COLLAPSE

Southbank Centre (UK) - 2016

Performance, Gallery Show

Collaborators: New Movement Collective and Oliver Coates.

COLLAPSE consists of two artworks in recursive conversation: one a dance performance, the other a gallery show. The work was presented as a ticketed dance performance and an ongoing gallery show at the Southbank Centre in 2016. Its origins lie in the earliest artistic experiments at the studio, when Shaw and Trossell were primarily making sculpture: they sat deep in curiosity about movement, 3D motion blur, and the ability of a scanner to record in four dimensions - and the possibility to use these tools to turn ephemeral moments into physical sculptures with weight and volume. Six years later, their vision realized, COLLAPSE premiered.

Zinc coated sculpture

Zinc coated sculpture

PERFORMANCE: COLLAPSE - A Period Drama

Building ScanLAB’s oeuvre with multidisciplinary collaborators, Collapse united ScanLAB’s pioneering image capture techniques and striking imagery with intricate choreography danced alongside live and electronic music to celebrate the imperfect and accidental in today’s technology dependent world, probing the complexities of time, group memory and the cyclical nature of societal evolution. Are we survivors or fossils in the journey of tomorrow?

Drawing on experiential theatre practice, the audience became directly involved in the intimate performance, invited to explore radical technology, movement and live music inside the lesser-known spaces of the Royal Festival Hall.

A series of sculptures, film and sound act as spatial memories of the COLLAPSE performance. Digitally fabricated fragments of dancers’ limbs are suspended, lingering where their performer once created them. Traces of movement are solidified and stand as physical echoes, unearthed, archaeological monuments sitting within a landscape of projections and sound.

The sculptures talk of a recent event now passed, but also hint at the perpetual human cycle of boom, exuberance, downfall and rediscovery. The film and audio backdrop depict the natural and manmade terrain that informs these cycles and is itself dramatically influenced by the human motions now frozen within. The city rises and falls in the background as the digital dust that both sustains and threatens our time.

New Movement Collective perform COLLAPSE at the Southbank Centre, Aug 2016

New Movement Collective perform COLLAPSE at the Southbank Centre, Aug 2016

New Movement Collective perform COLLAPSE at the Southbank Centre, Aug 2016

New Movement Collective perform COLLAPSE at the Southbank Centre, Aug 2016

3D scan of dancers in motion

3D scan of dancers in motion

COLLAPSE: An Exhibition of Remains, Southbank Centre, Aug 2016

COLLAPSE: An Exhibition of Remains, Southbank Centre, Aug 2016

ScanLAB Projects
COLLAPSE in performance at the Barbican Centre, 2014

COLLAPSE in performance at the Barbican Centre, 2014