John Court (FI/UK) & Mark Harvey (NZ): Drop Kick
Friday 28.9. 10.00 – 16.00
Snellmanin puisto Park
Saturday 29.9. 10.00 – 16.00
Kuopio Market Square & streets around
Drop Kickwill involve playful endurance/durational actions performed by John Court and Mark Harvey together with apparatuses that they develop in workshops with local youth through a process of guided collaboration. Notions of play will be explored through a sense of free-association in the development of these large objects with participants and the way in which Court and Harvey choose to respond to them through their actions.
The performances will involve physical labour by Court and Harvey, via a sense of productive obsessive-compulsion, not unlike what one does when doodling while day-dreaming and carrying out ‘workly’ tasks. There will be a series of 2 objects made and each will be large enough for Court and Harvey to perform with at the same time. The materials will have ‘a found’ sense about them (they will be sources from a mixture of recycled materials and building supplies) such as wood, metal and more malleable materials like paper.
The title Drop Kick refers to a rugby strategy and also a physical action/gesture made in relation to playing with ball like objects in New Zealand. It can also be a metaphor for when one makes a mistake. Court and Harvey are interested in how the objects and associated performances might be seen to embrace notions of mistakes (as play).
Drop Kick is a development on performances with objects created by Court and Harvey in their recent practices; Court with his giant hard materials at Signal in Brussels, and Harvey in projects like in TEZA in Wellington and ‘at Te Tuhi gallery Auckland.