Nested within the PQ Performance Space Exhibition, The Lively Assemble brings together humans and more-than-humans in a collective effort to perform togetherness. The project is informed by the following questions: What does a multi-species collaboration do for growing performance practices? How do more-than-humans travel to PQ and how can they perform together? How do we assemble in an exhibition space that does not allow for a physical more-than-human presence?

 The installation represents an assemblage of collaborations between humans (six students from UAL Wimbledon College and TAAT collective) and a selection of more-than-human entities: a lavender plant, the wind, a family of worms, stones collected on Brighton beach and plant seeds from five different European countries. Through performative gestures for interdependence (daily habits and small rituals) new forms of collectivity are negotiated and celebrated.

Two video screens were part of the curatorial setup: one showing the hybrid development process (online-offline) of the Live Assembly and the other showing the development of an Encounter Portal in Aberystwyth (Wales, UK) a physical exercise in collaborating as a temporary multi-species collective.

Have a look in the interviews through our youtube channel here:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzrNyxu3l2o

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTA-HI8y0oU

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU3URUfCzH4

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDnrvQVWtek

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7qtc7E0mw0

Partners and contributors

University of the Arts London, Prague Quadrennial, Andrew Filmer, SoAP Maastricht, Theresa Nelson, Viktoria Mazeris, Catalina Diaconescu, Timna Krenn, Jingyi Ye, Xinran Meng, Sophia New, Breg Horemans and Gert-Jan Stam.

Gestures

I hate basil, Worm