Camden Encounters & Sergina: Memories, Collaboration & Drag

This year I have focussed on two projects: Camden Encounters, a 12-month long commission from Camden Council in celebration of 50 years since the formation of the Borough in its current form, and #Sergina, a drag queen character I have developed over the past few years, who sings and performs songs about love, sex and cell phones - alone and with others.

Whilst Camden Encounters involves very physical interactions and negotiations with the city in order to gather people's 'Sticky Memories' from nooks and crannies of Camden through a series of face-to-face encounters at the sites of these memories, Sergina's collaborations tend to happen mostly online. For my upcoming multi-performer, multi-location performance entitled Sergina's Stimulatingly Sexy Simultaneous Simulation of Herself, which is taking place on two consecutive days in November, (at the opening of RIGHT HERE/RIGHT NOW at The Lowry on 11th and at SHOUT festival in Birmingham on 12th,) I have the great honour (and pleasure) to work with an array of massively brilliant people in a variety of cities, without whom this performance would not be possible. 

Performers for Sergina's Sexy.. include Liz Rosenfeld (Berlin), Kate Spence (Birmingham), Raul de Nieves (Brooklyn), Vladimir Bjelicic (Belgrade). Plus I have Roseanna Velin doing makeup, Patricia Muriale on costumes and Kanchi Wichmann and Trevor Pitt are both helping to lick songs into shape. 

From The Lowry on 11th November the performance will be live streamed via This is Tomorrow, so you have the chance to watch it on a screen near you, from wherever.

For Camden Encounters, the end destination is the official Camden50 website, to which I am uploading the edited interviews one-by-one. Last month I gave a live presentation of the project at The Roundhouse, along with three of my participants: Ruth Ingram, Hannah Morris, Ubah Egal and Gill Watson (going online next week!). On 30th November the commission will be brought to a close with a public presentation in Camden Town Hall. 

Other news includes the (first ever cinema) screening of 3 Sergina films at the Scottish Queer International Film Festival (#SQIFF2015) in Glasgow next weekend, as part of a shorts programme called 'Anxiety Sucks.' And, for those in Berlin, I'm doing a (solo) performance on 25th October, in Bethanien, at the Finissage of 25 Karat by this year's Goldrausch Künstlerinnen programme participants. 

More info about dates & places of all these is below. 

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you at one event or the other before long!

Best wishes,

Elly  

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ellyclarke.com / georgerichmondproject.com / camden50.co.uk / 
@elly_clarke / #Sergina