Live at Fierce Start Party

Fierce is an internationally renowned performance festival shaped by the West Midlands. For the last decade Fierce has built its reputation with a combination of high-risk transgressive performance (e.g. the work of body-based artists like Franko B., Ron Athey and Kira O’Reilly in the late nineties and early noughties) and eye-catching interventions in the public realm by the likes of Belgian artist Benjamin Verdonk’s (The Great Swallow, 2005) and Joshua Soafer (Name in Lights, 2007).

Fierce returns with a unique producing and curatorial model developed by its recently appointed joint artistic directors Laura McDermott and Harun Morrison. Renouncing the typical practice of drawing together pre-made works, more likely than not having featured in another festival, all the works here will be either new projects or completely reworked for a Birmingham setting.

Strikingly, the artistic-directors do not know the content of the next festival, due to commence in February 2011. Over the next ten months audiences will be able to follow the development of these projects as they emerge in response to a series of visits to the city. The fruition of these journeys will culminate in the festival.

The Fierce Start Party in the A.E. Harris warehouse space is an opportunity to be follow the arc of these nascent artworks from the beginning. Each participating artist has been invited to have a presence, this may take the form of an artwork, the artist physically being there or a message in lieu of them.

Nicole Carlt

Laura McDermott tells us a little about the ideas behind the launch party