The Buildings are Alive. . .

photography Ellie Keeble

The Buildings Are Alive... is a production created by 7 inter-disciplinary collaborative artists called the Culture Collective working with London Sinfonietta contemporary music ensemble, based on the Psycho Buildings exhibition at The Hayward Gallery and music repertoire from London Sinfonietta. 

The Culture Collective are a group of 7 artists from different art disciplines, Katie Keeble dancer and choreographer, Antoine Francois pianist, Jordan Hunt composer and violinist, Rachel Essien podcaster and production assistant, Will Crook animator, Benji Fox sound design, Tom Olaf-Urb composer. As young artists we were also mentoring young people from Southwark and Lambeth in the Street Genius programme, Alika Jeffs and Emrul Hassan. 

Collaborating as seven artists was a challenge as we were also getting to know one another, but we formed a really strong group and worked well together. We decided to collaborate in our artistic practices in smaller groups, Jordan and I collaborated in creating an indoor and outdoor structured improvisation for dance and music working with fabrics we designed inspired by the Psycho Buildings exhibition and architectual buildings along the Southbank. 

The dancers are Jade Yung, Masumi Saito, Katie Keeble and Nick Lawson and the musicians are Jordan Hunt and Sam Wilton (London SInfonietta player). We performed in four different locations, outside the Hayward Gallery, on the Southbank, outside the Royal Festival Hall and on the clore ballroom, Royal Festival Hall. The dancers all performed really well together and with the musicians, it was a great pleasure to work with everyone in this project. 

The Buildings are Alive... was held during the day and inside on the clore ballroom were live performances by London Sinfonietta players of pieces by Dai Fujikura, Tansy Davies and John Cage. Will Crook created animations to pieces composed by Jordan Hunt, Antoine Francois and Benji Fox, Tom Olaf-Urb and Alika Jeffs (aka AJ). We also interviewed the composers and players about the pieces they are playing and this was played along with the animation films, and Benji created an interactive Pre-prepared Piano piece inspired by John Cage's piece performed Prepared Piano.

 

photography Justin Pipergev 

You can find out more information on our website www.thebuildingsarealive.co.uk 

blog page http://lsculturecollective.blogspot.com in the August and November '08 archive

and youtube page http://www.youtube.com/user/londonsinfonietta

image design Will Crook

With the London Sinfonietta I worked as a young artist in a two week mentoring programme for young people in Southwark and Lambeth, in association with the BFI, London Sinfonietta, Southbank Centre and SOWF. There was 20 young people forming two groups in music and film, working with composer Duncan Chapman, film maker Shelly Love and VJ and graffiti artist Pablao Fiasco. 

In the programme I was lucky to be moving between the two groups and met all the young people in the programme as well as work with the artists leading them, it was great to explore and learn about the tools and ways of creating music composition and different skills in camera work and film making. At the end of the programme the young people brought their work together for a live performance in their composition and live VJ and recorded images from the two weeks creating. From this programme two young people, Emrul and AJ, came on board with the Culture Collective and London Sinfonietta for The Buildings are Alive..., and others joined companies as BFI, Tate Modern, Hayward Gallery, Siobhan Davies Dance, Rambert Dance Company and many more for experience and training in the arts, its such a great programme for young people!