‘Alternate Languages: Confronting Boundaries’ – Professor David Cotterrell’s ‘Mirror III’ and ‘Mirror IV’ installed at Royal Academy of Arts festival

Professor David Cotterrell’s Mirror III: Horizon and Mirror IV: Legacy will be shown as part of the upcoming event Alternate Languages: Confronting Boundaries at the Royal Academy.

Alternate Languages is a day-long festival taking place at the Royal Academy on Saturday 16 March 2019 that invites a critique of our relationship with one another and with our spaces. Through immersive spatial activations, artworks, performances, workshops and discussions the festival explores isolation and connection, exclusion and generosity, and ask what unites us and divides us.

The event provides a critique of our relationship with one another and with our spaces. In a day of free immersive spatial activations, artworks, performances, workshops and discussions in the Royal Academy, we explore isolation and connection, exclusion and generosity, and ask what unites us and divides us.

As disenchantment permeates many aspects of society and polarisation increases, we must transcend difference, overcome prejudices, find ways to understand and connect with one another.

This event is the third in a series by the same name, which was first initiated with the British Council to occupy the empty space of the British Pavilion, for Island, at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Throughout this event, we hope to expand the languages we have available to express and share ideas, and to create an opportunity for different voices to be heard.

Professor David Cotterrell’s Mirror III: Horizon (2016) is a series of two-screen works devised to provide insight into global communities that experience distancing and objectification – examining what might transpire between two strangers if their communication was reduced to the language of lights. Mirror IV: Legacy (2018) is a double screen visual art installation that explores the dynamics of inherited memories of violence, through the performances of six young Rwandan actors, belonging to the post-Genocide generation.

Created in collaboration with Sri Lankan playwright, screenwriter and theatre director Ruwanthie de Chickera, these two-screen video works are part of a series devised to provide insight into global communities that experience distancing and objectification. This is the first showing of these works in London.

Mirror III and Mirror IV installation
Alternate Languages: Confronting Boundaries
The McAuley Gallery (Mirror III) & The Weston Gallery (Mirror IV) at The Royal Academy, London W1J 0BD
Saturday 16 March 2019, 11AM – 7PM
Free access to installations (with ticketed access to the Seeking Refuge Event on Saturday 3.30PM – 4.45PM)

David Cotterrell is a Professor in Fine Art in the Art & Design Research Centre (ADRC) at Sheffield Hallam University. Follow him @davidcotterrell.