Artistic director Kris Nelson celebrates the return of the LIFT festival

We are thrilled to bring LIFT 2022 to life. London has been too long.

With the theme “Unexpected Perspectives”, LIFT 2022 asks you to change the way you approach the world and experience performance: whether it’s from a bird’s eye view, around a campfire or in search of ghosts. in a mall.

You will meet artists from Glasgow, Helsinki, Milan, Nairobi, Vilnius and all over London. They play with scales – from a maximalist slice of life with hundreds of performers (and several tons of sand) to very intimate and personal experiences. We travel through London – this year’s festival takes place in eight boroughs and involves collaboration with dozens of partners.

You will see from above dozens of artists singing on lounge chairs on a beach set up in Albany in the famous Lithuanian Beach Opera Sun & Sea by Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė and Lina Lapelytė. It’s a large-scale project with a huge imagination involving hundreds of Londoners, dogs, children, ice cream and a deep message. Sun & Seaplaces the threat of climate change amidst a lazy beach idyll, a contrast that makes for an unforgettably ironic and poignant experience. Don’t miss it.

See the world through the eyes of Kenyan multidisciplinary artists The Nest Collective. Very versatile, their artistic creation includes empathetic and evocative films, provocative visual art exhibitions and the organization of unmissable parties. For LIFT 2022, the Nest is moving to Lewisham at Shipwright. They will animate the series of fairs Cooking talk. Then, in a sensational doubleheader, they will present the world premiere of The feminine and the foreign , their docu-portrait film featuring activists across London in intimate conversations about migrant, gay and black experiences. Then they throw Nairobi x Local, a day and night party in a garden by the Thames with DJs from LOCAL and AJAA Radio from South London.

On a more intimate scale, Italian-Armenian artist Giorgia Ohanesian Nardin immerses you in personal and political visuals and voices. For the UK premiere of ֳիշեր-gisher, they collaborate with eight London-based artists, including choreographic pioneer Jamila Johnson-Small. Invoking their shared Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) heritage, Nardin assembles a collage of musings on geography, body, heritage and conflict in this show beginning inside Sadler’s Wells and ending with a gathering around a fire.

The Glasgow artist couple and duo Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill offer another kind of intimacy: an autobiographical meta-theatre full of tenderness. Surrounded by puppets and cameras in the Great Hall of the Battersea Arts Centre, they recreate Pinocchioamid Ivor’s gender transition. The result is The Making of Pinocchio a performance that shows us how to define and redefine who we are for the people we love the most.

In Brixton, at the Black Cultural Archives, We should all be dreamingFinnish artists Sonya Lindfors and Maryan Abdulkarim invite you to discover the radical potential of the dream. It is a celebration of community which is a space for collective imagination. At Shoreditch Town Hall, up-and-coming designers from across London – the UpLIFTers (Lift’s Young Producers Programme) occupy a unique space in the basement. They have a packed series including Choose margin tactile workshops exploring marginalized identities, installation 遺 комнаты / Pieces left behindimmersing you in leaked rooms in Hong Kong and Russia and The rising stars of the galaxya showcase of talented young musicians playing beats from around the world.

In three shopping centers scattered across London, the maestros of ZU-UK interactive theater refresh your everyday experience withGhost Radio . Join them on a ghost hunt where you’ll discover spirits found in everyday commerce and the hidden stories of how products find their way into our hands as you play.

We will also be digital – with online versions ofThe Making of Pinocchio andThe feminine and the foreignavailable to audiences around the world. These are accompanied byBurning suns, rising seasorganized by Radical Ecology – films and workshops on deforestation, indigenous rights, migration and the unequal distribution of toxicity.

Each of these works asks you to change your point of view, and they do so with a sense of adventure, curiosity and empathy. From all of us at LIFT, we welcome you. Enjoy discovering these new takes, new views and unexpected perspectives.

LIFT Festival runs from June 23 to July 10

Photo credit: Tyler Kelly