Dear reader,

This portfolio consists of a website, an audio catalogue and this curators note.
When I speak of curator, I refer to the researcher who brings this portfolio into being.

This portfolio acts as a creative documentation for the 2020 iteration of Dark Festival. Dark Festival was a 2.5 hour experience of performance works experienced under the condition of darkness. Darkness for everyone - curators, documenters, performers, sound technicians and audience.

Through this portfolio I practice my research into surrender. It is an experimentation with agency.In this case, the portfolio, does not feature my voice as a singular entity or author of the festival. But instead places it in negotiation with the experiences gathered from audience, performers and documenters.It surrenders to a negotiation between these voices. Not only does this allow something else to appear, it also creates agency between the voices included in this documentation. Additionally agency is played with by not offering too much information, describing or explaining but by giving space to imagine.

In line with the research:
- some things might remain subtle and won't be loud enough to meet the spectator
- there will be an underlining notion of returning to (insistence, repetition)


This portfolio will not explain, therefore the viewer will have to let go of any expectation they might have about the kind of information they receive.

to not telling you everything

to not describing

to mess

to not being exactly in place

to not being 100%perfect

to trusting the other

to not having the documentation exactly how I would like it

to insisting that it will be like this

to not knowing that this will not bring the affective qualities that I originally experienced

to there being a form but there not being a consistent use of form

to giving value to non-linearity

to trying to give you your own journey through this

to losing my voice, finding my voice and merging my voice with all the other voices

to it not always being fully visible
to it being quiet
to it not being enough
to feeling lost
to the boundaries and the edges

to letting go of what it originally was and finding something new

to it not doing what I want it to do

to understanding that this might not be understandable

to knowing that you will never know

to not really knowing that

to not knowing how you will look

to not knowing if all the sound will work

to not knowing if that will really give you a good enough idea anyway

to adjusting my thinking through the voice of others

to repeating myself
to not being clear enough
to saying it again
to being too minimal
to not using enough materials
to not knowing if this is a good idea
to not being good at editing audio
to thinking there is a good and a bad
to insisting
to being passive, then active, then passive and softening and listening
to spending time with
to not moving on
to being too vague

The audio catalogue will take you through an auditory experience of the event. The website shares a visual representation taken from the experience of spectators and documenters.

I want to note that Dark Festival had at its core the following principles:
- A value for taking time, being with
- The importance of establishing a space where artists could experiment with their practice, and take a risk during COVID-19 times. When currently this feels somewhat limited
- A value for subtle nuanced work, for staying with that and insisting upon it
- Curiosity and wish to immerse the spectator within the work, and gather from this their personal experience


The works selected were a mix of works which would encounter restrictions, changes or loss as part of being performed in the dark. Sitting next to those which as it materialised were really made to be encountered through the condition of darkness. For example the live performance works in comparison to the audio works (one of which was originally a video work) - had different stakes for the artists. In either instance, both types of work encountered surrender somehow, whether this was from the side of the artist performing or through what the state they evoked in the audience member.