Chicago-based duo Cupola Bobber are Nuffield International Artists in Residence. They make physical performance that hangs somewhere between staged theatrics and the beautifully familiar.
With an eye on vaudeville, the night sky, and this note: "If I die, my knowledge may die with me", Cupola Bobber investigate the stars, the railroad, and their memories in a struggle to pinpoint something infinitely satisfying.
Using an intricate web of lo-fi mechanics, they convert a confined interior into an expansive nightscape, a universe out of cardboard, and two small towers made from cardboard toy bricks. The space changes, tasks flow into each other, the light goes from bright to twilight to night... Stars dancing together, dialogue that finds meaning in dozens of connecting threads, and resolution in the kind of beauty that makes you sigh.
Cupola Bobber carry their home, their universe, on their backs – a cosmology part kaijin [Japanese film effects monster], part Buster Keaton. They make a place for performance in the twenty-first century.
Matthew Goulish (Goat Island), selecting artist
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Cupola Bobber are also running an artists masterclass (10am-1pm, Thursday 29 November, £10 / £7)
How can we disorient ourselves properly in order to undo the bits of collective fantasy we engage in daily? With an emphasis on non-linear collaborative performance, participants will create short performances using found and assigned text, movement and other media with the goal of making an engaging work that generates its own logic (max 16 participants).
Tuesday 27 November 2007 to Wednesday 28 November 2007 @ 8pm
