Photos by Haeeun Lee
05.2025LIVENESS WORKSHOP IV
A series of public workshops with NEUROLIVE artists sharing their artistic research.
Taking place from 27-31 May 2025 at Siobhan Davies Studios, Workshop 4 was a 5-day series of public workshops that offered an opportunity to experience the processes behind the artistic investigations of liveness that contributed to the NEUROLIVE project. Each day shared the artistic research of a different NEUROLIVE commission, and was led by different artists closely involved in that particular work.
The workshops offered the lead artists an opportunity to reflect back on the research they each brought to NEUROLIVE, and also facilitated exchanges between different NEUROLIVE artists participating in one another’s workshop days, interwoven with contributions from the scientific team.
Workshop schedule:
Tuesday 27 May, 11:00-17:30
How Shall We Begin Again?
Initiated by artist Jo Fong, How Shall We Begin Again? took the form of a two-day live installation, created and performed by fifty people in 2022.
On this first day of the workshop week, participants met each other through moving, listening, recalling and embodying the creative process of How Shall We Begin Again? Jo describes this performance as ‘between portraiture, protest and something like a prayer. On its simplest level it’s about how we reconnect with ourselves, our bodies and each other’. This workshop day was led by artists Elina Akhmetova and Jay Yule, who were part of the core artistic team of How Shall We Begin Again?, with workshop plans developed in conversation with Jo Fong.
Wednesday 28 May, 11:00-17:30
Detective Work
Choreographer Seke Chimutengwende and collaborator Stephanie McMann led participants through some of the processes and material from their 2021 show Detective Work, looking at choreography as a process of creating and solving mysteries. Thinking about liveness as a way of investigating the present, participants worked with movement, text, improvisation and set material in order to find their own ways of unravelling the mystery of the creative process.
Thursday 29 May, 11:00-17:30
Performing and Not Performing, performed by Jia-Yu Corti
A collaboration with choreographer and performer Jia-Yu Corti, the performance-experiment Performing and Not Performing, performed by Jia-Yu Corti was presented at Goldsmiths University in 2023. This artistic and scientific work playfully investigated a spectrum of states between performing and not performing - both in terms of how performers generate these states and how audiences perceive them.
This workshop day shared this work’s exploration of ways of modulating ‘being oneself’ while being witnessed as a performer. Freeing from predetermined movement or action to guide the performance mode, participants worked to discern and connect the habitual and the intuitive, observing how their own live practice unfolded. This workshop practiced total immersion into the present, into the doing, into trust. The day was led by Jia-Yu Corti with contributions from scientific and artistic collaborators Albane Arthuis, Guido Orgs and Matthias Sperling.
Friday 30 May, 11:00-17:30
~ snakeskin in the wild ~
Created by Dog Kennel Hill Project in 2023, ~ snakeskin in the wild ~ brought a combination of formalism and anarchy to the examination of liveness and the aesthetics of science.
This workshop day invited participants to engage with key artistic and scientific approaches from the project, working with materials such as slime and wooden rods to investigate their role in practice and performance. Through hands-on experimentation, participants examined how scientific and artistic processes were deeply intertwined in the work, tackling the challenge of measuring liveness—not in the controlled environment of a lab, but in the unpredictable, wild context of a theatrical performance event. Led by Dog Kennel Hill Project artists Ben Ash, Heni Hale and Rachel Lopez de la Nieta, this workshop offered a unique opportunity to delve into these ideas through practice and discussion.
Saturday 31 May, 11:00-17:30
Readings of what was never written
Created by Matthias Sperling in collaboration with Temitope Ajose, Ben Ash, Iris Yi Po Chan and Katye Coe, Readings of what was never written was performed in 2024.
This workshop day explored choreographic materials from this work that approach dancing as a process of ‘taking a reading’ - intuitively interpreting our moment-to-moment embodied experience. The ways that this work brings together dance, science and science fiction opened up an exploration of embodied ways of knowing as an intrinsic part of live dance experiences, attending to how – for performers and audience members alike – this can span a generative meshwork of our bodily capacities for knowing that are variously ‘scientific’ (rational, languaged, explicit) and ‘magical’ (more-than-rational, felt sense, intuitive). This workshop was led by choreographer Matthias Sperling and collaborating performer Katye Coe, with live sound designer Joel Cahen.
