Translating Space - Rearranging Hundred Years Gallery

This presentation analyses how experimental music performances can create temporal spaces of activity which exist outside of a permanent sense of place, becoming nomadic practices cultivated in the interstices of the cultural landscape. I focus on performances held at Hundred Years gallery, London during the Tread Into Mulch event on 2nd June 2023 by Ivy Nostrum, Ecka Mordecai & Rory Salter and Liminal Haze.

Referencing Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) concept of the ‘smooth and striated’, I look to explore how these performances enact processes of ‘translation, transversal, and reversal’ of space, constructing sites which are temporal and in flux. Using ethnomethodological approaches from my current research into DIY experimental music, I highlight tactics used by each performer to enact these processes, ranging from the literal entanglement of the audience in the performance to the rearranging of the space as the performance itself. In examining the materiality of Hundred Years Gallery, from its white cube basement space to its convivial ground floor cafe space, I look to understand how it is the combination of the ‘relations-between’ performer and place which construct these temporal spaces which are, as Massey (2005) states, ‘always under construction’.

My research aims to develop an understanding of how this practice of translating space can become a useful tool in adapting to the increasingly privatised built environment where dedicated spaces for experimental performance are becoming increasingly precarious, as well as cultivating a milieu of artists whose work is embedded with the experimental, improvisational, reflexive and collaborative.