Anthropo+Screen by-products is a performance research project, dialogue and collaboration with garment designer Alena Kudera, under alias KUDERA + MPEARSONATER.
Recently joined by sculptor Yoav Admoni and dance artist Amy Voris towards an immersive performance installation highlighting consumerism, plastic waste, fast fashion, and environmental crisis.
A collection of garments and accessories made from single use plastics and other materials destined for the landfill. They are designed to give immersive, sensory experiences to dancers who improvise. It is visually mesmerizing, sculptural, grotesque yet seductive. We are transformed into mythical sentient beings, animating inanimate bodies that can be shed or discarded.
The project began in search of a bodily and felt response to climate crisis.
For me, 'wearing the consequences’ of global capitalist consumer culture is a kind of shadow play. It activates my imagination to create future possibilities and alternative pasts. This play creates agency to relate in new ways with the fearful cognitive reality of climate crisis.
Photo: Alena Kudera Image: Mary Pearson
Image: Laura Doehler in theatre wearing head mask of latex gloves, woven yellow plastic and blue ties, bare arm in front of projection of her image in forest
Image: Mary Pearson, wearing 'Latex Swan' close up of dancing at water's edge on Dorset coast
Image: Mary Pearson, wearing plastic shopping bags and food wrappers, styrofoam and plastic balls, blue ties, in sand by jagged rocks on Welsh coastline
Image: Laura Doehler in theatre wearing head mask of latex gloves, woven yellow plastic and blue ties, bare arm in front of projection of her image in forest
Project History
2020
August 31st - September 12th, 2020
Ponderosa Dance, Stolzenhagen, Germany.
Residency culminating in site-specific outdoor performance.
2019
may 27th- June 1st, 2019
Filming in mature growth forest, Llandysul, Wales.
june 24-29th, 2019
Filming on Jurassic heritage coastline, Dorset, UK.
Sept 23- October 4th
Residencies in LJMU Sudley Theatre, and Unity Theatre, Liverpool
Sept 23, 2019 ‘rough cuts’ screening of video shorts at Metal Culture
Oct 4, 2019 work-in-progress performance installation at Unity Theatre
2021-
episode iii
Kudera’s second collection is intense in volume and scale, playful and sinister. It can obscure my body, weigh it down, heat it up, and limit some senses to enhance others. I am transformed into mythical sentient beings, or disguised in piles of trash.
Leather belt remnants with metallic fake reptile plastic surfaces are stitched together with video tape. A leather crown encircles its wearer in cascades of video tape, creating a swishing ‘surround sound’. Plastic mouths and eye protectors look like devils in gas masks, reminding of potential contamination. Brightly colored cable tie spikes ward off proximity, and resemble plasticised sea creatures. Old trainers cover the body in carbon footprints. Tights, stuffed with eternal non-recyclable packaging, a multi-legged denim devil made of expendable jeans, a globe of shiny coffee packages: ‘3rd world’ exploitation for ‘1st world’ convenience.