There's a long tradition of body-centric sounding apparatus in performance art, pop music, IT and engineering. Alex presents a performative lecture about the Objectinstruments of Chicks on Speed and her current Phd research into foot-appendages, as new interfaces for musical expression in live-art.
"And while I'm here, why don't you give me some of those high-heeled feet?" Laurie Anderson, Monkeys Paw, 1989.
We speak about manipulation, but rarely do we speak about PEDIPULATION. With the Computer Enhanced Footwear (CEF) in the live art piece FOOTwerk Murray-Leslie suggests that the foot can be temporarily enhanced with technology to create a new type of High-Techne Fashion, a new tool to carry out complex creative tasks on stage, coupled with special techniques of playing the shoes, including arial dance styles such as pole dancing.
During the lecture Alex introduces her new short film with the shoes: This work creates a new metaphorical reading of pole and trans-gender activism in Singapore, which have been silenced since the late 70’s.
FOOTwerk gives the trans-artist Marla Bendini and the art of pole a new voice via sonnified streams of data via the shoes, contra to forms of silence which have been forced on minority groups throughout history. Generated via the inclusion of Murray-Leslie’s computer enhanced footwear during an exploratory jam session at @ NTU Centre for Contemporary Art in Singapore in 2015, the data emitted from Marla’s moves with the shoes, influenced the entire audio visual critical dialogue around the illegal status of her body in Singapore.
The work continues Chicks in Speed’s remixing of popular culture and politically engaged practice.
All our talks are for free (whether you are a member or not), held in english, at the auditorium of the MUDAM (the "Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean") in Luxembourg.
