Michael Pinchbeck is a writer, live artist and performance maker based in Nottingham. He studied Theatre and Creative Writing at Lancaster University and has a Masters in Performance and Live Art from Nottingham Trent University. In 2004 he embarked on a four year live art project - The Long and Winding Road - commissioned by Fierce!
He won the 2007 Nottingham Creative Business Award for Writing and Publishing for The White Album commissioned by Nottingham Playhouse. He is writing a new play for Nottingham Playhouse – The Ashes. In 2008, he was selected by Arts Council England to represent the UK at the Biennale for Young Artists in Italy. He premiered The Post Show Party Show supported by Dance4 at Springdance 2008. He is a core member of performance company Reckless Sleepers and co-founder of Nottingham live art platform - Hatch.
For more information about his work and images please go to www.michaelpinchbeck.co.uk
Saturday 6 September 2008
Process
Critically, Michael will remain the lead artist but not perform live in the project, enabling 24 Hour Stubble to embrace risk and represent an artistic challenge to his practice. It is important to him, after working on a triptych of personal projects, to sit outside of the work and activate other voices and personalities. He will work closely with the artists involved to source and generate material.
The initial phase will allow Michael to interview the artists and draw up a timescale for the devising process – allocating each artist a lead section based on their skill set and performance interests.
The recurring motif of the piece will be traditional folk song ‘Michael Finnegan’ with each performer as the leader of their own section. The project borrows from many different sources and stimuli, from folk art to live art, from Sweeney Todd to Taxi Driver, from Boy Bands to Barber Shop Quartets.
The second phase of Devising and Strategy will employ a timeline to inform the process. Building four hour-long blocks the creative team will work on 4 Hour Stubble, 8 Hour Stubble, 12 Hour Stubble etc. Each block will take a different creative voice to explore the diverse dynamic of the ensemble.
Once the structure is in place, in the third phase of the project: Production and Realisation, the creative team will devise performance and visual content for each section of the piece. This will involve the use of old and new technologies, from BIC razors to Babyliss shavers, from audio cassette to DV cameras as we explore the potential for Stubble-Cam and The Wild Track – a close-up live link from a camera zoomed in on a sleeping performer’s face and the sound of hair growing as recorded by an analogue tape player.
At the end of the devising process, we will present a work in progress of 24 Hour Stubble. The work in progress provides a forum for critical feedback from an invited audience of artists and promoters and an opportunity to test our 24-hour capacity.
The initial phase will allow Michael to interview the artists and draw up a timescale for the devising process – allocating each artist a lead section based on their skill set and performance interests.
The recurring motif of the piece will be traditional folk song ‘Michael Finnegan’ with each performer as the leader of their own section. The project borrows from many different sources and stimuli, from folk art to live art, from Sweeney Todd to Taxi Driver, from Boy Bands to Barber Shop Quartets.
The second phase of Devising and Strategy will employ a timeline to inform the process. Building four hour-long blocks the creative team will work on 4 Hour Stubble, 8 Hour Stubble, 12 Hour Stubble etc. Each block will take a different creative voice to explore the diverse dynamic of the ensemble.
Once the structure is in place, in the third phase of the project: Production and Realisation, the creative team will devise performance and visual content for each section of the piece. This will involve the use of old and new technologies, from BIC razors to Babyliss shavers, from audio cassette to DV cameras as we explore the potential for Stubble-Cam and The Wild Track – a close-up live link from a camera zoomed in on a sleeping performer’s face and the sound of hair growing as recorded by an analogue tape player.
At the end of the devising process, we will present a work in progress of 24 Hour Stubble. The work in progress provides a forum for critical feedback from an invited audience of artists and promoters and an opportunity to test our 24-hour capacity.
Aims and Objectives
The aim of the work is to develop relationships between five established and experienced artists from different disciplines and to enable Michael to return to the devised performance territory he inhabited with Metro-Boulot-Dodo. 24 Hour Stubble takes his interdisciplinary work into new directions and contexts as it brings together a broad range of practitioners and partners to reach new audiences.
Following recent live art projects, 24 Hour Stubble continues Michael’s ongoing research interests into notions of duration, loss and the performance of absence and presence. The work is a forensic investigation into the act of shaving and the growing and cutting of facial hair as a metaphor for madness, male-ness, time passing and aging.
The project takes Michael’s live art out of a private one-to-one context e.g. a car, a bench - into a more public site-specific performance space e.g. a theatre, a gallery, a warehouse - and allows him to consolidate the many strands of his practice and professional experience as a writer, live artist and dramaturge. The piece will sit somewhere between a durational performance installation and a play.
Following recent live art projects, 24 Hour Stubble continues Michael’s ongoing research interests into notions of duration, loss and the performance of absence and presence. The work is a forensic investigation into the act of shaving and the growing and cutting of facial hair as a metaphor for madness, male-ness, time passing and aging.
The project takes Michael’s live art out of a private one-to-one context e.g. a car, a bench - into a more public site-specific performance space e.g. a theatre, a gallery, a warehouse - and allows him to consolidate the many strands of his practice and professional experience as a writer, live artist and dramaturge. The piece will sit somewhere between a durational performance installation and a play.
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