FORGED (in the tender heat of your embrace)

Commissioned Unlimited Commissions: Emerging Artist Award with support from Creative Scotland and the inaugural Dave Toole OBE Bursary Award

Next performance: RISE Festival, Moray Arts Centre, 24-26th May 2024

Image: FORGED (in the tender heat of your embrace) by Laura Fisher. Design by Zephyr Liddell. Photograph by Emily Nicholl

FORGED (in the tender heat of your embrace)

let me take your weight ~ can I lean on you today? ~ is that okay?

FORGED (in the tender heat of your embrace) is a durational performance installation for gallery spaces and a temporary site for collective rest which holds the live archive of an ongoing choreographic collaboration between artist Laura Fisher and seven sheets of copper metal.

Drawing parallels between the material properties of the sheet metal and the artist’s body which experiences chronic pain, the collaboration utilises body heat to create an intimate relationship of interdependency. Through cycles of moving and resting together, body and metal shift in supportive relation to one another from which sculptural forms gradually emerge and change.

The search for a shared movement language between material and human is echoed in the integration of live audio description by guest artists – whose words, observations and narration become a third dancer in the performance.

An evolving archive, FORGED responds to each new site it is presented within, working with local guest artist to create a new interpretation of the Audio Description each time, adding to the archive of voices, bodies and perspectives that make up the work.

Image by Emily Nicholl

close your eyes ~ rest your head ~ lay your tired body down

Within a soft sculptural environment designed by Zephyr Liddell, audiences are given permission to rest and drift between the senses. Disrupting sight as the dominant sensory engagement within gallery spaces, FORGED invites tactile interactions between material and bodies to consider the complicated relationship around care, power, illness and intimacy that often exists for disabled people

FORGED (in the tender heat of your embrace) is an Unlimited commission, supporting the work of disabled artists with funding from Creative Scotland and the Dave Toole OBE Bursary fund.

Supported by Creative Scotland, Dance Base, Outerspaces, Present Futures, Studio Somewhere, and The Work Room’s residency programme.

Lead artist: Laura Fisher

Guest Audio Describers (live) TMS: Ellen Renton & Simone Seales

Guest Audio Describers (live) Rise Festival: Lynsey Gilmour & Ruby Worth

Audio Describers (performance): Raquel Meseguer Zafe & Romany Dear

Audio Describer (installation): Romany Dear

Costume, Textiles & Installation Design: Zephyr Liddell

Dramaturg: Thulani Rachia

Choreographic Mentor: Farah Saleh

Audio Description Consultation: Quiplash

Co-producers: Siân Baxter & Laura Fisher

Production Manager: Siân Baxter