Art Night, Dundee: Shadowy sirens & sea creatures

This year’s iteration of the long-running Art Night was also its first to take place outside of London. Instead, Art Night 2023 was hosted by Dundee’s creative community, who facilitated an exciting evening of conversation, exploration, curiosity and even raving. Loosely following the map provided, we stumble across community-led projects while hopping from one commission to the next.

To the rhythm of the River Tay, crowds of onlookers ebbed and flowed towards Saoirse Amira Anis’s performance breach of a fraying body. The Scottish-Moroccan artist’s mesmerising movements stemmed from the barnacled depths of her solo show, symphony for a fraying body, currently on display at Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA). Inside this one-room, cave-like exhibition (all awash with the most beautiful lime green), Anis has carved out a space for respite, resistance, and renewal.

By foregrounding the Black body, which holds ancestral knowledge and memories, Anis forges a strategy for living which is buoyed by love, empathy and collective care. The installation centres on a sea-dwelling creature, inspired by myths both Scottish (perhaps the selkie) and Moroccan (Aicha Kandicha). Such physical contradictions integral to these watery mythical figures speak to the artist’s experience of feeling rage and hope simultaneously. Luring viewers into the film installation, a trail of the creature’s crimson shedded tentacles can be found abandoned on the floor nearby, an expression both of grief for what they have endured but also an offering – an invitation to find solace in the gallery.

symphony for a fraying body (film still), 2023. Photo: Saoirse Amira Anis, courtesy of the artist.

On Art Night, Anis’ amphibious creature came alive to greet us on land, as if they had just escaped from a folkloric tale. A one-off performance in three parts, mapped from dusk to dark, breach of a fraying body saw the artist embody the creature as she moved through the city. Siren-like in its ability to pull onlookers in and hold a commanding presence throughout, the creature danced and paraded through DCA, freeing itself from the confines of the gallery space and revelling in the open air. As I came face to face with the creature, I locked eyes with the artist behind the mask, and felt the inherent vulnerability and power that performance can create.

Through the artist’s gaze, breach of a fraying body sets up an unspoken dialogue between the creature and onlooker, which prompted me to question how I should interact with this performance. Should I look on in awe or avert my eyes? Should I join in or stand there, a passive bystander? Through costume (expertly crafted by collaborators Sabrina Henry and Dr Sequoia Barnes), Anis embodies this hybrid creature in her performance, but behind the textured layers, the artist is still very much present.

Still from My Bodily Remains... by Tai Shani. Image courtesy of the artist.

Then there was Tai Shani’s filmic tableaux at The Little Theatre. Poetically titled My Bodily Remains, Your Bodily Remains, And All The Bodily Remains That Ever Were And Ever Will Be, Shani’s film is an exhilarating voyage through the genres of fantasy and horror. In the vein of her debut book, Our Fatal Magic, the film is voiced by four enigmatic protagonists. Epic in its scope and revolutionary potential, the hour-long film with its intoxicating score begins with an 'ancient' book with sacred status, titled ‘The Book of Love’.

With a stark nod to fairytale traditions, once the text is opened and its wisdom revealed, we find that the artist bends truth for ironic effect. Excerpts of writing by prolific and radical thinkers and activists including Ulrike Meinhof and Raoul Vaneigem intersect experimental vignettes that jar intergalactic imagery with microscopic detail. Some of these excerpts are modern, not ancient, and these are the voices which stir up the determinedly political messages of the film, targeting the rise of fascism and right-wing rhetoric. 

This rage escalates throughout My Bodily Remains... and provocatively explodes with refrains like “fuck the TERFs” and “property is theft”. Yet, this pain is offset, and arguably underpinned, by themes of love and intimacy. There are parallels to the contradicting emotions and experiences Anis channels into her artistic practice. Like the watery, mythical depths of Anis’ commission, Shani has dreamed up a siren-like protagonist who lurks in a shadowy cave. While Anis has found inspiration in Donna Haraway’s “tentacular thinking”, and Shani in Meinhof and Vaneigem (among others), both of these commissions are embedded within theoretical research but deeply enriched by intense emotional expression.

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Saoirse Amira Anis, symphony for a fraying body, at Dundee Contemporary Arts until 6 Aug
artnight.org.uk