LIVENESS WORKSHOP IV
A series of public workshops with NEUROLIVE artists sharing their artistic research.
Taking place from 27-31 May 2025 at Siobhan Davies Studios, Workshop 4 was a 5-day series of public workshops that offered an opportunity to experience the processes behind the artistic investigations of liveness that contributed to the NEUROLIVE project. Each day shared the artistic research of a different NEUROLIVE commission, and was led by different artists closely involved in that particular work.
The workshops offered the lead artists an opportunity to reflect back on the research they each brought to NEUROLIVE, and also facilitated exchanges between different NEUROLIVE artists participating in one another’s workshop days, interwoven with contributions from the scientific team.
Workshop schedule:
Tuesday 27 May, 11:00-17:30
How Shall We Begin Again?
Initiated by artist Jo Fong, How Shall We Begin Again? took the form of a two-day live installation, created and performed by fifty people in 2022.
On this first day of the workshop week, participants met each other through moving, listening, recalling and embodying the creative process of How Shall We Begin Again? Jo describes this performance as ‘between portraiture, protest and something like a prayer. On its simplest level it’s about how we reconnect with ourselves, our bodies and each other’. This workshop day was led by artists Elina Akhmetova and Jay Yule, who were part of the core artistic team of How Shall We Begin Again?, with workshop plans developed in conversation with Jo Fong.
Wednesday 28 May, 11:00-17:30
Detective Work
Choreographer Seke Chimutengwende and collaborator Stephanie McMann led participants through some of the processes and material from their 2021 show Detective Work, looking at choreography as a process of creating and solving mysteries. Thinking about liveness as a way of investigating the present, participants worked with movement, text, improvisation and set material in order to find their own ways of unravelling the mystery of the creative process.
Thursday 29 May, 11:00-17:30
Performing and Not Performing, performed by Jia-Yu Corti
A collaboration with choreographer and performer Jia-Yu Corti, the performance-experiment Performing and Not Performing, performed by Jia-Yu Corti was presented at Goldsmiths University in 2023. This artistic and scientific work playfully investigated a spectrum of states between performing and not performing - both in terms of how performers generate these states and how audiences perceive them.
This workshop day shared this work’s exploration of ways of modulating ‘being oneself’ while being witnessed as a performer. Freeing from predetermined movement or action to guide the performance mode, participants worked to discern and connect the habitual and the intuitive, observing how their own live practice unfolded. This workshop practiced total immersion into the present, into the doing, into trust. The day was led by Jia-Yu Corti with contributions from scientific and artistic collaborators Albane Arthuis, Guido Orgs and Matthias Sperling.
Friday 30 May, 11:00-17:30
~ snakeskin in the wild ~
Created by Dog Kennel Hill Project in 2023, ~ snakeskin in the wild ~ brought a combination of formalism and anarchy to the examination of liveness and the aesthetics of science.
This workshop day invited participants to engage with key artistic and scientific approaches from the project, working with materials such as slime and wooden rods to investigate their role in practice and performance. Through hands-on experimentation, participants examined how scientific and artistic processes were deeply intertwined in the work, tackling the challenge of measuring liveness—not in the controlled environment of a lab, but in the unpredictable, wild context of a theatrical performance event. Led by Dog Kennel Hill Project artists Ben Ash, Heni Hale and Rachel Lopez de la Nieta, this workshop offered a unique opportunity to delve into these ideas through practice and discussion.
Saturday 31 May, 11:00-17:30
Readings of what was never written
Created by Matthias Sperling in collaboration with Temitope Ajose, Ben Ash, Iris Yi Po Chan and Katye Coe, Readings of what was never written was performed in 2024.
This workshop day explored choreographic materials from this work that approach dancing as a process of ‘taking a reading’ - intuitively interpreting our moment-to-moment embodied experience. The ways that this work brings together dance, science and science fiction opened up an exploration of embodied ways of knowing as an intrinsic part of live dance experiences, attending to how – for performers and audience members alike – this can span a generative meshwork of our bodily capacities for knowing that are variously ‘scientific’ (rational, languaged, explicit) and ‘magical’ (more-than-rational, felt sense, intuitive). This workshop was led by choreographer Matthias Sperling and collaborating performer Katye Coe, with live sound designer Joel Cahen.
A European Research Council funded project