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About the Artist

Jools Gilson is a 2021 Irish Fulbright Scholar hosted by Theatre and Dance at ²ÊÃñ±¦µä. She was head of the School of Film, Music and Theatre at University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland from 2016 – 2020, and is delighted to be spending the fall 21 semester at ²ÊÃñ±¦µä. She is an artist whose practice is knotted, knitted and woven between the disciplines of visual art, creative writing, dance theatre and broadcast radio; choreographies with dancers spinning wool; 30,000 sewing needles hung from a gallery ceiling; and his chrysanthemums. Her texts, choreography, installation and radio work have been published, performed, exhibited and broadcast internationally. Amongst other things, she is interested in the grain and potentiality of textile practices to incisively re-think contemporary poetics of femininity. She is the first professor of creative practice at UCC.

B2 Residency Details:

During her residency with B2, Gilson will work on Tempestries, an original work in which she will explore the use of textile green screen as costume and landscape, as well as choreography/shadow play as a way to tangle science with storytelling. Gilson connects practices of textile hand-making and the somatic experience of dress with climate. The project seeks to develop ways to creatively connect the ordinary and exceptional as a strategy of activism and performance through a series of braided processes for wearing the weather; story gathering and making; attunement to processes of touch; embodiment and movement and the development of smart textiles. For her residency at B2, she’ll be doing preliminary collaborative R&D for a full project that will be presented in Ireland in 2023.