Review: FREEDOM, Chisenhale Dance Space

The irony is not lost on the Camden Fringe audience at Chisenhale Dance Space, in the 32 degree heat, as our UK government’s loud mobile alerts terrify us with belated warnings about the burning land. With reflections on climate, land and soil – where it forces us to go and where we belong, FREEDOM is a participatory visual arts exhibition and performance by Surya Chandra for Unity Arts Collective. This exhibition boasts artwork co-created by drawing together a core ensemble and communities to make work that transcends linguistic and cultural barriers. It does this well and encourages an audience to immerse themselves in a visual arts experience.

There’s an invitation to interact with a selection of curated puppets, sculpture and visual art, where sensory, immersive sounds unconsciously prompt you to move differently around the space. The experience is non verbal and allows an audience to discover at their own pace. Through a subtle, challenging examination of the refugee and displaced experience, FREEDOM explores hope, resilience, identity and transformation before inviting an audience to ask questions about life, death and their own freedoms. There are three main layers: the audience makes their own discovery as the performance slowly moves around them; the performance then unfolds and there is time to listen and witness; then, finally the audience actively becomes part of the experience to collectively re-trace the journeys together. This last layer gives an opportunity to understand the issue sensorily by becoming active in the topic.

Experimental music by Jesu Piceno provides a physical and sensory soundscape using live instruments, electronic sound and recorded voice to hold the sonic space. It successfully adds another sensory layer for an audience wishing to navigate a live experience away from the comfort of their darkened seats.

Facts and figures are printed out on A4 pages and taped to the floors, mapping out a migrant experience. Again, Subhadip Mulcherjee’s meticulous research is curated by an invited reading choice – there is no lecture here.

Chandra, the director and performer, is trained in Hindustani classical music and his musicality is successfully utilised in movement by weaving classic threads with European theatre practice. We glimpse visual moments of joy as he dances in puppet character, heightened by red light and overhead projections of swirling movement facilitated by Ester Ricci .Both Chandra and puppeteer James Frost move with slow and purposeful grace. This gentle, graceful movement is beautiful as birds fly past us and sharks swim at our feet, reminding us of the strong connections with nature and of human contact with wild, living creatures.

These puppets are all made out of cardboard and other repurposed materials, offering affordable making for everyone. The human puppets have been crafted collaboratively in workshops by refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, students, artists, and local community members. The audience can go all tactile to manipulate them as part of the exhibition and performance. A feeling that several hands have crafted the toes and the fingers arises, giving an imagined sense that there are many walking with us in this space.

A post-event walk to Mile End tube station provoked questions about FREEDOM and how active engagement challenges an audience to become involved. My colleague reflected on how the cardboard puppets speak of the disposability of humans. Unity Arts Collective closes the event with a request to share one written, factual reality from the exhibition that stuck in your memory. Both of us heard that 90% of refugee children suffer from PTSD. It stays with you. Tonight was a hot sweaty communion between the audience and the art, transcending barriers and it was lowkey brilliant. 

Project Director: Surya Chandra
Researcher: Subhadip Mukherjee
Visual Artist & Puppeteer: James Frost
Multidisciplinary Sound Artist : Jesu Piceno, Ester Ricci
Performer: Surya Chandra
Videographer: Nidal Nasir
Produced by Unity Arts Collective

This event has now concluded its run as part of Camden Fringe.

Hosted at the University of Kent, it showcases work created collaboratively by refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, students, artists, and local community members. Read more below.