F O L L Y (2015)
1. lack of good sense; foolishness.
2. a costly ornamental building with no practical purpose
3. a cabaret-style performance, typically with female performers
F O L L Y was commissioned by Lisa Alexander for Love Letters to a (Post-) Europe (2015), a two-day festival at BIOS, Athens, held in the context of a rapidly changing Europe.
The idea for the event stemmed from an urge to curate a process of coming together and collective witness in the context of Europe at that moment and with particular reference to Greece. Box office proceeds were divided between the Athens-based charity Solidarity for All and the venue. Athens-based artists hosted visiting artists, who travelled of their own volition.
F O L L Y is a short live performance accompanying a video of Bowie performing Heroes at a concert in post-reunited Berlin, having written the song when he had a studio beside the Wall in 1977. It is on the one hand an absurd attempt to share a stage with Bowie and on the other, an attempt to seek a thread between audiences in live and recorded time, in a moment of company across space and time. In that sense, it was an attempt at transmitting solidarity, however brief.
Participating artists: Kate Adams (UK), Demosthenes Agrafiotis(GR), Brian Catling (UK), cris cheek (UK), Robin Deacon (UK/USA), Vassiliki Dimou (GR), Tim Etchells (UK), Alec Finlay (UK), Matthew Goulish (USA), Guy Harries (UK), Steven C Harvey (UK), Catherine Hoffmann (UK), Wendy Houstoun (UK),Mikhail Karikis (GR/UK), Brian Lobel (USA/UK), Claire MacDonald (UK), Georgios Makkas (GR), Ivana Müller (HR/FR), Mariela Nestora (GR), Kira O’Reilly (IE/UK),Florence Peake (UK), Erica Scourti (UK/GR), Maria Sideri (GR), Anna Sherbany (UK), Jungmin Song (KR), Yoko Tawada (JP/DE), Nikki Tomlinson (UK)
FOLLY was also performed as part of TO YOU TO YOU TO YOU (2018) curated by Lisa Alexander at Toynbee Studios.
Choreography & performance : Nikki Tomlinson
Music : “Heroes” by David Bowie, written by David Bowie and Brian Eno
Images : Nikki Tomlinson, photos by Eftychia Vlachou and StudioMaba