PERFORMANCE: Linder: The Darktown Cakewalk, Celebrated House of Fame
VENUE: Chisenhale Gallery, 64 Chisenhale Road, London, E3 5QZ
DATE: 10 July, 2010
TIME: 12.00pm – 01.00am
Chisenhale Gallery presents The Darktown Cakewalk: Celebrated from the House of FAME, a thirteen-hour performance event by artist and musician Linder in collaboration with musician Stuart McCallum (of The Cinematic Orchestra), fashion designer Richard Nicholl (also Creative Director, Cerruti) and dancers and musicians from varied traditions and disciplines. The Darktown Cakewalk is produced in collaboration with Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow and supported by Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2010.
The Darktown Cakewalk is an epic invocation of glamour and fantastical pageantry. Witch trials and beauty queens, ragtime and Euro Pop merge to enfold the viewer in a secret history of prejudice and dissent. The thirteen-hour performance will begin at noon and be divided into two six-hour sections (‘masque’ and ‘anti-masque’) with a thirteenth hour, traditionally the witching hour, between midnight and 1.00am. The audience will intermingle with the performers and will be able to come and go over the 13 hours as they wish.
Over the last three decades Linder has consistently questioned roles of gender identity and commodification in society. Part of the late 1970s and early 1980s Manchester punk and post punk scenes, she has been described as a ‘post punk feminist crusader’, and as a ‘corrective’ to punk which – even in its anti-establishment, popularist posturing – still spoke primarily to (and from the perspective of) young men. Best known for her photomontages, such as her artwork on the cover of the 1977 Buzzcocks single, ‘Orgasm Addict’ (now in the collection of Tate Modern), the narrative, structure and casting of this performance are based on a range of collaged material and ideas. The Darktown Cakewalk is a development of recent performances at Tate St. Ives and The Arches / Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2010.
CHISENHALE Gallery
64 Chisenhale Road, London, E3 5QZ
+ 44 (0)20 8981 4518
www.chisenhale.org.uk
Opening hours
Wednesday to Sunday 1 – 6pm