BMW Tate Live: Performance Room – Selma and Sofiane Ouissi

Choreographers and dancers Selma and Sofiane Ouissi use Skype to unite two performances on separate continents.
Selma is in Paris and Sofiane in London and they use Skype to interact, while digital artist Yacine Sebti creates additional visual imagery. Through their live link-up, the two artists respond to each other’s on-screen movements.
Selma and Sofiane Ouissi are major figures of contemporary dance in the Arab world and have collaborated with directors and choreographers such as Fadhel Jaziri, Hichem Rostom, Martino Müller, and the Compagnie Michèle Anne de Mey.
The duo have performed in numerous shows worldwide and at live art festivals: Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Tanzquartier in Vienna, Danse in Aix, Bouffes du Nord in Paris, and Festival de Carthage. In 2007 they founded the collective L’Art Rue, dedicated to the production and dissemination of contemporary art in public spaces in Tunisia, and created the art biennale Dream City of which the third edition took place in 2012.
In 2011 they worked with director Cécil Thuillier to create a choreographic film Laaroussa inspired by the work of women potters from Sejnane, Tunisia, which was shown at the Palais de Tokyo Triennale in Paris, 2012. This film piece resulted in a live choreographic and immersive film work for the 2013 Kunsten Festival des arts in Brussels.
This performance will be in collaboration with Yacine Sebti. Sebti works across performance, installation and computer programming. Sebti’s practice is centered upon experimenting with computer programming software, like those of Mathematica, Pure DATA, Max Msp and Open Frameworks. Sebti then uses these computer programming devices as a method to explore the dialogue between sound and video in the real time of dance, performance and theatre. Sebti has often developed interactive performance and video installations from computer programming workshops, for example Move In A Frame which was exhibited at STRP festival in Eindhoven, Holland in 2009.
Sebti currently lives and works in Belgium. His work has been exhibited internationally at Viper - Basel , eArts - Shanghai and Seoul Media Arts Biennale - Ghent. Recent exhibitions include Salt Lake with Tom Heene shown at iMAL arts in Brussels, Belgium and Sebti’s recent 2011–12 collaboration with Selma and Sofiane Ouissi on the performance Here.
Live Q&A
During the performance you are encouraged to chat with other viewers from around the world via Twitter, Facebook and Google+ and to ask the artist or curator questions which will be answered at the end of the performance during the live Q&A. You can access the latest updates @TateLive using #BMWTateLive , Tate Facebook or Tate Google+ .
Credits
BMW Tate Live is curated by Catherine Wood, Curator, Contemporary Art and Performance, Tate and Capucine Perrot, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern.
BMW Tate Live is a partnership between BMW and Tate, which focuses on performance, interdisciplinary art and curating digital space.