Wiels | EN

Ula Sickle & HYOID
Voice ascending a staircase (2019)

Ula Sickle presents an intimate, experimental sound performance in the striking, seven-storey staircase of WIELS. This is a pared down score for body and voice, performed by singer Fabienne Seveillac and dancer/choreographer Ula Sickle. This new commission draws from Sickle’s research – developed during her 2018 residency at WIELS – into the voice and body in public space, and gestures of resistance.

The work explores the body in movement, a topic that has long fascinated visual artists, not least painters at the start of the 20^th century. One of Sickle’s starting points was Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus Stairway (1932), painted at a moment of uncertainty about the future of the Bauhaus school (closed shortly afterwards by the Nazis), while Sickle’s title directly alludes to Duchamp’s seminal painting Nude descending a staircase, No. 2 (1912).

Continuing Sickle’s collaboration with Hyoid Voices and composer Stine Janvin, this stripped-down work departs from the larger scale theatre pieces for which Sickle is best known. In this way, it responds to both the context of WIELS where she has recently spent 6 months and the framework of Performatik, which encourages artists to try out new, transdisciplinary approaches to their work.

Performance
Friday 22.03 & Saturday 23.03.2019
12:00 & 16:00
WIELS Staircase
Duration: 15 min.
Free, upon reservation

Performers: Ula Sickle, Fabienne Seveillac
Artistic collaboration: Hyoid Contemporary Voices
Outside ear: Andreas Halling
Text: Extract from Jacob Wren’s “In love with the movement of the world” (2017)

Conversation: From stage to gallery/gallery to stage
Friday 22.03.2019, 12:30
WIELS Auditorium
Free
Upon reservation

A conversation exploring cross disciplinary practices that draw upon conventions of the visual and the performing arts with Ula Sickle, Alexis Blake, and Noé Soulier. Moderated by Zoë Gray.