I make live art and performance from the position of an infiltrated outsider: foreign, but able to 'pass'; pushing against heteronormativity with my queerness, but identifying as male; and positioned somewhere between the fringes of academia and the art scene.
Hybridity and otherness are cornerstones to my work, which brings together different ideas, mediums and vocabularies in unexpected combinations, and is more interested in asking questions than making statements. My practice is process-led, socially-engaged and driven by Queer politics. It is highly context-sensitive, frequently responding to a specific time or place, and aspiring to capture the zeitgeist or mood of the times.
I stand by the conviction that performance can really do something. I believe the eloquence of its actions can go beyond rational perception; that its porous and refractive qualities are open and accessible to a broad audience; that it generates shared experiences that are visceral, conceptual, and emotional; that it can open up a charged space for contemplation and action, within which transformative powers can be conjured for both audience and doer.
Hybridity and otherness are cornerstones to my work, which brings together different ideas, mediums and vocabularies in unexpected combinations, and is more interested in asking questions than making statements. My practice is process-led, socially-engaged and driven by Queer politics. It is highly context-sensitive, frequently responding to a specific time or place, and aspiring to capture the zeitgeist or mood of the times.
I stand by the conviction that performance can really do something. I believe the eloquence of its actions can go beyond rational perception; that its porous and refractive qualities are open and accessible to a broad audience; that it generates shared experiences that are visceral, conceptual, and emotional; that it can open up a charged space for contemplation and action, within which transformative powers can be conjured for both audience and doer.
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I have both a penchant for the Baroque and the Japanese aesthetic concept of 'wabi sabi'; finding beauty in the exuberantly ornate, the broken, and the incomplete. An old friend once said I like art that “shows the flaw in humanity”, and it is true that vulnerability and fragility have a way of working its way into my work. My long-standing collaborator Daisy Orton once told me I like performances like I like my sandwiches: strong flavours, a variety of textures and layers, with lashings of condiments. Yes, I like to get my hands dirty.
I take musico-visual approaches to composition, so that visual and aural elements are frequently structural anchoring points in my work. And yet, I often find myself building unrehearsable moments into my performances. This tension between the deliberately and carefully arranged, and the messy and accidental is a recurring aesthetic motif in my work. Using totemic objects and materials, I am particularly drawn to materiality and its visceral power. Not only can it reveal the body as an ever-mutating site upon which larger forces act, but it can offer way to go beyond discursive language. And yet, language and work-play, often in the shape of incantatory lists or litanies, are a recurring feature in my performances. |
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If I am drawn to performance as a medium, it's due to its inherent liveness, the opportunities it offers for exchange, and the ways it can serve as a vehicle to interrogate and trouble meaning-making processes. My work feels most at home situated in the here-and-now. Flirting with risk, it dances on the knife-edge between the planned and the spontaneous, between me as an artist and the audience, between structure and chaos, between what is there in the work and what the audience bring to it. My work aspires to a level of high porosity, leaving plenty of room and ways in for the audience, so that their engagement is fundamentally necessary for the work's completion.
My practice tackles complex topics in ways that go from the poetic to the carnivalesque, from the apotheotic to the derisive, from the holy to the profane. This playfulness, and a knowing way of raising challenging questions, are some of the ways my Queer sensibility comes through in my work. I aspire to be a beautifully glorious little stone in your shoe.
In 2005 I founded Accidental Collective with Daisy Orton. We devise performances using bricolage approaches, subverting familiar frameworks and having a responsive relationship to sites, contexts, and audiences. Our aesthetics lean towards the hand crafted and the lo-fi. Our work is generous, participatory and visually striking - it has a big heart and a strong mind. You can read about our practice here, and view our past work here.
My practice tackles complex topics in ways that go from the poetic to the carnivalesque, from the apotheotic to the derisive, from the holy to the profane. This playfulness, and a knowing way of raising challenging questions, are some of the ways my Queer sensibility comes through in my work. I aspire to be a beautifully glorious little stone in your shoe.
In 2005 I founded Accidental Collective with Daisy Orton. We devise performances using bricolage approaches, subverting familiar frameworks and having a responsive relationship to sites, contexts, and audiences. Our aesthetics lean towards the hand crafted and the lo-fi. Our work is generous, participatory and visually striking - it has a big heart and a strong mind. You can read about our practice here, and view our past work here.
ALL WITHIN A COLLAPSING BUILDING:
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BARLOVENTO y SOTAVENTO
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20x20 (una de cal x una de arena)
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ANGELUS: angels de Beers
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YES NO BLACK WHITE
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Bride of Brexit
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UNNEGATIVE
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No More These Sounds
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"It's a pleasure working with Pablo. He throws himself into the work, does research,
and performs with dedication, intensity, and a gusto for the creative process."
Richard Schechner, East Coast Artists Director
"An intimate artist with a powerful stage presence,
Pablo left a very large audience feeling exhilarated and politically mobilised."
Diana Georgiou, Co-director at CUNTemporary
"Pablo epitomises the reasons I curate Live Art. Energetic and inventive, he's proved on more than one occasion to be extremely professional and capable of dealing with challenging situations and sensitive topics with wit, precision, care and creativity."
Giulia Casalini
Founder and curator at Archivio Queer Italia
/ Teoremi Performance Festival / Deep Trash
and performs with dedication, intensity, and a gusto for the creative process."
Richard Schechner, East Coast Artists Director
"An intimate artist with a powerful stage presence,
Pablo left a very large audience feeling exhilarated and politically mobilised."
Diana Georgiou, Co-director at CUNTemporary
"Pablo epitomises the reasons I curate Live Art. Energetic and inventive, he's proved on more than one occasion to be extremely professional and capable of dealing with challenging situations and sensitive topics with wit, precision, care and creativity."
Giulia Casalini
Founder and curator at Archivio Queer Italia
/ Teoremi Performance Festival / Deep Trash
COLLABORATIONS
