This is not face painting as you know it. There will be no butterflies, tigers or ‘pretty’ there is no time frame just the twilight zone of 4 dimensional skin art. Surreal disco skin decorator Natalie Sharp invites you to spin the wheel of (mis)fortune to discover your antipodean character.
Narrative, visual and audio experience for kids (and adults) at nightfall.
Light Field is an off-grid, kinetically-powered participatory installation by sound artist Bill Thompson and choreographer Saffy Setohy; Made of, and activated by light, people and the sound of light taking place in the woods.
Yoga guru Moses of Chelsea returns via California to get you high by stretching. So let’s get high together.
Join Babaloose for a workshop that explores the basics of theatrical set design, childhood den building and Arte Povera sculpture-making to create an ideal portable performance space for an open platform Babaloose event in the Vortex.
Craft, create and decorate your own outlandish festival head-piece that lights up and take part in a procession through the festival after dark.
Participatory puppet and noise-making workshop with resulting festival procession where festival goers are invited to join CHAMP at 5.30pm as they lead a procession around the site with a motley crew of collected musicians and noise-makers.
Narrative, visual and audio experience for kids (and adults) at nightfall.
Performative intervention drawing invisible ghosts from in and around Braziers House as discovered on the Braziers Residency.
Sam Underwood and Sam Cook have been working together following the residency to build a selection of weird and wonderful musical instruments that will tour the festival site with a series of impromptu performances. This staged performance will see them bring together musicians and other vagabonds recruited over the course of the weekend, so let's see what transpires!
Áine O Dwyer’s performances are cross-disciplinary, shifting between the roles of vocalist, soloist, accompanist, musician, improviser, composer, performer and visual artist. Aine will perform an acoustic harp set in the lounge at Braziers House.
Serena Korda's Jug Choir: Ectoplasmic Variations explores the materiality of object and sound drawing on a rich history of jugs being used as musical instruments. The Jug Choir is an exhibit and unfolding sonic experiment with new sets of singers who play their part in bringing the jugs to life to mark the end of the afternoon. See Braziers House programme for more information on the work and artist Serena Korda.
Cyanotype workshop for all ages and artistic abilities. Come along and create your own Supernormal blueprint.
Find Pester and Rossi's shed and get involved with making outlandish DIY costumes and props with the duo, which may result in potential collective conga around the site...
Sound artist and performer Nathaniel Mann offers songs and sounds of and for the forest. Look out for field recordings, deconstructed folk and torchlight in the woods at night. Find him in a glade, at the gloaming. Nathaniel has been selected by Oxford Contemporary Music as part of the City Partners Programme 2016-17.
Workshop for kids up to 5 yrs and their families to engage in freeform improvisation, exploring the joys of making a racket.
Animal mask making workshop using artist's paintings as inspiration.
Sound Hoppers is a deep-listening sound exploration playgroup for kids aged 3 -11.
Join artist Angela Rawlings for a sound and writing workshop to explore how what you hear impacts your writing. Will you flow with it, tune it out, incorporate it into your text, or struggle upstream against the soundscape? Everyone is invited to bring their favourite writing material - paper, journal, pen, pencil, crayons, lipstick, markers, mobile phone etc…
Traditional narrative song, full voiced sacred harp singing and sparse mountain banjo
Brigitte Hart presents an a capella performance of 5-6 'folk' songs from around the world all with their own story of lament.
Serena Korda's Jug Choir: Ectoplasmic Variations explores the materiality of object and sound drawing on a rich history of jugs being used as musical instruments. The Jug Choir is an exhibit and unfolding sonic experiment with new sets of singers who play their part in bringing the jugs to life to mark the end of the afternoon. See Braziers House programme for more information on the work and artist Serena Korda.
PunkSeq10 combining a 10 step sequencer and an Atari Punk Console for glitchy grooves. Great project for those with previous soldering experience. This consists of a distorted-noise machine - being driven by a step-sequencer - allowing either 4, 8 or 10 steps - build it, stick the battery in for industrial techno-fun ...
This Place I Found, a workshop about mindful, observational and non-judgemental writing.
The Neighbours are Bats uses recordings made using a bat detector to imagine a 'bat band', in which five common British bat species become five band members. With guidance from resident bats, audiences are invited to don a bat costume and join in a jam session.
Nothing Is DJs
Filming at Supernormal throughout the weekend, Islington Mill Public Access TV are born from a love of 80’s & 90’s alternative music shows as a conduit for the experimental, weird and wonderful.
Lose your kids for hours as they play among the trees in Braziers magical woodland adventure playground.
Wild Bunch is a clubnight run by people with learning difficulties for everyone, who return to play a high jinx set of bangers at Supernormal.
After a vibrant debut last year, the Bare Plume Cafe Bar returns for Supernormal 2016 to bring you pick-me-up cocktails, ethical-but-not-boring food, tropical vibes, performances and all round fun. Come enjoy an espresso martini whilst listening to specially curated playlists from artists taking part in the festival.
A spontaneous, pop-up talk-show engaging people in an interactive participant-led discussion to find out what’s on your minds - big or small. Come along and join-in the discussion.
