Fundraiser

This first fundraiser for PS² was an idea by the Board and the event was curated by Board member Laura Graham.
It took place at the Black Box and in retrospect has been artistically very successful. Being loyal to our ethos that artists should be paid, our overall income and fundraising was however quite small.

In a curious mix of satirical burlesque, emerging musical talent, nostalgia and acoustic sets to get your heart racing and your head questioning.
TICKETS £10 CONCESSION £8 Tickets on the door.
To reserve tickets, email: pssquared@btconnect.com.

THE ARTISTS STATEMENT SESSIONS

Curated by Laura Graham

In light-hearted frivolity, the white cube embeds itself in the black box- to produce a creation- a chimera of art forms
Paul Kane and the Over the Hill Collective present

“I POD SHUFFLE SESSIONS”

Musical knowledge is our currency and the ‘I pod Shuffle Sessions’ have been conceived to challenge an unconscious response to music. We all listen to iPods; we all use Shuffle, and yet rarely do we hear the narrative, or the story behind the music. 80% of the time we only listen to 20% of our music.  Over The Hill Music Collective challenges you to hear new music with the “ i POD shuffle ' playlist. 
The Collective is aimed at mature musicians, but open to everyone.  Set up a year ago, it offers musicians and music lovers the opportunity to play, collaborate and share.  We invite people to ‘Sing something, Play Something or Say something’ on the last Thursday on every month at the Oh Yeah Music Centre.

JAMES KING and RORY MCSWIGGAN

James King has engaged in performance activities for thirty-five years.
After retiring in 2004, having spent thirty years of University teaching, he developed an interest in voice performance. This has taken him into open mic entertainment and sound poetry opportunities, performing his sound work on radio 4 on new
years day 2013, as the year of culture dawned. Increasingly, this voice work has become part of his
 performance art.
He performs regularly with Bbeyond, Belfast, during the monthly spontaneous group events, and in his adopted city of Derry, where he regularly collaborates with others.This evenings offering comes in conjunction with the work of comedian Rory McSwiggan.

SOUP DU JOUR

Plays with the concept of the recent upsurge and interest in burlesque, aiming to evoke the satirical emphasis present in the original Victorian Burlesque acts, whilst questioning contemporary society, politics and social mores in a comically seductive manner.
“The girl who fell to Earth”
An alien lands on Earth. Seeing how humans interact, and in an effort to fit in, she decides to learn how to seduce the human species. However, struggling to understand some of the 'attractive' qualities of the female, she is driven to desperate measures to attempt to recreate the ideal human body.
BURLESQUEBOT- A robot, built to teach burlesque to women! Wind her up and watch her go.
WARNING! Still in the early stages of development; there is a risk of breaking down. 

HANNAH MCPHILLIMY

Is a songstress.
‘You see, for me, the best part of being a musician has been writing the songs with the performance coming a close, but definite, second. This order reflects the make up and execution of my songs as the musical decisions I make before, and during a performance, are always informed by the narrative of the songs. As a result my sound has developed, like my lyrics into a distinct, gentle and slightly melancholic style, which often leaves my voice quite exposed.
My songs play with the idea of revealing oneself to others; the cost, the risk and the reward; as I, with bare accompaniment on piano and ukulele, reveal myself to you. If I hope for anything from this, then it is that when I’m done you will be left with the story and emotions of the songs that I have written, living on in you. That would make me oh so happy.”

Hannah McPhillimy is one of the four successful acts for 2013 on the ‘scratch my progress’ program run by the Oh Yeah Music Centre designed to hothouse new talent, enabling learning about the business of music plus the trades of performing and writing.

ELVIRA SAINTAMARIA

Elvira Santamaría was born (1967) in Mexico. Since 1991 she has presented her performances internationally at many different festivals: Including Nippon International Art Performance Festival (NIPAF) in Japan; Rencontre International d'Art Performance in Quebec; Trans-Europe 2000 in Hanover, Germany; International Review of Live Art in Scotland and in Blurrr Biennial of Performance Art in Israel. She has also shown her work throughout Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean, USA and Europe. In 1997 she received the scholarship “Jóvenes Creadores” (young creators) from the FONCA (National Fund for Culture and Arts) and has had two art residencies in Quebec in 1995 and 2002. Since 2000, she has been a member of the performance art group BMI. In 2001, she initiated and organized the event “Acciones en Ruta”; In 2002 curated and coordinated the “Mexico-Japan Performance Art Encounter” in Mexico City and Yucatan.
Her work presently focuses on intervention and process art.
She states ; “Action Art is an amorphous form of art and existential practice of self-knowledge. It’s poetic postulates the self-creation through the acts, and it is an endless process of learning. The symbolic act creates important reference points in the evolution of the consciousness of the artist, but the ‘not symbolic’ one is the true dimension of the present. I work with the things that life presents to me in the moment. I don't use things, I dialog with them. The public context is, for me, the place where the creation of situations can deconstruct what we think of as reality, human relationships and ourselves. Following the ideas of the ‘situationists’ where “the audience must not exist anymore but les 'Vivants' (the living ones), in their plural and diverse forms”.
My work has evolved through a personal search by means of many forms of action art (performance, public interventions, process, installation etc). Nowadays I am doing urban performance, art intervention, process art and In-situ installations, which are rarely practiced in Mexico.

MUDBLIND

MUDBLIND was formed August 2010, when three like minded, and yet differently influenced musicians came together to put right a City Centre night life that they had felt had gone awry.
A Belfast based Rock 'n' Blues outfit, they have gigged in venues as illustrious as The Hudson, The Mercantile Hotel (Dublin), The Black Box, and The Spring and Airbrake. With appearances at The March Bacc...hanial, Culture Night (2011 and 2012), The East Belfast Art Festival, and soon to come, Stroke City’s Carnivale of Colours 2013, in the year of The City of Culture. Re-forging honest and pure Rhythm and Blues for the 21st Century, ensuring that their provocative lyrical style, well-crafted melody and bottleneck breakdowns are always crowd pleasers, MUDBLIND are
Robert Kane- Guitars and vocals
Stephen Purdy-Bass Guitar
Mathew Hewer- Drums and percussion