NEW COMERS: Nicole Bachmann – dreamideamachine ART VIEW

In her practice Nicole Bachmann explores ways of knowledge production through the use of the voice, language, movement and rhythm. Using text as a starting point, she collaborates with actors and dancers to create live performances and scenarios that deconstruct language in order to create new ways of communicating and conveying information. Specifically, Bachmann is interested in how the voice can be activated by the individual to make oneself heard and used as an agent for social and political change. She’s also the co-founder of “Performance as Publishing”, a collaborative project with Ruth Beale. Bachmann’s new commission “I don’t want your whispers” for her participation at London’s annual Performance Art Festival “Block Universe”, examines the relationship between language, voice and power. This work is informed by ideas surrounding activism and dominant discourse, and how to find one’s own voice in order to be heard and listened to. Performed by actor Anna Tierney and dancer Patricia Langa, this work deals with negotiations of speech and the materiality of the voice and gestures.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Block Universe Archive

In your artwork you examine the relationship between language, voice and power. Are you interested in personal speech and individuality and how they can prevail?
Yes, I’m interested in how the voice can be activated by the individual to make oneself heard and be used as an agent for social and political change.
Do you believe that the governance are currently trying to silence our voice and with sneaky actions to control us and to circumvent privileges and conquests of the past?
Theresa May is trying to use the Terror Attacks in London as a pretext to water down Human Rights and to allow for greater surveillance of the general public.
Contrarily from the other artists, your work that is dealing with negotiations of speech and the materiality of gestures, is performed by two professionals: the actress Anna Tierney and the dancer Patricia Langa. Why?
Working with professional actors and dancers with an acute understanding of text, tone and interpretation, together with their bodily abilities and their intellectual capacities, allows me to develop my work further.
This year’s festival theme address notions of nationhood, inclusivity and identity politics set against a changing socio-political landscape. Looking at networked communities and the power of collective voices. We would like you to explain us, your concept in response to the issues addressed by Universe Block and how it emerged?
The work is informed by the late developments in politics but also by ideas of activism and dominant discourse and questions how to find one’s voice in order to be heard. It ties in with questions the festival addresses which one is the power of collective voices, and how individual voices can gain strength and power by reuniting.
In your opinion which of the issues addressed by Universe Block, is considered most important, that will affect the future of contemporary art, and society?
Just having read Rebecca Solnit’s book ‘Hope in the Dark’ I believe in the idea of networked communities and the power of the many. They might still be underground but will surface in time.