AGENDA!

AGENDA

18.05.24

7 pm-11 pm

105-109 French St, G40 4EH

WILLIAM JOYS

STEPHANIE BLACK-DANIELS

TAMIR AMAR PETTER

LEWIS PROSSER

MUSIC FROM DIRT BROOKS

William Joys returns to Glasgow to set the Agenda in Strange Field’s spectacular and absurdist opening event.

Strange Field launches its first major exhibition and event programme for 2024-25 with an evening of performance co-curated by artist William Joys and Strange Field Programme Director, Jenny Tipton. For AGENDA, William Joys will be presenting The Actress Part 1: An Introduction to the Method and Part 2: Wilful Pleasure. Taking his cue from the theatre of Bette Bourne and the Bloo Lips and influences drawn from the teachings and writings of the mother of the acting method, Stella Adler; England’s stately homo Quentin Crisp; the histrionic plays of Maxwell Anderson; Machiavellian and Marxian analysis; and, of course, Oscar Wilde. Joys’ work examines notions of modesty and majesty, authority and teaching, through hierarchies and matriarchy.

Joys graduated with a Master's from Glasgow School of Art in 2018, and since then has been an actress based in London, performing in several major events both as a solo artist and as half of the duo Sartre25 with Bernard Walsh. Through channeling characters, he arouses suspicion around theatre’s, and the arts in general’s, claim for authenticity in favor of ‘artificial’ inI. He performs through layers of subterfuge, and in his performance, he becomes an object, that embodies the prop, the stage, and the costume, to promote the art of acting.

Joining Joys will be  Absurdist basketmaker Lewis Prosser, now based in Penarth, Wales, who trained as a Printmaker at the Glasgow School of Art before teaching himself straw craft and willow basketry. His work uses basket making and performance to celebrate ideas of ritual, heritage, and labor in the UK. At Agenda, Prosser will be working with themes of intoxication, disguise, and disruption in an improvised score using wearable wicker

Three Glasgow-based artists also join Joys; Stephanie Black-Daniels is a visual artist and facilitator, working predominantly with performance within contemporary art. Stephanie is a master's graduate from the performance pathway at Glasgow School of Art’s MLitt Fine Art Practice program and Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Black-Daniels presents a previous internationally toured work, EXTENSIONS. The work has been performed at festivals worldwide, from Rapid Pulse in Chicago to Month of Performance Art in Berlin, CREATurE Live Art in Lithuania, and Gallery 3H+K in Pori, Finland. EXTENSIONS has been redeveloped, delving deeper into Black-Daniels' exploration of matrescence, gender, and sexuality. Using a headpiece made of ribbon, intertwined with digitally printed motifs from her current performance scores, she will perform acts of pulling, binding, holding, and releasing. Conformity, emotion, and ritual will be evoked using this head prop, which gradually becomes a willing partner in the relationship between body and extension.

Tamir Amar Pettet is a British Moroccan visual artist, performer, and writer, working with ideas surrounding the intersections of identity, youth, and the internet. Tamir graduated from Goldsmiths with a degree in anthropology and visual practice before moving to Glasgow to attend Glasgow School of Art. Their performance at Agenda will explore childhood nostalgia with handmade props and an ode to the Windows operating systems and the chat rooms of the virtual world from 2006, in a damning cyber court case about the matter of a forgotten password.

Music and sound is provided by artist Dirt Brooks.

The event takes place on the ground floor of our venue at 105-109 French Street. The venue is wheelchair accessible, but please note we currently do not have a fully wheelchair-accessible bathroom. The event will be a mixture of seating and standing. A bar with refreshments will be available and the event is unticketed (with a capacity of 165), so please arrive early to guarantee entry.

Doors open at 7 pm, with performances starting at 8 pm.

This event is supported by The National Lottery through Creative Scotland.