You Are There And Not There is an inter-disciplinary project that combines visual art, music and performance. It is an exploration into what it means to be seen and unseen and how we may choose to move in the world, with some of us existing somewhere in-between imminence and transcendence. This middle state reminds us that our existence is a participation in both, a reminder of our constant existential metamorphism and our relation to reality and selfhood. Using recordings from short interviews with members of the public in Peckham on the High Street Street, visual art and drawings inspired from those interactions and a performance exploring anonymity. This project touches on ideas of otherness, recognition, existentialism and the way our history informs our present, as one of the artists’ participants had said in response: “Sometimes you are there and not there.”

VISUAL ART

Fabric Hangings [ 1.5m x 3m ]

3 digital drawings by Chisara Agor printed on organic cotton hang from the ceiling, creating a backdrop for both the sound and performance piece, adorned with mirrors. Linking together images created by the artist and quotes taken from the interviewees, the fabric pieces intend to create connections between the physical and the surreal. Illustrating how humans can find themselves at once a person in a space and reflection of someone else’s or societies desires.

SOUND AND PERFORMANCE

Sound piece [6 mins]

Created from interviews taken place one day in March 2019 Chisara Agor asks members of the public on Peckham High Street about one point in their lives where they felt Seen and Unseen. The answers ranging from the everyday city experience to notions of race, class and metaphysics sit within a musical pallet that uses these voices as instruments of their own right. Listen below.

Anonymous Live music Performance piece [ 20 mins ]

A live reimagined performance of Chisara’s Anonymous a track made through using the recorded elements from the audio piece You Are There And Not There. Live instrumentation, sampling of field recordings, looping and vocal melodies the piece is built and deconstructed in front of a live audience.

FILM / MOVING IMAGE / COSTUME

Artist Film

An experimental short directed and performed by Chisara Agor that seeks to create a physical manifestation of the themes explored in You Are There […] By undergoing mask making and wearing the artist intends to explore ideas of ancestral recall through Afrodiasporic pre-colonial religions and gender fluid/ non-binary performance art through movement, film and poetry.

Performance photos by Seb JJ Peters