Week 11

Ben Judd

"Ben Judd’s work examines his relationship to specific individuals and groups; recently the choreographic and the rhythmic has been used as a method of constructing temporary communities. The work explores how the ritualistic activities of marginalised groups and individuals can be extended into an action realised by actors (one that itself hovers on the border between immersion and a more self-conscious, knowing state), and how, in turn, this action can be interpreted in a moving image work. Positioning himself and the audience as both participant and observer, he engages the grey area between ritual and performance, searching for an unreachable and idealised state of community."

http://benjudd.com/biography/

http://benjudd.com/video-and-performance/a-deep-and-tenebrous-unity/

"A performance at Bloc Projects, Sheffield, which further explored themes of closeness/distance and revealed/hidden. Performers used text taken from conversations with Icelanders during Judd’s residency in Seyðisfjörður in December 2014. Seyðisfjörður is in a remote part of eastern Iceland surrounded by mountains, and his conversations there focussed on its location, the community, the winter darkness and the Icelandic mythology of ‘hidden people’. This text was combined with selected phrases from William Morris’s diary of his trip to Iceland in 1871. Judd also incorporated original Victorian photographs in a roving magic lantern projection."

http://benjudd.com/video-and-performance/a-deep-and-tenebrous-unity/