Installation informed by present or absent sonic phenomena - this work is the realization of a text score, written in response to the study in Braziers House. Martin is an artist concerned with reflection, repetition, categorization and perception and is a member of Braziers community.
Film Material will be 'in residence' in the all new Vortex space, presenting expanded filmic performances, screenings and projections to activate and punctuate the space throughout the weekend.
The Young Women's Music Project (YWMP) is an educational charity that offers free music workshops for women to make music together, learn new skills, express themselves, and grow in confidence. YWMP will respond to Supernormal and draw on their own personal experiences to create a wall of images inspired by the festival around them.
Roaming walk-about hat-based installations. Stop and say hi and marvel at their wonderful creations!
A series of landworks, or contemporary, ephemeral Geoglyphs - designs, shapes and sigils resulting from air/sunlight deprivation to photosynthesis set upon the landscape reflecting aspects of the founding tenets of Braziers Park: creativity, community and radical education.
Expanded exhibition celebrating the anarcha-feminist fanzine GirlFrenzy through spoken word, performance, music, readings, games and drawing comics. The project is hosted by some of the original contributors to GirlFrenzy including Erica Smith, Rachael House and Liz Wakfield with contributions from fellow fans. See blackboard for more details on what's happening when over the weekend.
Keep an eye out for helpful looking folks with tabards and lollipop signs - stop them and ask for help we dare you!
Battery powered, pop-up, improvisatory, sound and light show taking place after dark around the festival site.
A pop-up, interactive installation at Bare Plume, celebrating the art of the dart.
An open in-situ printing press dedicated to producing music ephemera and printed matter for the festival and beyond. See blackboard by the Pink Milk Float for daily programme.
For the annual Phlaag Pole commission, Georgia Horgan has produced a new textile work that explores her interests in craft, the mechanisation of the textile industry and the production of history tapestries from the beginning of several medieval women’s communes.
Eastville Project Space take over the Pink Shed and turn it into an active project space throughout the weekend. Featuring: 'How We Communicate’ - an installation by Owl Project's Simon Blackmore, Tim Hill's anti-lecture 'The Island of Noise' as well as workshops, collbaorative performances, film and more. See the blackboard outside the Pink Shed for more info.
Cephalopod is a collaborative film-based hub taking residence deep in the woods for the weekend. Their mollusc-inspired shed will host a selection of events from BEEF members, friends & guests including; a 16mm film drop in workshop as the cephalopod transforms into a darkroom, film screenings, sound explorations, experimental live soundscape excursions.
WARP members Neasa Terry, Sam Perry and Yvonne Lake have been selected to attend Supernormal to collectively and individually respond to the arts, projects and activities programme through a variety of textual mediums. Wales Artist Resource Programme (WARP) is based in G39 art space in Cardiff and provides professional development resources, mentoring and guidance for artists.
Georgia Horgan is interested how social and political histories are represented and the mechanics of alternative ways of teaching and learning. For her shed commission, Georgia has made a reading resource that traces this history from medieval Beguines communities to Braziers Park School of Integrative Social Research. Alongside the reading material is a series of textile works based on the cloth used for 'samarras' - the ceremonial robes heretics were forced to wear during trials. Whilst providing a place to read and reflect on the context of Supernormal, these textile works consider the connections between heretic movements and modern communes.
Spike Associate members Alessio Mazzaro and Fiona Winning create a space in the woods where people can join them to become somebody else and gain superpowers to do nothing as an antidote to hyper productivity.
Following on from 'A Woodland Truce', a play (of sorts) at Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London, in February, artist Matt Copson will be transforming a shed in to a theatrical installation at Supernormal, which may or may not include: staving off mortality, polluting the national discourse, replenishing electrolytes, inner conflict on a public scale, animals (rats, birds etc), red, green and blue.
Performative, fun and provoking artist duo Pester and Rossi will be taking over a shed to grace you with their outlandish DIY costumes, props and wearable sculpture. Be sure to visit the shed on Saturday from 12 noon - 3pm to take part in the fun and get involved in making costumes. Strut your stuff down the catwalk on Saturday night from 8 - 10pm when the shed will reopen to host performances with special guests Fallopé & the Tubes.
Melanie will present a work in three parts featuring observations, research and ideas formed during the artist residency and her experience working at previous Supernormals.
Lucy has created a new open-ended structure as a space and place of exchange. Drawing on your input, the space will be self-governing for people to use it as they wish. Come find it and join-in!
Yeovil based Eastville Project Space and Farmer Glitch will be providing an array of specialist sound workshops over the festival weekend from the Pink Shed HQ.
Supernormal Super Sensory Summer School make a typically awe-inspiring return in what can only be described as a ‘Woodhenge’ structure, with everything from ‘post-human’ discourses to Kibbo Kift inspired ceremonial design and craft on offer to get involved in. See blackboard by the henge for daily programme.
The Greenhouse, Sat & Sun 12-5pm. During the Supernormal residency Rebecca Lennon conducted a number of interviews with community members at Braziers Park, including Fede who looks after the beehives. Rebecca now presents a new video inspired by the 'waggle dance', the democratic communication of a beehive. Weaving together footage of her time at Braziers: the movement of bees, conversations, gestures and architecture into a rhythmical assemblage, the video is a geometric portrait of a community, and a study of the waggle dance as a choreography.