this kind can flourish in future.

The work itself reflected the artists’ determination to resist easy categorisation of their artform, ranging from the elegant narrative structures of Tamar Raban, Guy Gutman and Bill Aitchison, to the monolithic extreme sound gesture of Zlatko Kopljar. Wladyslaw Kazmierczak and Ewa Rybska also made a welcome return (their third) to Carlisle with a new piece, evidence that relationships built through these events continue bearing fruit in the long term.

Seeing so many diverse performances in a very short time has a cumulative impact – one night I was exhilarated, the next I felt like I’d eaten a surfeit of lampreys. Live art depends largely on the visceral impact of sharing a space with someone undertaking something extraordinary, and should take its toll. But it also has its consolations. Harald Smykla’s lovingly detailed River Eden Psychohistory Project offered a spurious history of an Eighteenth-Century religious cult that located the Garden of Eden in Carlisle. A perfect metaphor for the mix of vision and belief required to create events of this kind, and a myth to charm our doubts with until the next Map Live event.

Writer detail:
Paul Taylor is an artist and cartoonist and a director of West Walls Studios in Carlisle, with a particular interest in community based and collaborative practice. He has found himself writing a lot about Live Art events through accident rather than design, but is rather enjoying it.

Venue detail:
Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery »
Castle Street, Carlisle CA3 8TP

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