“Tears in Rain” was a day-long event for Plymouth Art Weekender 2017, that wove together a range of practices by six artists whose work uses performance, alongside moving image and installation. The program mixed durational work with timed actions, and included new works and works adapted to suit the particular situation.

Mark Leahy performed a new work, “threaded insert” where he received, via headphones, a series of instructions randomly selected from a database of audio files. The content derives from instructions for “proper” speech and rules for public behavior. He performed the piece three times, starting from a different point in the building each time, mapping a different course in response. The sense was of the performer being guided by an outside force, being at the mercy of random instructions.

Katrina Brown and Minou Polleros presented “Auditorium Quietly Shifts,” a movement duet that worked in response to perceived qualities and received impulses within and of the building. Their actions were scored and their performance was shaped by a sense of material and phenomenal aspects of the place. Both performers work with choreography, and with drawing, and this sense of operating across disciplines connected to the multidisciplinary sense of this project.

Marcy Saude used the conventions of the theatre, as a site for an audience to pay attention, to present a re-performance of Hollis Frampton’s “A Lecture,” a 16mm projector performance-lecture about the nature of cinema. The darkened theatre space made it very appropriate for Saude’s interest in the intersection of performance, lectures, and cinema, and the title of the project “Tears in Rain” with its reference to cinematic history and memory supported this re-performance.

Steven Paige’s lecture-performance “Que(e)ery in the Archive” used edited moving image material gathered during a research residency in the US Library of Congress. Paige read a complex layered text over the projection that referred to the policing and disciplining of the body in sport and the military, and considered the citizen’s body as subject to the state. In particular, queer readings of the archive material were encouraged by the relationship between text and image.

Mo Bottomley presented an installation “Gentleman Garden” which populated the stage area with sculpturally modified men’s underwear. He performed a number of Dada or Punk inspired pieces as solos, and played in the band, The Spoils Collective, as the closing element of the day’s events.