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Darragh McLoughlin

World-renowned Irish performer and circus artist Darragh McLoughlin presents a double bill! With Stickman and The Fulfillment, he turns all expectations of circus and storytelling on their head and paints a portrait of the shared moment in the theater space.

Stickman

Stickman is a performance which features a man, a stick and a TV.

The man balances the stick on various parts of his body, thereby setting himself and the stick in motion.

If the man has an agenda, he keeps it to himself.

The stick gets moved around and balanced by the man seeming to not have much to say.

The TV lurks in the background and throughout the performance puts titles on whatever the man and the stick are doing; thus attempting to dictate what the audience see.

All the while the audience watches and tries to keep up with the ever changing rules of play.

Then the TV titles them. ‘WATCHERS’.

Stickman is an exploration of our relationships with meaning, empathy and agency.

“The phantasmagoric movements created by each meticulously calculated move and the deep exploration of each stick elicited occasional voices of pure “wow” and “wow” from the audience. It was leaking.” Mayu Yoshihira (Daily Journal Editorial Department)
“I watched the whole thing unfold with excitement. That’s the only rule of the space magic called theater.” Sae Shimaizawa (Daily Journal Editorial Department)

 

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The Fulfillment

To fulfill: (verb)

1.    achieve or realize (something desired, promised, or predicted).

2.    carry out (a duty or role) as required, promised, or expected.

The Fulfillment is a modular, audience-driven performance built around a simple mechanic: an empty frame and a title. What happens next is determined by those present, and gradually as the fulfilled frames accumulate, an unpredictable live exhibition emerges, shaped entirely by those present.

Each performance becomes a portrait of our collective moment.

Darragh McLoughlin was born in 1987 in Ireland as youngest of three siblings and son of two professional chefs. In 2006 he moved to Berlin to attend the Jonglier Katakomben School of Juggling. In 2008, he attended the Academy for Circus and Performance Art and completed his education with a bachelor degree in Circus Arts. In 2014, he was selected as a Circus Next laureate with Fragments of a Mind and has since created several acclaimed works: The Whistle, Stickman and For as Long as We’re Here. Besides his performance work he has created conceptual artwork series: The Fulfillment, Stories of Falling Objects, Variations of Stickman and WATCHERS.

Darragh teaches at different professional institutions around Europe: FLIC Scuola di Circo, ACAPA, Die Etage, CODARTS and Les Beaux Arts, HMDK Stuttgart.

Girevik

In Girevik, a man embarks on a physical exchange with iron weights.

Responding to the objects’ proposals requires him to push his body to the edge of its physical abilities. The artist travels through a territory defined by obstacles, constantly at the risk of reaching a dead end. Confronted with his vulnerability, he labors to keep the cast-iron bodies moving. Precisely, gently, sincerely, he rearranges the heavy piles again and again. His fragile play interlaces stillness with collapse and order with chaos. The result is a slowly unfolding composition, full of noise, sweat, and tangible tension built through the artist’s physical and emotional effort.

Girevik muscles in on the domain of the traditional “strongman “archetype, and wrestles it to submission. Deconstructed, strength is unburdened of stereotypes. This work explores what is strong, and what strong is, in our nature, and explores the subtleties, revealing emotional, intellectual, and psychological dimensions.

The piece challenges the historically hyper-masculine aura around the kettlebell and seeks an alternative poetics of labor.

Without language