Emergency Festival: Free, non-stop performance in Manchester
Catherine Love encounters a "a Choose Your Own Adventure storybook of performance" at Emergency Festival in Manchester. [Exeunt Magazine]
"Emergency, a free day of non-stop performance, occupies the building with an apt sense of playfulness. The shows and installations might not be for kids, but still there are stories, games, a spirit of exploration. As I walk in, the atrium is temporarily home to a group of men moving in ever-tightening patterns, stuck in a repeating loop of constriction and collision. Peter Jacobs’ performance installation No Man Is An Island is suggestive of the restrictions of patriarchal society, which hems in men as much as it does women. But it also looks a lot like a game – one whose rules, perhaps, we can change."
Catherine Love encounters a "a Choose Your Own Adventure storybook of performance" at Emergency Festival in Manchester. [Exeunt Magazine]
"Emergency, a free day of non-stop performance, occupies the building with an apt sense of playfulness. The shows and installations might not be for kids, but still there are stories, games, a spirit of exploration. As I walk in, the atrium is temporarily home to a group of men moving in ever-tightening patterns, stuck in a repeating loop of constriction and collision. Peter Jacobs’ performance installation No Man Is An Island is suggestive of the restrictions of patriarchal society, which hems in men as much as it does women. But it also looks a lot like a game – one whose rules, perhaps, we can change."
Review: Emergency Mini-Festival @ Z-Arts [The State of the Arts]
"The next piece we encountered was No Man Is An Island by Peter Jacobs, which involved four or five burly, bearded men in black summer dresses walking vaguely yet specifically around the Atrium to an ominous, atmospheric soundtrack. This piece supposedly explores “perceptions of public, personal and private space”. Perhaps it was the durational nature of the piece, or it being housed in the sunny thoroughfare Atrium space, but it didn’t keep me engaged long enough to catch up with it. A space that reflected the moodiness might have been more fitting, or perhaps it just wasn’t for me – but we quickly moved on."
"The next piece we encountered was No Man Is An Island by Peter Jacobs, which involved four or five burly, bearded men in black summer dresses walking vaguely yet specifically around the Atrium to an ominous, atmospheric soundtrack. This piece supposedly explores “perceptions of public, personal and private space”. Perhaps it was the durational nature of the piece, or it being housed in the sunny thoroughfare Atrium space, but it didn’t keep me engaged long enough to catch up with it. A space that reflected the moodiness might have been more fitting, or perhaps it just wasn’t for me – but we quickly moved on."