For more information, images, quotes and interview requests REM KOOLHAAS DESIGNS STRUCTURE FOR NEW please contact: PERFORMANCE WORK CURATED BY ADAM THIRLWELL Erica Bolton WITH HANS ULRICH OBRIST Bolton & Quinn +44 (0)20 7221 5000 Leading authors from Chile, Croatia, Iceland, Japan, Kenya, Martinique and Palestine will [email protected] perform new works for Studio Créole, a new performance work curated by award-winning Sim Eldem author Adam Thirlwell in collaboration with Hans Ulrich Obrist. Bolton & Quinn +44 (0)20 7221 5000 Co-commissioned by MIF and Carriageworks, Sydney, Studio Créole will have its world [email protected] premiere at Manchester Academy 1 from 12–14 July, performed in a specially designed structure by international architect Rem Koolhaas. Daisy Taylor Bolton & Quinn The seven authors have been commissioned to write seven new short stories, which they will +44 (0)20 7221 5000 read aloud in their original language to a live audience. The stories will be simultaneously [email protected] translated into English and interpreted by an actor on stage, resulting in a unique live mif.co.uk performance that explores language, interpretation and globalisation. The authors are Adania Shibli (reading in Palestinian Arabic), Alejandro Zambra (reading in Chilean Spanish), Dubravka Ugrešić (reading in Croatian), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (reading in Kikuyu), Patrick Chamoiseau (reading in French/Antillean Creole), Sayaka Murata (reading in Japanese) and Sjón (reading in Icelandic). Page 1 of 5 Studio Créole will be performed in a set by Rem Koolhaas, whose world-leading practice Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) has designed The Factory, the cultural space being developed in Manchester, which will be operated by MIF. Hans Ulrich Obrist said: “Studio Créole is an exhibition about bridge building between languages and continents. It is an experimental group show curated with the celebrated novelist and writer Adam Thirlwell and the visionary architect Rem Koolhaas who began his career as a writer. The exhibition is about the ‘creolisation’ of the world and hence is a homage to the late Édouard Glissant who considered the blend of languages and cultures a decisive characteristic of Antillean identity. Studio Créole is about celebrating a world of many languages. In the words of writer and artist Etel Adnan, ‘Thankfully, we are living after Babel, in a world of many languages that we can all move between. Our deepest identity is created from an infinite number of things, and every language is the door to a whole world.’” Adam Thirlwell said: “With Studio Créole, we want to stage world literature literally – to put it on stage in all its multilingual complexity, and with all the drama inherent in live interpretation. One of the paradoxes of literature that’s always fascinated me is that it’s an international art form which uses the nationalistic medium of language. It’s really exciting to be bringing this poly-linguistic project to Manchester – which is itself such a cosmopolitan city.” John McGrath, MIF Artistic Director and Chief Executive said: “This is the first time at MIF that we have put literature, authors and their stories at the heart of a project. It’s also a project that, particularly in the political moment we’re in, celebrates the complexity of a multi-lingual world and the beauty of the many languages of that world. The creative team have created a unique environment into which seven of the world’s most extraordinary writers will step and present their work in a way that has never been presented before.” Page 1 of 5 Studio Créole is commissioned by Manchester International Festival and Carriageworks, Sydney. Produced by Manchester International Festival. MIF19, which runs from 4–21 July For more information, images, quotes and 2019 with artists from across the globe premiering a variety of new work in spaces interview requests throughout the city. For more details about this year’s programme, please visit mif.co.uk. please contact: Images can be downloaded here: http://press.mif.co.uk/mif19/ Erica Bolton Bolton & Quinn Listings +44 (0)20 7221 5000 Studio Créole [email protected] Manchester Academy 1, OXford Road, M13 9PR Friday 12 – Sunday 14 July, 7.30pm Sim Eldem Bolton & Quinn Tickets £25, £20 concessions / £10 for Greater Manchester residents on a lower wage +44 (0)20 7221 5000 mif.co.uk / +44 (0) 333 320 2890 [email protected] Ends Daisy Taylor Bolton & Quinn NOTES TO EDITORS +44 (0)20 7221 5000 [email protected] About Manchester International Festival Manchester International Festival (MIF) is the world’s first festival of original, new work and mif.co.uk special events, staged every two years in Manchester, UK. MIF launched in 2007 as an artist-led festival presenting new works from across the spectrum of performing arts, visual arts and popular culture. The next Festival takes place from 4 – 21 July 2019. MIF has commissioned, produced and presented world premieres