Biography - Simon Piasecki

Educational Experience

2001 – present University of Chester
Senior Lecturer in Performance Studies and Programme Leader for BA Hons Combined Drama and Theatre Studies

2000 – 2001 University of Derby
Senior Lecturer Theatre & Performance Studies
Lectured to undergraduate students of Theatre and Performance Studies
Co-wrote and validated new BA Hons Performance Works Degree
Began research toward doctoral proposal for post-soviet collaboration as member of Center for Advanced Studio Practice in Art & Design
Facilitated the bringing over of dissident Bellarussian filmaker , Viktor Daschuk

1995 - 2000 Stafford College Curriculum Coordinator Performing Arts
Co-wrote and directed HND, ND, First Diploma Performing Arts.
Built new team and area, crossing disciplines and concentrating on contemporary and experimental forms, increasing student numbers tenfold during period of employment.
External Examiner for Open College Network, Univ, of Staffordshire
Lectured on all performance based subjects, specialising in practitioner theory, visual & semiotic form, live art and text

1990 - 1995 Burton Technical College Lecturer & Sector Leader Performing arts
Co-wrote and directed National and First Diplomas in addition to leading the A level in Theatre studies – built area with Vida Midgelow (Dance practitioner). Area constituted 40% of Art and Design Section by the time post completed.
Ran Burton Youth Theatres throughout this period.

1990 - 1992 Sutton College Part-time Lecturer
Lectured in visual communication for art and performance to Foundation, General Art and Design and Theatre students.

Recent Professional Practice
(main activities only)

Current Live Artworks

Lessons in Language 2007
A CD-Rom and Publication as a parody of the quick-learn language pack. The work documents a number of performances that deal with cultural location, prejudice, fear and located perspectives. As a whole it is a commentary on otherness and the constructs of identity. The limited edition artwork will be presented with live gallery launches and screenings.

The Nightflight Project Sept. 2006 – May 2007
A large Scale collaborative project with the artist Teddy Kiendl and produced by Germination. Nightflight deals with the spaces between cultural location. The work is a physically realised trek across a range of hills (the first being the Clwydian Range in Wales). Nightflight is a performative event that occurs in the black of night and allows its audience a meditative reflection on the themselves as self and other. It occurs along an ancient border and draws upon the syncretic derivations of identity. It is at once the flight from harm, a ritual, a conversation in no man’s land and a celebration of the other in ourselves. Nightflight will constitute a major event for Wales in May of 2007 and as part of Liverpool’s European City of Culture in 2008.

Realised Projects

A Wonderful Engine November 2005, Chester
An installation with live performance, acupuncture and sonic art, drawing on Swift’s Gullivers Travels with a particular view of the itinary contents of his pockets. The work looks at notions of cultural derivation from the artifact and the appropriation of mythology that results.

Entropic by Walt Shaw May – November 2005
Performer in this live installation collaboration with Walt Shaw, Lol Coxhill, Sophia Lycouris and Graham Foster. The work illustrates the deterioration of organised states as a scientific allegory of human socio-politics and is directed by Walt Shaw of BET4 Artists.

Mould by Mobius Dance Theatre June 2005.
Commissioned scriptwriter for this touring work of dance theatre.

Pandoras Box by Being Frank Physical Theatre June 2005
Commissioned scriptwriter and textual advisor for this touring work of dance theatre.

Mendel’s Garden 2004 Glamorgan and Chester, 2005 Melton Mowbray
A collaborative installation with the biologist and artist Walt Shaw, that explores Mendel’s laws of inheritance. The work traced the path of generations of dried peas as they were shaken to the floor in a garden of audio speakers. It was a durational exploration of objective and datative fact versus subjective qualitative truths. It was first presented to support a paper at ‘Theatres of Science’ conference in Glamorgan, 2004.

Timepoints February – September 2004 toured.
A mid-scale collaboration with Walt Shaw and a number of other artists including contemporary dancers and experimental musicians. This was a work artistically directed by Shaw and exploring the notion of the key moments of life. The work was a spontaneous result of an agreed and complex score disseminated by Shaw. The collaborating artists planned their response to the score and performed this live with Shaw to public audience. There were seven performances in all, each with Shaw and one other artist. The final work involved all of the artists.

Polarities January 2004 –Derby Dance Centre
A Bet4 Artists installation performance looking at the strictures between creativity and logic in Science and Art. Part of the Bet4 Live Arts Laboratory.

So Near Sofa (film) June 2003
Dancer and actor in this short dance for camera directed by Oliver Scott and funded by the Arts Council.

The Boxer (film) June 2003 –
Title role in this location film based on Hemingway’s tale. Directed by Paul Rickwood.

Mortified by David Mckenna and Being Frank Theatre July 2002 – January 2003
Performer in a dance based education project for boys, aiming to redefine their perception of dance and develop qualities of participation and respect.

Sanctuary Wood and Demobbed October 2002 – February 2003
Documentation of the Sanctuary Wood project and performance in collaboration with Glyn Davies Marshal and Peter Morton. Produced in the Chester Literature Festival.

Best Bent Wire June 2002
solo work with a suit of nails in and around the walls of Chester.

Sanctuary Wood, Ypres June 2001
Invited as a collaborator with live artist Glynn Davies Marshall, will will work together over a three day period in and around the historic trenches of this 1st World War museum
June 2001&

Best Bent Wire I – performed at The Surgery, Stafford
Secondsands, Wish & Technical Problems with Bet4 Artists February 2001
National Review of Live Arts, Glasgow,

Kontakt, La Revolution Francais , I Will You, & Underground at the Winter Palace
performed September 2000
International Festival of Experimental & Performance Art , Manege ,St Petersburg, Russia - as solo artist & collaborator with Shelley Good and Glyn Davies Marshall

Secondsands
1999 - June 2000
co-deviser & performer with Bet4 artists at Green Room , Manchester and on tour.

TPZ International Summer School
July 1999 TheaterpadagogischeLingen, Germany
Invited practitioner to run workshops and create festival performance with young people from seven countries.

Womberang I999
Baggage Factory TC, Everyman Theatre Cheltenham

Pina Bausch & Tanztheater Wuppertal production of Viktor January 1999
Sadlers Wells
Performed as ‘Doktor’.

1997 – 1998
Various projects including:

InsideOutsideIn devised and performed with Bet4 Artists, toured to a variety of venues & spaces including Confluence Theatre, Paris; Documenta X modern art show, Kassel; London International Mime Festival, Turtle Key Arts, London

Trinational Exhibition – a collaborative exhibition curated with Spirale artists group of Paris and Axe group of Germany and shown in all three countries

Atsawaytodoit – performance resulting from research with Bet4 Artists, toured in three countries and exploring the destructive force of Mr.Punch.

Continuing Research

Phd at Nottingham Trent University
Fearing Insurgence: The Performative Self and Other in Post-Soviet Era.
The PhD study is supervised by Adrian Heathfield and Johannes Birringer and explores the shift of otherness through the Balkanization of the West (Mestrovic) since the fall of the Soviet Union. It autobiographically presents the other in myself using live art strategies and is a 50% practical study.

Art and Science in Bet4’s Live Art Laboratory since the 1990’s
Biographical paper delivered at the Theatres of Science Conference in Glamorgan, 2004 and at the CPaRA conference ‘Whats in the Tin’ at Chester in 2005.

Freedom from Restriction – completed December 2002
A paper exploring the application of predetermined perameters as a common factor of twentieth century artistic process. The paper aims to explore the self infliction of restrictive devices amongst key artists of several disciplines as an attempt to free creative and methodological processes from the hegemonic pressure of academy.