Auto Italia, London, 08 December 2017
Rhoda Boateng, Adam Fa-Rah, Chloe Filani, Christopher Kirubi and Shenece Oretha
Rush, 2017. Courtesy of the artists.

For a minute, I’m glad I’m on the ground because there’s nothing left for me to fall off of and because the feeling of the dirt and concrete against the side of my face makes me think of the inside of your mouth which is coarse, damp and dark like the unlit street. As I push myself up some secret part of me makes an effort to brush the edge of my mouth against the street, my lips twitch slightly as they scrape against the gravel.
I feel a tiny rock stick to the corner of my mouth.
I don’t brush it away.

Rush is a new body of work initiated by Christopher Kirubi in collaboration with Auto Italia. Launching with an evening of newly commissioned performance, the ongoing project takes shape through a collaboration developed with Adam Fa-Rah, Chloe Fiilani, Shenece Oretha and Rhoda Boateng, working together as artists and friends meeting regularly to discuss spaces of desire, of community, and of action. Through poetry, sound and performance they seek to trace often hidden spaces of intimacy and carve out new ones – both private and shared.

Rush is about forming an opening in this conversation. It is a working blueprint to help understand what a movement in and out of otherness might feel like, how the story-telling of a phone call and other ways of sharing language can work to form points of contact that are loose, tentative and playful, and are formed on our own terms.

For this launch evening we will share text, sound and movements that have emerged from these conversations; acting as performances, excerpts, provocations and shared moments. Rush will continue in 2018 with a publication project.

198 Contemporary Arts & Learning

BREATHLESS