Simon Piasecki

Simon Piasecki specialises in devised and site-specific forms, works to camera and Performance Art. He has collaborated broadly, working  with artists such as Augusto Boal, Guillermo Gomez Pena, Frank Van Der Ven, Deborah Hay, Scanner, Walt Shaw and Pina Bausch (as a performer in Viktor).

One of Simon's recent major research projects has been an exploration of contexts of identity and belonging through the vehicle of performance – this has led to some fourteen major works, the largest of which, Nightflight, was produced over the Clwydian range of hills in 2006, funded by the Arts Council of Wales and produced by Germination. In this work 100 participants were led over the range at night through 28 performed installations.Other research projects include working in the Basque country in 2009-10 placing a work over the Penas Negras mountain (Walking with Stones), and collaborating on two commissioned works with Robert Wilsmore. The first, The Knowledge of Whitby Steps was funded by CETL and was a work to camera based upon Rafael’s painting of the School at Athens, engaging with notions of embodiment and mediation of experience. The second work, commissioned for the Conference of European Philosophy in 2011 was Antarctica 1(911).

Current research includes working toward a retrospective show of works covering a decade,  a book chapter for Continuum in Kraftwerk:Music Non-Stop, and examining contexts of belonging as they operate relatively between Self and Other. This concerns a body of practice in ‘auto-performance’ that has developed over the span of a decade in response to a powerful shift in his sense of identity and place following a key discovery in 2000. Simon is a governor at the Northern School of Dance.