The competition

Each year Manchester’s freshest performers are invited to pitch a creative idea to a panel in 60 seconds. The winner receives a £500 commission to realise the idea and present it as part of greenroom’s programme.

‘Pitches’ are invited from performance artists across a range of non-narrative disciplines, and the idea could be realised as experimental performance, dance, installation, durational performance or live art.

The next competition will take place in February 2010.

2009’s Instant Winner

In November 2009, this year’s winner Ehsan Gill presented Separation of mixtures as part of a Double Bill alongside Until Thursday’s Oliver Bray.

About the artist

Ehsan Gill’s area of research is body based performance art. Creating works on and with his body, he explores the implications of identity formation for an asian male body in the current political climate. His work specifically examines the the destabilising implications of race when articulated within western discourse. By foregrounding his body in practice he attempts to articulate race as a source of unique insight instead of loss.

About the performance

Separation of mixtures is a photographic series examining the continued primacy of the heterosexual white male body as the seat of agency in identity making. Co-opting the clinical ‘mug shot’ portraiture style of Thomas Ruff, this project asks questions of which bodies possess power in the formation of identity. Specifically in this case how an ethnically Othered body (which is attributed a certain religious origin) governs its identity in relation to others.

The central research question being: what are ethnically Othered artists “allowed” to say? and what can they get away with?

2008 Instant Winners were:

Hello Friends Theatre presenting Dressing The Part

Self-presentation. Personal tastes. You chose to put that on. You choose to. Fads, trends, standardised uniforms. Ooo – nice. What has she come as?
Dressing The Part is an exploration of performance in everyday life through what we wear. A dress up and dress down performance piece in which everyone we are, were and ever could be, are laid bare in front of an event-controlling audience.

Tam Hinton presenting HARD BARDS

Many people have wanted to punch Tam Hinton during his ‘career’. Almost everyone who sees him in fact. Now the wily swine has turned this to his advantage, mixing delicate poetry with the nose splintering violence of amateur boxing! A new combination of wordsmithery/fistycuffs.

Previous Instant Win Winners:

Commissioned February 07 and presented June 07:

Adam Mancktelow presented an energetic performance Man Dog; where mans animalistic instincts came alive with humorous consequences. A performance about consequences … there is always someone above you, the leash is on. We are all kept on a short leash and we are all obedient. What is happening in the world is not natural because we are doing things that we don’t want to do, but could this be a good thing?

Sometimes… Co. presented Wouldn’t It Be Nice: Have you ever wondered about the price of everything and the value of nothing? For a limited time only, it’s one pound. Sometimes…Co produced an installation of 500 objects purchased for just £1 from the general public in Manchester’s city centre.

Commissioned February 06 and presented through out 2006/07:

Sinead King was looking for love and her exploration culminated in three pieces using movement, text and performance to express her journey.

Jonathan Richardson and The Bucket Company presented us with quirky cabaret and intermission theatre shows, grown in the armpit of the Pennines!

Commissioned February 05 and presented February 06:

Jiva Parthipan presented FIST where he explored power and domination with an arm-wrestle tournament!

Richard Sorensen presented Ladies and Gentlemen an instant exhibition inspired by the best of British toilet graffiti!