Is this the first major artis­tic response to life under the pandemic?

Man­ches­ter Inter­na­tion­al Fes­ti­val (MIF), one of the most excit­ing and orig­i­nal artist-led fes­ti­vals around, is back again this year from 1 – 18 July with a strong show­case of col­lab­o­ra­tions across artis­tic medi­ums. Staged every two years in venues across Greater Man­ches­ter, the MIF cura­to­r­i­al team take on the man­tle of com­mis­sion­ing inno­v­a­tive and diverse work by world-renowned artists. Names have includ­ed: Björk to Philip Glass; David Lynch to Thomas Oster­meier; Yoko Ono to Mari­na Abramović; and Wayne McGre­gor to Zaha Hadid Architects.

MIF is get­ting a new year-round home in the com­ing years: The Fac­to­ry, a major new arts space that’s cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion in the heart of the city. The Fac­to­ry isn’t due for com­ple­tion until 2022, but this extra­or­di­nary new space presents its first work dur­ing MIF21: Arca­dia, a site-spe­cif­ic instal­la­tion cre­at­ed espe­cial­ly for the con­struc­tion site by direc­tor Deb­o­rah Warn­er. It fea­tures record­ed con­tri­bu­tions from lead­ing actors and musi­cians includ­ing Simon Rus­sell Beale, Rox­Xxan, Jane Hor­rocks, Bri­an Cox, Lioness, David Thewlis, and many oth­ers and runs through the night on Sat­ur­day 10 July.

As part of this year’s pro­gramme, six crit­i­cal­ly-acclaimed prac­ti­tion­ers have formed a col­lab­o­ra­tive hybrid film titled All of This Unre­al Time, which will pre­mière as an immer­sive sur­round sound instal­la­tion at Man­ches­ter Cen­tral between 1 and 4 July. Max Porter’s lyri­cal writ­ing is fused with the cere­bral, genre-bust­ing sound of Gram­my-nom­i­nat­ed Jon Hop­kins and twins Aaron and Bryce Dess­ner, who come togeth­er to explore how lan­guage is trans­formed when it’s exter­nalised and performed.

Porter him­self describes All of This Unre­al Time as, ​“a quite dif­fer­ent, quite incred­i­ble poem-film-essay-song”, which fol­lows a man walk­ing through an aban­doned indus­tri­al land­scape and his sub­se­quent jour­ney to self­hood. Read­ings by Cil­lian Mur­phy heav­i­ly informed Porter’s writ­ing, shift­ing the pat­terns of the piece to elu­ci­date the dif­fer­ence between how lan­guage sounds in one’s head ver­sus how it’s performed.

Veer­ing between authen­tic­i­ty and sur­re­al­ism, direc­tor Aoife McArdle’s imag­i­na­tive visu­als work togeth­er with Murphy’s per­for­mance to con­struct an inti­mate and con­fes­sion­al tone that is jux­ta­posed with moments of anger and frus­tra­tion. This can­did explo­ration of a man’s fail­ings with­in the rainy, emp­ty streets of Lon­don in lock­down, becomes a spa­tial expe­ri­ence – a unique hybrid of dif­fer­ent artforms.

Mean­while, Post­cards from Now marks anoth­er riv­et­ing project which is a response to the pur­ga­to­r­i­al sta­sis engi­neered by the pan­dem­ic. Com­prised of dance chore­og­ra­phy, visu­al art, music, per­for­mance and ani­ma­tion, the work comes from sev­er­al dis­tinct per­spec­tives com­mis­sioned at the height of glob­al lock­down, and ulti­mate­ly asks the ques­tion that’s been in our col­lec­tive con­scious­ness: what hap­pens next?

Col­lab­o­ra­tions between lead­ing artists Akram Khan and Naa­man Azhari, Lucin­da Childs and (LA)HORDE Col­lec­tive, as well as films by Lola Arias and Ibrahim Maham explore notions of com­mu­ni­ty, patri­archy and pow­er through mov­ing image.

Khan’s pro­found­ly inno­v­a­tive sto­ry­telling as a dance artist is trans­lat­ed into live action footage, and then hand-drawn in Azhari’s roto­scope ani­ma­tion style. Breath­less Pup­pets chron­i­cles how a time of tragedy and iso­la­tion allowed the rekin­dling of a friend­ship that had been forced apart due to cul­tur­al expec­ta­tions and the dis­ap­proval of fathers. Khan and Azhar’s medi­ums con­verge in the mak­ing of the project, where, ​“life is nev­er clear, you recog­nise some parts of life, you think you are in con­trol of some parts of life and real­ly, you are not.”

Down­load and Run Zoom: Build­ing Momen­tum in Lock­down is a play­ful short film that depicts the phe­nom­e­non of ​‘post-inter­net dance’ through an ongo­ing dig­i­tal col­lab­o­ra­tion between chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Lucin­da Childs and (LA)HORDE col­lec­tive (direc­tors of Bal­let nation­al de Mar­seille). Explor­ing the trans­for­ma­tion of cre­ative work­flows through the dis­tances enforced by the pan­dem­ic, unex­pect­ed yet relat­able pos­si­bil­i­ties come to the surface.

The work of Argen­tin­ian direc­tor Lola Arias lies at the over­lap between the fic­tion­al and the real. Her lat­est film, Far Away from Rus­sia, brings to light the depri­va­tion of the elderly’s right to a social and polit­i­cal life, while look­ing at the entrap­ment and depen­dence brought on by the pan­dem­ic. The dai­ly rou­tine of an elder­ly per­son and their car­er becomes a focal point, chart­ing an unfore­seen dis­play of love and resis­tance: ​“Who is real­ly tak­ing care of whom?”

Final­ly, estab­lish­ing a rela­tion­ship between old air­planes and mod­ern drones, Ibrahim Mahama’s (Par­lia­ment of Ghosts, M19) Love Cam­pus ABCD, 2019 – 2021 prompts the birth of new imag­i­na­tions. This year, the artist seeks to bring forth an era of recon­cep­tu­al­is­ing life beyond the strict con­fines of the human expe­ri­ence. The film tells the sto­ry of Mahama’s pledge to cre­ate edu­ca­tion­al and cul­tur­al infra­struc­tures such as the Savan­nah Cen­tre for Con­tem­po­rary Art (SCCA), and his pledge to edu­cate and encour­age the par­tic­i­pa­tion of young peo­ple from dis­en­fran­chised com­mu­ni­ties in Tamale.

Tick­ets for All of this Unre­al Time: mif​.co​.uk/​w​h​a​t​s​-​o​n​/​a​l​l​-​o​f​-​t​h​i​s​-​u​n​r​e​a​l​-time

Tick­ets for Post­cards from Now (Free): mif​.co​.uk/​w​h​a​t​s​-​o​n​/​p​o​s​t​c​a​r​d​s​-​f​r​o​m-now

Find a com­pre­hen­sive list of MIF21 events and more infor­ma­tion on book­ings at: mif​.co​.uk/​w​h​a​ts-on

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