Graduates of the Month

Published: 02/06/2016

This month we are featuring two graduates from the Contemporary Performance Practice programme, Rosana Cade (pictured above) and Nick Anderson. After meeting at RCS, they decided to start their own performance-making company Buzzcut. Rosana and Nickspoke to us about their work and what they have planned for Buzzcut in the next year.

Tell us about Buzzcut and the work you produce.

Buzzcut is an artist-led organisation that supports experimental performance practice in Scotland. Founded at the end of 2011, we have hosted five annual five day international live art festivals in Glasgow each spring, as well as a range of events throughout the year often in collaboration with other organisations. At the centre of our practice is a question: ‘How can an event strengthen a community?’ We believe that live performance is all about community it’s about people gathering together and sharing. Gathering together to experience something new, to participate, to be collectively moved to action or to tears. We are dedicated to interrogating the accessibility of live performance in order to widen and strengthen the community of people we welcome into our events. As a result, all of our festivals are pay-what-you-can, and have various forms of disabled accessibility.

In our annual festival we always have a programme that is 50% local artists and 50% artists traveling to Scotland. We are interested in representing a diverse range of people in our programmes and interrogating what that means, and in supporting work that might not have opportunities to be shown elsewhere in Scotland.

Outside of Buzzcut, both of us also have performance-making practices and have shared work extensively across the UK and internationally. We’re excited at the opportunities this gives us to meet new artists, see more work and develop new connections between our community in Glasgow and those elsewhere.

Double Thrills, your new monthly performance event started in May in the CCA what performances do you have planned for the year?

We’re “doubly thrilled” about our programme at the CCA. Each month there will be at least one local artist and one travelling to Glasgow from further afield. We haven’t completely filled up the local side of the programme yet as we want to be responsive to the local community and stay in touch with artists as their work develops. In the travelling programme we’ve got some really special treats, starting with Ira Brand’s show Break Yourself in June, which is a brilliant solo performance looking at identity, impersonation, sexuality and masculinity. In July we’ve got the wild and exceptional Christeene, who some people might have caught at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2014 or at the Arches last Spring. This is her new show and we are over the moon to be bringing it to Glasgow. She will be supported by theall-female live art band Fallope and the Tubes. Across the autumn we’ve got a range of some of the leading experimental performance-makers in the UK bringing their work to Glasgow.

You both met on the Contemporary Performance Practice programme at RCS how did this degree programme help you progress into the industry and begin your own company?

Our learning on the CPP programme lay the foundations of us developing Buzzcut. Firstly, the programme is all about working autonomously, making your own opportunities and developing your own methods for working. The programme encouraged us to dismantle existing structures that oppress us or takeaway opportunities, challenge hierarchy, work collaboratively, consider the wider social context and politics of every decision we make. It gave us opportunities to work with people outside of our peers, to collaborate with a range of different communities, and question who art is for and who makes it. It introduced us to a wide range of performance-makers and practices, which inspired us to be radical, to be weird, to be bold. The programme itself is a strong community and Buzzcut was first founded in service of this community and with great support. It wouldn’t exist without CPP and the people who surround it.

You have both stayed in Glasgow upon graduation. What is it about Glasgow that makes it such an attractive city for performing and creative artists?

Glasgow is still a relatively inexpensive city to live in, with a strong sense of artistic community and quite a few exciting festivals and events across visual art, music and theatre. These are all important to artists. It feels like an accessible city where it’s possible to make things happen yourself, and as a result has a pretty strong DIY arts scene, alongside the established venues.

There are definitely challenges to being in Glasgow since the Arches was closed down last year, which offered a year round home to the experimental performance community in the city. This has meant a loss of opportunities for support to make work and to see high class international performance. As BUZZCUT we are presenting our programme at the CCA in order to provide regular opportunities for audiences to gather and see work, and we are excited to see what else will spring up in response to this loss.