In May we spent a hot, humid, and sultry two weeks in Macau, where faded Sixteenth Century Catholic iconography sits aside contemporary China’s LED illuminated skyline.

There, in the midst of Macau’s largest open space, thrust upwards towards the brooding humid skies, stood the 35m tall, free-standing, lightening attractor of a scaffold tower that the Festival organisers had built for us. Its sheer size made all the more alarming by continual threats of torrential thunder storms and typhoons. Despite any misplaced concerns we may have had the tower stood firm, the weather held, and Congregation ran for 35 consecutive shows, to packed and appreciative audiences.

Unsung Heroes’ was an installation that took place across three sites on Salford Quays in Winter 2011. (Imperial War Museum, MediaCityUK & The Lowry Plaza). ‘Unsung Heroes’ was KMA’s first ever site-specific piece. The new installation was designed after KMA were awarded the first ever public art commission involving all of the organizations on Salford Quays. Unsung Heroes used a commissioned soundtrack by renowned composer Peter Broderick. The score was layered with sections of recorded voices and submitted text to form a rich, poetic conversation about the spirit of Salford, Trafford and The Quays.

September 2010 was the month of Congregation. The Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, Central Square in Bournemouth, and Tate Britain in London were all thronged with participants.

KMA’s most ambitious work to date, Congregation will be the world’s first ever ballet designed, choreographed and composed entirely for pedestrian performers. There will be no rehearsal and no textual input: participants will simply respond to the choreography of light and sound in an embodied, rather than verbal, discourse. The score for Congregation has been created by Portland-based composer Peter Broderick.

Commissioned by SCAN and British Council, Congregation is due to premiere simultaneously at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai as part of World Expo and Bournemouth for the Inside Out Festival, followed by further performances at Tate Britain, London

Congregation illuminates the responses that humans make to interruption and interference in their environment. The interruption, in this example, is the arrival of a lone figure (The Angel). This figure cannot communicate, can barely move and appears powerless. Despite its impotence, the figure is utterly immovable, indelible, and as such must be perceived as super-human, with an authority and permanence as powerful as any force of nature. If it will not adapt, it demands to be acknowledged; and the witnesses of the arrival must establish a relationship with it. Our human need to believe – to attribute meaning, to understand our environment – leads us to make extraordinary attempts to relate to this enigmatic presence, and we fall quickly upon universal patterns of religion, spirituality, faith. We seek affirmation in sharing these beliefs with our neighbours, and attempt to reduce and distill the mystery into something tangible. Communities form as consensus develops, and factions seek to confirm their specific relationship with the visitor by defining their differences from each other.

And what then becomes of us should this visitor depart? Are we willing to accept that what seemed permanent was merely an apparition – that we were fooled, and foolish – or was the power in the shared experience sufficient to outlive the trigger? Will we miss our visitor, or rejoice in the reaction which was catalysed? Was the act of the moment more telling than the subject?

Projected light and thermal-imaging technology were used to create jaw-dropping interactive playing arenas in which human movement triggered spectacular light effects. The games took place simultaneously in three North East UK locations; Gateshead, Sunderland and Middlesbrough. Each area competed against the others in this world-first event.

The games were set out of doors, in large urban spaces, with no pre-prepared participants. The scale of the arenas created a vast aesthetic impact on the urban environments in which they were placed, drawing audiences to them, quite often by chance as people went about their daily lives. Curiosity drew people in, but it was the intelligence of the language within these games which held the public attention and engaged them in problem solving, play and social engagement.

By manipulating time and space within the public arena and blurring the distinction between participant and audience, KMA’s work is opening up vast new environments in which art and audiences meet equally on each other’s terms.

Some video footage from Great Street Games is available here

Strange Attractors (The Anatomy of Dr Tulp) opened in Liverpool in September as part of the inaugural Abandon Normal Devices festival.

The piece is an exploration of relationships and spaces, using the audience as the subject matter, creating an impromptu choreography formed as a response to the natural enquiry and playfulness of the public.

There’s more information and some video from the opening night here.