Since 2017 Memory Dance has been working with music, art, technology and dancing festival, No Bounds.
2017
The first collaboration was a mammoth all-dayer screening at Sheffield’s Trafalgar Warehouse. ‘Expect a rolling program of rarely seen archive film and video from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, and beyond. The day includes a scratch video retrospective from 80s visual artist Nick Cope, Clock DVA's experimental music films, radical documentary from the miner's strikes, industrial cinema from South Yorkshire, early computer animation from Warp, and a world premiere screening of Nik Allday’s 1981 film Recoil with a soundtrack by Cabaret Voltaire…’
Tucked up away on Floor 3, we screened a ten and a half hour of archive Sheffield films from docs to deviant disco visuals. This culminated in a FUNDRAISING MEGA RAFFLE DRAW WITH TOP TOP PRIZES donated by Warp Records, Bleep.com, Central Processing uit, WIRE Magzine, Public Information, Whities, Blood Sport, Opal Tapes, Ekoplekz, Ghost Box, Swing Ting - with all proceeds heading to the Alzheimer’s Society.
2018
We ramped up proceedings in 2018 with activity across two venues. First up was the project space, which was in Foodhall / New Century, taking over two rooms with durational screening projects.
In the 70s and 80s, South Yorkshire County City Council sponsored a wave of films to be made about council services to help reposition Sheffield’s image and attract business to the region in the post-industrial economy, with the aim of showing the city in a positive light and the hope of building internal confidence.
Martin Harris and David Rea made Free For All in 1976 about the abundant range of Sheffield parklands and leisure spaces the city council has to offer. No more do the factories clog up your breathing apparatus; swimming, cycling, outdoor brass-bands, the Botanical Gardens, Millhouses and Hillsborough Park are where it’s at in the feel-good world of 70s South Yorkshire. Free For All glides along without narration amidst a gorgeous 16mm palette of greens and yellows,
Working from a newly restored 16mm print, MEMORY DANCE presents a remixed version of Free For All with a new soundtrack put together entirely with audio elements from the original film by Alex Wilson.
In the second room we explored the art of the Sheffield Mester through archive film and video. Running across the No Bounds festival weekend, Trades and Crafts will present three sets of documentary films on industrial Sheffield: first from the late 1970s (Trades and Crafts), the next 1993 (Masters of Metalworking) and finally a series of shorts from director Shaun Bloodworth made in 2013-15.
Into the evening, we joined together 1980s Sheffield Polytechnic student and scratch video artists Nick Cope with Dub scientist and remix legend Nick Cope for a special live performance backed by the hefty Sinai Soundsystem. It was special night.
2019
Memory Dance x No Bounds @ Millennium Gallery - A rolling screening of rarely-seen archive film and video from Sheffield and South Yorkshire, presented in an immersive AV chamber at the Millennium Gallery across the No Bounds weekend. Open to all.
Featuring newly discovered Sheffield Polytechnic art school material, early computer animation, music video, social history documentary, and fiction work from unseen archives, and found footage. Made by people from the area, and inspired by the region during the 1960s-1990s. In association with Sheffield Hallam University.
2020/1
2020. COVID. HAPPENED.
2021. COVID. HAPPENED.
But Memory Dance x No Bounds still went down during the dark winter of 2021.
Please see MEMORY DANCE x SHEFFIELD LIVE for evidence of that.
2023/24
2023. No Bounds Took A Break.
2024. No Bounds x Memory Dance will return…