OM WIELS 2024 Echoing Spirits 478 LR

Oscar Murillo’s ​‘The flood­ed gar­den’ accom­pa­nied by Lydia McGlinchey

31.07.24

As part of his Tate Modern pre­sen­ta­ti­on, The flood­ed gar­den, Oscar Murillo will be orga­ni­zing a pro­gram of per­for­man­ces, which depart from the exhi­bi­ti­on and flood the city of London with echoes of the exhi­bit. The per­for­man­ces will con­sist of con­certs by the Mar, Río y Cordillera, a group invi­ted from Colombia, as well as seve­r­al per­for­man­ces devel­o­ped by Lydia McGlinchey, per­for­med by clo­se col­lea­gues and col­la­bo­ra­tors from Brussels. The per­for­man­ces will be publi­cly announ­ced 48 hours befo­re their hap­pe­ning making for live­ly and spon­ta­neous encounters.

Lydia McGlinchey will be devel­o­ping a cho­re­o­grap­hic sco­re in dia­lo­gue with the for­mal and con­cep­tu­al fra­me­work of Murillo’s flight dra­wings and Surge series as an impul­se for embo­di­ment. This work will build on their last encoun­ter during Murillo’s exhi­bi­ti­on​‘Masses’ at Wiels in the per­for­man­ce series​‘Echoing Spirits’.

Surge, having the con­no­ta­ti­on for both natu­ral and soci­al move­ment, made me think of dea­ling with the body in two regis­ters: the body as a mate­ri­al and the body as a soci­al enti­ty. This idea could equal­ly depart from the way in which the exhi­bit supe­rim­po­ses plas­tic chairs (which repre­sent infor­mal soci­al assem­bly) with the Surge pain­tings (who­se mes­me­ri­zing visu­al effects con­no­tes itself with water/​energetic movement).

The per­for­man­ce will fluc­tu­a­te, moving into peaks then sub­si­den­ce, evol­ving through dif­fe­rent modes of inhabiting/​composing the space. 

Inspired by the way that a mass of marks and gestu­res works to cre­a­te a lar­ger affect in Murillo’s pain­tings, I think of the per­for­man­ce like an evol­ving atmos­p­he­re. One whe­re an assem­bla­ge of bodies, gestu­res, text, and voi­ces works to form gre­a­ter fee­ling in the spa­ce. I would like to incor­po­ra­te the idea of col­lec­ti­ve cho­re­o­grap­hies which hold ten­si­on through being for­mal­ly mes­me­ri­zing, yet con­tain a subt­le tone of brutality.”

In the spi­rit of Murillo’s inte­rest in spon­ta­neous live encoun­ters, the cho­re­o­grap­hy will be recep­ti­ve and live­ly in nature. 

The per­for­man­ce I cre­a­te together with the per­for­mers will remain reac­ti­ve to pos­si­ble unex­pec­ted encoun­ters with one ano­ther and audien­ce, allo­wing the spa­ce, public, and pre­sent to mer­ge into the work, whilst staying con­nec­ted to a cho­re­o­grap­hic impul­se which links us. Our per­for­man­ce ena­bles the work accu­mu­la­ting in the Tate to reso­na­te in public space.”

The per­for­man­ce will trans­form through a series of three shows star­ting at the Tate south tanks on the 1st of August at 3pm, flooding to Regents park on the 9th of August at 4pm, and then on to Bethnal Green Gardens on the 17th of August.

These per­for­men­ces were com­mis­si­o­ned by London based artist Oscar Murillo and Lydia will be col­la­bo­ra­ting with inter­na­ti­o­nal per­for­man­ce artists Stefa Govaert, Nabil Ennassouh, Castélie Yalombo Lilonge, Mate Jonjic, Estefanía Álvarez Ramírez, Alphonse Eklou, Ching Shu Huang and Nathan Feliot.

Picture: per­for­man­ce during the expo​‘Echoing Spirits’ by Oscar Murillo in Wiels, Brussels (2024)