UNFIX is back next month with a three week virtual lineup of international events combining art, ritual, dance, film, music, debate, and workshops from 11 – 27 June.
The innovative festival investigating ecological crisis and renewal through the lens of social, cultural, political, environmental and personal transformation will return for its sixth edition – this year in a digital format, providing an online and accessible platform for audiences and artists alike.
UNFIX Festival started in Glasgow in 2015 and now has sister events in New York City, Tokyo and Bologna. For the very first time, all four cities will synchronise their programmes online allowing an international sharing of works all responding to what the human impact and forced human narrative upon the planet and entire natural world means for us right now.
Though the lockdowns and digital isolation of the past year have been challenging, UNFIX is leaning into the opportunity they present: the 2021 programme will bring together artists from the UK, United States, Italy, Japan, Germany, Mexico and beyond in ways that could never happen in one physical place. The festival will offer an online dreamspace for creating imaginal solidarity between communities across the world as we face the ‘new normal’ and the restarting of the machine after COVID.
The programme will explore the human relationship to the natural world and how it has changed throughout the pandemic, living within the anthropocene, shedding of skin and letting go of his-tory, revival and rebirth. Artists will celebrate our physical environment, find joy after grief, and call audiences to action to stand up to the climate crisis.
Among the first names to be announced – Scottish and UK artists include:
Interdisciplinary artist Clarinda Tse who works with tactility, the body and another-than human lifeforms and objects, invites viewers to explore the daily magic in Bubbling in Thick Time; multidisciplinary psychic worker and artist Bea Xu presents Bloodsport < The Island – a live online action role playing game set at a world-building temple in a post-extractivist solarpunk future; and with a vast body of work inspired by the natural and cultural ecology of Scotland’s wild places, Dougie Strang invites audiences to participate in a daily practice titled Still Find Joy and hosts a special book launch event, Dispatches from the Dark Mountain.
Edinburgh based artist and cultural geographer, Iryna Zamuruieva will convene a pig mourning ceremony for the 100 million pigs that have lost their lives because of the African Swine Fever (ASF) pandemic; and Carrie Fertig, recipient of the UNFIX festival residency at The Barn in Aberdeen presents Plummet – a thousand piece glass icicle installation and sound performance tolling end times to radically alter our impact, waste, and behaviour.
A snapshot of international names featuring include:
Renowned Japanese Butoh dancer and choreographer Atsushi Takenouchi questions the boundaries between our bodies and our environment, performing Skin from his home in Italy; Chicago’s Degenerate Art Ensemble, known for large-scale dance and theatre projects present their online work The Invitation – a meditation on the human relationship to the natural world, to Animist practices, and our connection to Mother Earth; and Before Bed – an intimate experimental reading collective located in Sydney, Australia founded by interdisciplinary artist, Audrey Newton will host a shared, interconnected, and comfortable reading and listening experience.
The programme will also welcome returning artists last seen at UNFIX in 2019 including:
Transfeminist artist Niya B engages with her own internalised toxicity and the elements of water and air in a ritual of shedding skin and letting go in Ekdysis; VIDIV, a collaboration of Glasgow based sound and performance artists (Desalvo, Aereogramme, Sons & Daughters) reflect on human mortality and social morbidity using electronic harsh noise; and sound artist and musician Ruaridh Law presents A Sea of Cogs – a series of short films focussing on those who have lost work during the pandemic, the link between work and identity, and hopes for the future.
UNFIX Director, Paul Michael Henry, said: “How humans organise themselves, and the ways of life we strive for, begin in our imagination. Capitalism and our treatment of the planet as a resource started out as ideas, and it’s now obvious that they are inadequate and point towards climate change and disaster. The arts and communal exploration through culture offer vital ways to dream otherwise, and to imagine a different future. UNFIX aims to provide a melting pot for work concerned with ecological crisis, climate change, hyper-capitalism and all the things that might help to address them: love, care, imagination, joy and dissent.”
UNFIX exists to help us feel deeply and viscerally into the biggest issues shaping our lives, and puts it to you that Climate Change and ecological crisis are happening inside your body, RIGHT NOW.
The Festival takes place from 11-27 June. For the full lineup of artists and to buy a festival pass, visit unfixfestival.com. The full programme schedule will be announced later this month.
Supported by Creative Scotland, the Barn and the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA).
Press contact:
Emma Costello emma@storytellingpr.com
Emma Ainley-Walker emmaaw@storytellingpr.com
Notes to editors.
Festival passes are available to purchase on a sliding scale to ensure our events stay as accessible as possible. This is made possible by having different tiers of tickets, and support we receive from grant funding.
We have four tiers of festival passes and encourage you to buy the ticket most representative of your financial situation – this is an honesty based policy so please use your own discretion. As always we, the festival organisers, are working within financial constraints so please pay what you can afford to support our festival, artists and staff members!
Unwaged Festival Pass – Free
I am unemployed and struggle to meet my basic needs
Low Income Festival Pass – £10
I have trouble meeting my basic needs regularly
General Festival Pass – £15
I regularly meet me needs and am somewhat comfortable
Solidarity Festival Pass – £25
I have surplus disposable income and want to pay in forward
High Income Festival Pass – £40
I have excess disposable income and want to pay it forward by contributing to the running of UNFIX Festival
Full Festival Lineup
Alex Popa – Consider This Unhappy Wretch
April Lin – R: Rest
Atsushi Takenouche – SKIN
Audrey Newton and Fiona Davies – Before Bed
Bea Xu – Bloodsport < The Island
Bibo & Brian Keeley – BREATHE
Carmen Berbel Lapaz – “It was the soundest pile of unwantedness that I knew”
Carrie Fertig – Plummet
Caterina Moroni – Bloom & Doom
Clarinda Tse – Bubbling in Thick Time: farmer, shower, consumables, strainer, microcosms, stillness
Crab Bee – Accessing Genii Loci: Personalities of Place
Degenerate Art Ensemble – The Invitation
Dominique Baron-Bonarjee – Listen to the sap and the juice
Dominique Koch – Holobiont Society
Dougie Strang – Still Find Joy
Dark Mountain Project – Dispatches From the Dark Mountain
Eva Jack – Whale Watching
Finn Rabbit-Dove – Gull
Hollie Miller – We the Living
Iryna Zamuruieva – Pig Mourning Ceremony
Jane Pitt – Sloopwild
Luke Jordan – Hermetic Super-Embryology
Maddie Granlund – 30 Minute Dance, Half-disappeared
Marleen Boschen
Niya B – Ekdysis
Ruaridh Law – A Sea of Cogs
Sandrine Deumier – Falling
Sonja Baumel – Microbial Entanglement
Veronica Mota – Karuma / Shadow Work
VIDIV – VIDIV
Yokko UNFIX NYC – 16 artists curated by our partners at UNFIX New York City, running throughout the festival
Yuri Dini UNFIX Bologna – Notes from the Anthropocene
Seisaku & Yuri UNFIX Japan – The Wind in the Labyrinth
