Rise 2024: Forged

FORGED (in the tender heat of your embrace)

Laura Fisher

FORGED is one durational performance split into 4 chapters:

Sat 25 May

11.00am – Part 1: To Hold with Guest Audio Description from Lynsey Gilmour

12.30pm – Part 2: To Lean with Guest Audio Description from Lynsey Gilmour    

2.00pm – Part 3: To Listen with Guest Audio Description from Ruby Worth

3.30pm – Part 4: To Trust with Guest Audio Description from Ruby Worth

Moray Art Centre

Pay What You Can (Suggested price bands: £8-12, £13-16 or £17-20)

Age: 8+ (guideline)

Let me take your weight ~ can I lean on you today? ~ is that okay?



FORGED (in the tender heat of your embrace) is a durational performance installation for gallery spaces and a temporary site for collective rest which holds the live archive of an ongoing choreographic collaboration between artist Laura Fisher and seven sheets of copper metal. Drawing parallels between the material properties of the sheet metal and the artist’s body which experiences chronic pain, the collaboration utilises body heat to create an intimate relationship of interdependency.

Through cycles of moving and resting together, body and metal shift in supportive relation to one another from which sculptural forms gradually emerge and change.The search for a shared movement language between material and human is echoed in the integration of live audio description by guest artists - whose words, observations and narration become a third dancer in the performance.

An evolving archive, FORGED responds to each new site it is presented within, working with local guest artist to create a new interpretation of the Audio Description each time, adding to the archive of voices, bodies and perspectives that make up the work. At RISE, Laura welcomes guest AD from local guest artist (TBA).

close your eyes ~ rest your head ~ lay your tired body down

Within a soft sculptural environment designed by Zephyr Liddell, audiences are given permission to rest and drift between the senses. Disrupting sight as the dominant sensory engagement within gallery spaces, FORGED invites tactile interactions between material and bodies to consider the complicated relationship around care, power, illness and intimacy that often exists for disabled people.

Access notes | Performance: The performance creatively integrates audio description, which is delivered live and amplified in the space. Audience can come and go, or move around as they need.There is a range of different seating options for audience, including mats, cushions, bean bags, chairs, benches and stools, plus standing space.Access notes | Installation: The Audio Archive & Audio Descriptions of the Installation space are available on MP3 players. Visitors can also bring their smartphone and headphones to access the audio.

Laura Fisher (she/they) is a disabled dance artist and performance maker working at the intersections of dance, sculpture, participatory practice and live art. Often working site specifically or responsively, Laura’s performance work makes gentle observations and interventions to site through artistic encounters that seek to shift the social choreography of a space. Beginning from their own embodied relationship to time, space, place and relationally, Laura's practice is inherently collaborative and rooted within queer and crip dramaturgy and aesthetics.

Drawing on definitions of ecology that de-centre the human, they regularly collaborate with materials as a practice of questioning human relations to materials and our perceptions of their value, away from that of commodities and towards their own artistic agency.

Zephyr Liddell is an artist and designer who works with costume, textiles and fashion in live performance. Zephyr has worked with numerous companies and independent directors including Scottish Dance Theatre, Mele Broomes, Al Seed, Farah Saleh. Recently Zephyr has been working with Citizens Theatre, Laura Fisher & Bassline Circus.

This space is limited for this show so please book early.

Suggested 8+ (made for adult audiences but no adult themes- kids are welcome with a supervision)