As part of Festival 31, Kirushan Sivagnanam and Claire Weetman are collaborating through an artists in residence research and development period. 

The 7 days of creative collaboration started with the artists exploring Birkenhead park and Kirushan’s studio, has visited Claire’s studio and some of the arts and community venues in St Helens and shared an initial performance piece at the Artist-Led St Helens Unfinished Projects evening.

The work is being informed by our conversations about power, systems, colonialism and the idea of deleting the borders that separate and divide us as humans. Performance and art that can be worn are processes that connect our practices and food has been shared, and cooked and baked throughout the journey.

On 12th August, Kirushan and Claire’s collaboration continues with a scratch performance of the work in Huyton Village. The collaborative soft-sculpture has been created by binding and connecting items of clothing into an inter-connected web. The act of tightly binding and transforming these items of human identity is slow and deliberate. The artists will invite the passing public to take part in the action of binding these items of human identity tightly, into lines that spread like a web through the space and to consider how people from all backgrounds can struggle with feeling confined, controlled, or having their identity hidden by the lines and systems of power.

The audience will be invited to take part in the unbinding of the clothes as the performance ends – a collective action that is representative of how a community can work together to make each person feel freedom. As part of this scratch performance we are exploring how the work can be developed into a future project, working with communities longer term.

Festival31 Artists in Residency programme 2025 Project is commissioned by SOLA Arts.