Urban re:passages

Beatrice Jarvis 

Practice Overview.

Beatrice is an urban space creative facilitator, performer, facilitator, choreographer and researcher. She utilizes key concepts of choreography and visual arts methodologies with the intention to develop, original doctoral research on the connections between choreography, dance and urban cultures developing heightened socio-cultural responses to the urban realm. Her practice merges essential dance techniques of somatic practice in a sociological framework of critical perspectives, cultivating a unique stance point to practice based research and the role of the body as archive and conduit in society. Beatrice is currently a visiting lecturer at various dance, art and architecture departments in London and wider afield in Europe (LSBU & AAIS, The Bucharest National University of Arts) developing a platform for the conceptual and physical integration of dance, sociology and choreography leading to practical social creative implementation and curation. Beatrice is keen to create platforms social interaction using urban wastelands, conflict zones and areas of social and cultural transformation and reflections on urban habitation as a creative resource. Beatrice received distinction for her MA in Photography and Urban Cultures affiliated by Arts and Humanities Research Council within the Department of Visual Sociology at, Goldsmiths and now continues with her PhD at Kingston University within the Architecture department; fusing a strong mixture of practice, research, experimentation and exploration to create a unique approach to urban socio-choreographic research. Her PhD is titled: Dancing Place: Embodied urban narrative and the choreographic workshop. The Sociological Dimension of Choreography as framework for progression of social reconciliation and revisoning urban cartography

Beatrice initiated an urban forum: Urban Research Forum for performers, artists, architects, urban designers, cultural researchers, sociologists, anthropologists and all with an urban interest of the body’s relationship to place. This is conducted through workshops, performances and exhibitions. Collaboration, discourse and intellectual inquiry are seminal to her constant sense of enquiry. Her practice has been profiled within dOCUMENTA (13), (Kassel) Pina Bausch Symposium, (London), The School of Art in Bucharest and various spaces in Berlin; including VITal, C|O, and Zentrum. She has presented her research: ‘Das Duet des Leibes und der Stadt. Berlin. Verschieben Stadt’ at Annual Association of Geographers Annual Meeting: LA; exploring the position of the body as social and political archive.
Her dance research has been profiled at Urban Encounters Tate Britain 2014, Critical Costume (Helsinki 2015) The Playhouse; Derry (Present), Bauhaus-Universität; Weimar, Birkbeck College; University of London, DRFI 4th International Conference 2012; Urban Photo Fest; Irish Association of Geographers: Annual Conference 2013: National University of Ireland, Galway, Aarhus School of Architecture 2014, Bucharest School of Art, Terror and the Tour and Galway Dance Festival and most recently she was commissioned as site artist in residence of Groundwork May 2015.

Recent conferences include: http://strnrn.org/2015/02/11/cfp-new-researchers-network-second-annual-symposium-dumb-objects-spoken-for-on-archives-and-documentation and http://adapt-r.eu/creative-practice-conference-aarhus/
Her commissions include MuPA, Steven Lawrence Center and EGFK.

For further examples of current work please see the following links:

Film work https://vimeo.com/beatricejarvis
Urban Research/ Workshop templates; Selected Writing: http://issuu.com/urbanresearchforum
Documentation: http://www.blurb.com/user/bj87
City as Studio: http://urbanorganics.cultura3.net/Resources/media/promo.mov

Specific case study examples:

Lest we should forget http://www.blurb.com/b/1273324-lest-we-should-forget?ce=blurb_ew&utm_source=widget
· Northern Ireland Cartography Project: AHRC: CollectingTrails http://www.blurb.com/b/1518505-collecting-trails?ce=blurb_ew&utm_source=widget
· Heygate Estate/Elephant and Castle: http://vimeo.com/26177151 password: city http://issuu.com/urbanresearchforum/docs/towards_embodied_methodology?mode=window&viewMode=singlePage
· Deptford Study for Steven Lawrence Centre: http://issuu.com/urbanresearchforum/docs/exhibition_catalouge_practising_space/3 and http://www.practisingspace.com/events-and-exhibitions.php
· Bucharest Study for local government AHRC: Dansul Objectul din Bucuresti LaBomba http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/1015638/a8bd37a9fad73767cb13edef857dba7d

Her current research is based in  Berlin, Bucharest, Gaza and Derry ( NI). ( 2014)

For detailed a full detailed resume contact Beatrice on +44 (0) 7790 149647

Email: beatricemaryjarvis@googlemail.com

Work and Practice

‘Cities, like dreams are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.’The city street offers a myriad of inspiration. The street provides an essential communication network for all city dwellers, a place of activity or calm, a place where we are free to wander, to rush, to sit, to use and to create.

I approach my practice with the idea that art should not be restricted to a studio, and I make the majority of my work in open and public spaces. I am keen to develop means of raising key social questions related to public space use and research how space in urban contexts can be more creatively used. I explore through site performance, photography and multi disciplinary work different areas of cities in Europe.

My practice draws on anthropological field research techniques and town planning and urban surveying, then translated into a more creative artistic context. I have researched extensively to draw links and inspiration from existing observational practices. I draw strong links to early concepts associated with Louis Aragon (Paris Peasant), Walter Benjamin (The Arcades Project) and stem key ideas from the Situationists and Happenings.

My artistic practice is strongly supported by detailed research methods to ensure through contextualisation. I constantly collect recent urban material, documenting current creative responses to cities, frequently on the fringes of legality operating as urban guerrillas. I gradually realised that these practitioners had little or no academic framework for their work and that they were repeating, unselfconsciously, many of the explorations and experiments in which artists responding to the city had been engaged in since the late 18th century.

The city is the choreography of life, and it can be used as resource for artistic practice; it can form a productive and substantial input for the creative mind. The motifs of human form repeat on the streets, to be observed, interpreted, or simply left in their flux. Crescendos and diminuendos of the bustling street rise and fall with the breath of the city, a living organism which one can walk upon, in, beside and amongst.

Please see Practising Space website for project example
http://www.urbanresearchforum.com

 

Beatrice offers consultancy and workshops on a freelance basis to NGO’s, councils and local authorities. Her extensive urban research back ground fused with creative practice based research methodology provides a unique stance for effective solutions to urban infra-stucture solutions. 

 

 

Specific case study examples:

 

•       Northern Ireland Cartography Project: AHRC: CollectingTrails

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/1002909/405ee1c548a4b9718763503e118327cc

 

•       Heygate Estate/Elephant and Castle: http://vimeo.com/26177151

password: city http://issuu.com/urbanresearchforum/docs/towards_embodied_methodology?mode=window&viewMode=singlePage

 

•       Deptford Study for Steven Lawrence Centre:

http://issuu.com/urbanresearchforum/docs/exhibition_catalouge_practising_space/3

and http://www.practisingspace.com/events-and-exhibitions.php