by artists including Page 2 of 5 Marina Abramović, Damon Albarn, Björk, Boris Charmatz, Jeremy Deller, Elbow, Wayne McGregor, Steve McQueen, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Thomas Ostermeier, Maxine Peake, Punchdrunk, The xx, Robert Wilson and Zaha Hadid Architects. These and other world-renowned artists from different art forms and backgrounds create dynamic, innovative and forward-thinking new work, staged in venues across Greater Manchester – from theatres, galleries and concert halls to railway depots, churches and car parks. MIF works closely with venues, festivals and other cultural organisations globally, whose financial and creative input helps to make many of these projects possible and ensures that work made at MIF goes on to be seen around the world. MIF supports a year-round Creative Engagement programme, bringing opportunities for people from all backgrounds, ages and from all corners of the city to get involved during the Festival and year-round, as volunteers, as participants in shows, through skills development workshops and a host of creative activities, such as Festival in My House. MIF will also be the operator for The Factory, the new world-class cultural space being developed in the heart of Manchester, designed by internationally-renowned architects Rem Koolhaas’ OMA. Due to open in 2021, The Factory will commission, present and produce a year-round programme, featuring new work from the world’s greatest artists and offering a space to make, explore and experiment. Attracting up to 850,000 visitors, The Factory will add £1.1 billion to the economy and create 1,500 jobs. Its pioneering programme of skills, training and engagement will benefit local people and the next generation of creative talent from across the city, whilst apprenticeships and trainee schemes are already underway during the construction phase. MIF’s Artistic Director and Chief EXecutive is John McGrath. MIF is a registered charity and company limited by guarantee. mif.co.uk Page 2 of 5 For more information, images, quotes and Adam Thirlwell interview requests Adam Thirlwell (London 1978) is the author of three novels, Politics, The Escape, and Lurid please contact: & Cute; a novella, Kapow!; and Multiples, a project with international novels. His work has been translated into 30 languages. He is the winner of the EM Forster Award from the Erica Bolton American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as a Somerset Maugham Award; and has Bolton & Quinn twice been nominated as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. His criticism +44 (0)20 7221 5000 appears in the Guardian, The New York Times and the New York Review of Books. He is the [email protected] London editor of the Paris Review. Sim Eldem Bolton & Quinn Rem Koolhaas +44 (0)20 7221 5000 Rem Koolhaas (Rotterdam, 1944) founded Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in [email protected] 1975 together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp. He graduated from the Architectural Association in London and in 1978 published Delirious New York: A Daisy Taylor Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. In 1995, his book S,M,L,XL summarized the work of Bolton & Quinn OMA in "a novel about architecture". He co-heads the work of both OMA and AMO, the +44 (0)20 7221 5000 research branch of OMA, operating in areas beyond the realm of architecture. His built [email protected] work includes the Qatar National Library and the Qatar Foundation Headquarters (2018), Fondation Galeries Lafayette in Paris (2018), Fondazione Prada in Milan (2015/2018), mif.co.uk Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), the headquarters for China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing (2012), Casa da Musica in Porto (2005), Seattle Central Library (2004), and the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin (2003). Current projects include the Taipei Performing Arts Centre, a new building for AXel Springer in Berlin, and the Factory in Manchester. Koolhaas directed the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, is a Page 3 of 5 professor at Harvard University, and is preparing a major exhibition for the Guggenheim museum to open in 2019 entitled Countryside: Future of the World. Hans Ulrich Obrist Hans Ulrich Obrist is Co-Director of the Serpentine Galleries, London. Prior to this, he was the Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show World Soup (The Kitchen Show) in 1991 he has curated more than 250 shows. Obrist was made Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in 2009 and received the CCS Bard Award for Curatorial Excellence in 2011. Obrist has lectured internationally at academic and art institutions and is contributing editor to several magazines and journals. His recent publications include Lives of Artists, Lives of Architects, Ways of Curating, A Brief History of Curating, Do It: The Compendium and The Age of Earthquakes with Douglas Coupland and Shumon Basar.