SOAK Live Art Present: The Thicket and The Worm

Experimental new performances by South West artists at the Market Hall Dome

We are delighted to present a special edition of SOAK at the Market Hall dome showcasing bold new performances by Yas Clarke and The Worm.

Our next SOAK is a fantastic double bill of sonic and musical experimental performances. Yas Clarke’s The Thicket is an intricate, rhythmic and melodic text score, composed for four voices performing a cappella. The Worm is a fictional, time-travelling narrator, created and acted out by Mimi Lawrence, a performance artist from Cornwall. The Worm will be performing from their new album Pantilde, which draws from folk and ritual traditions to focus on the everyday lives of a selection of peasants living in an alternative celtic landscape, alongside supernatural beings and embodied land masses.

In addition, the evening will begin with a new 360 immersive film by local motion designers Florian Thamer and Simon Russell from Sun Machine.

Step inside the immersive dome at Devonport Market Hall and experience a performance like never before – where sound, story and space intertwine in breathtaking 360°. The dome transforms these performances into living, breathing worlds: voices surround you, textures shift and shimmer overhead, and every note reverberates through a landscape of light and resonance. An unforgettable, once-only opportunity to feel sound and performance in full sensory immersion.

Timings:

Doors: 6.30pm

Film: 7.15pm

The Thicket: 7.30pm

The Worm: 8.45pm

Yas Clarke: The Thicket

A strange new a capella work from Bristol-based sound artist Yas Clarke, The Thicket is an intricate, rhythmic and melodic text score, composed for four voices. Sometimes narrative, sometimes abstract & non-verbal – this text is an arcane expression of the human relationship with its environment.

Each singer is conducted by a distinct in-ear score, a process which allows for detailed structuring of the four-part score; phrases, words and syllables layered into elaborate rhythms and harmonies otherwise impossible to perform. The result is mesmerising & uncanny, an experience which transports & transfixes.

“It’s not like much else I’ve heard… it’s really knocked me sideways, in a good way.”

Jen Allen, BBC Radio 3, Late Junction

“A meditation on humans & our place on Earth, conjuring both a sense of home & another world… Clarke reminds us that the barriers between real & imagined, natural & inorganic, aren’t so strict.”

Vanessa Ague, The Quietus

“Wow, this piece is really great… it’s really fantastic” Oren Ambarchi “a strange mixture of beauty & austerity that I have not come across before or since”

Harry Burgess, Adult Jazz.

Yas Clarke is a composer and sound artist best known for his original scores in experimental dance, live art and theatre including The Making of Pinocchio (Cade & Macaskill), Like Flying (Nic Green) and The Talent (Action Hero & Deborah Pearson). His collaborative performance work has toured worldwide including to festivals such as FTA Montreal, Brisbane Festival, Paris Festival d’Automne, South Africa National Arts Festival, Cultura Inglesa Sa o Paulo – and has received critical acclaim and recognition including multiple selections for British Council Showcase/Horizon, Made In Scotland, and Offie awards. Yas’s work is always experimental and collaborative and favours weird, minimal and abstract aesthetics. His work explores the human relationship to its environment, probing the boundaries between nature and artifice; organic and synthetic; continuous and discrete. As a performing musician Yas has toured extensively across Europe and Asia and his recorded works have been aired on networks such as BBC, WFMU, Resonance and NTS. Yas is a member of BEEF, The Brunswick Club CIC and associate artist of Interval, all artist-led collectives in Bristol.

The Worm: Pantilde

‘Pantilde’ focuses on the everyday lives of a selection of peasants living in an alternative celtic landscape, alongside supernatural beings and embodied land masses. Set across a variety of changing timelines, and featuring The Worm themself. These characters mingle with stream of concience ramblings about neurodivergence, and primordial ancestry from the project’s author. “It emerged as a way to unmask and play with genders and characters. It’s inspired by a book called ‘Medieval Woman’ by Ann Baer. I like the idea of making an album that’s a work of fiction. But also that because it’s a piece of abstract art it can give you limited facts and information about the story.” The album sounds in places like dungeon synth, a minimal theatrical soundscape or the end music for a Terry Pratchet casette tape. Performed live you will experience the esscence of this project in it’s purest ‘low-fi operatic’ form.

The Worm is a fictional, time-travelling narrator, created and acted out by Mimi Lawrence, a performance artist from Cornwall. The Worm is not a worm, nor is their music particularly about worms. The Worm is The Worm’s name. The Worm plays cello, harp, recorders and percussion, and they sing. Their live performances incorporate music, costume, clowning and spoken recitals and are inspired by historic forms of opera and dance, along with literature and computer games. Recordings of The Worm seek to document this performance experience. Their songs are simple and raw with a naive, intuitive attitude to production. The Worm explores vulnerability, humiliation and social acceptance. They are not exactly a musician but rather a clown, whose vehicle is song. Mimi developed the current set of music at Britten Pears Arts, Gwithian Chapel and Prah Foundation. They are releasing ‘Pantilde’ with Prah Recordings (UK) and EM records (Japan).

SOAK Live Art is curated and run by Sarah Blissett and Nuria Bonet.

Accessibility: This venue is fully accessible but if you have any questions or access requirements, please get in touch: soakliveart@gmail.com

A note on tickets:

If you are unable to attend any workshops or activities, please inform us as soon as possible so we can offer your spot to others who may be interested. Additionally, please review our ticket refund policy, as we will be adhering to it strictly.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation!