Charles Atlas, Mika Tajima and New Humans: The Pedestrians

The South London Gallery presents a new collaborative project by New York-based artists Charles Atlas and Mika Tajima. This live art presentation transforms the SLG’s main gallery into a hybrid installation/film set featuring a collaboration by Charles Atlas and Mika Tajima with contributions from New Humans, John Smith, Gaby Agis, Les Child, Richard Hornsey, Nina Power and others and others to create a dynamic space for performance, music, video and sculpture.

The Pedestrians examines the act of walking in its various social and political forms: from the march formations in processions and demonstrations, and the idle strolling flâneur, to the choreography of everyday movement in dance. The project traces the politics of this basic bodily movement in its different manifestations and strategies as it negotiates the changing landscape of modernity.

A walkway cuts through the space becoming at once arcade, exhibition, passage, runway and stage. Along the path are various objects and tableaux, including new scaffold sculptures and a selection of object arrangements that have come to be associated with Tajima’s collaborative New Humans installations and performances – cinema flats, mirrors, scaffolding, palettes of soft drinks, a junkyard car and a treadmill.

The installation is a fully functioning film set with four events rehearsed and performed within it. All elements relating to the film’s production are on display including lighting, film tracks, sound desk and equipment. This scenario becomes both a structure for collaborative activities and the subject of the performances within it.

The installation and preparation for performances are viewable by the public during regular gallery hours until 10 April, after which the installation with edited videos shot during the live period of the project remain open to the public.

Inviting a range of UK-based performers to participate, The Pedestrians becomes a framework for a diverse series of positions and actions working with and against the installation.

Charles Atlas, Mika Tajima and New Humans : The Pedestrians