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Julia Pond

@juliapond_

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Dance & Political Economy
PhD @kingston.school.of.art (thanks to @technedtp)
Performance @bred.company

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Can’t believe one week has passed since Metabolizer closed with a marathon dance day of 10.5 hours.

Very grateful to @37looestreet for the rich hosting and dialoguing, to everyone aged 8 to 80 (literally!) who came to dance in the pod, or engaged with the Optimizer! companion performance series.

It was a privilege to share space with the Optimizer! artists (in order of appearance)
@manualbrecht
@kyra_norman_ (with guest @angusbalbernie) @heni_hale
@bryonygillard

If you’re just hearing about all this now, Metabolizer is an interactive installation critiquing economic growth and exhaustion through data, and more and more and more dancing. There is an office pod for invisible dancing and a dashboard tracking the real time fluctuations in the data produced by the dancing. It is joyful, exhausting, poignant and a bit crazy (according to reporting from Metabolizer dancers).

Finally this work forms a practical part of the PhD research I have been working on @ksa_research_hub supported by @technedtp

And do get in touch if you’d like to see Metabolizer arrive in your neck of the woods…til then the pod is hibernating … taken in Looe Street by @juliapond_

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Saturday was the second consecutive day of 300 minutes of dancing thanks to some extremely productive KPop Demon Hunters child labour and closed off with some serious moves from @aapiccini

Tomorrow - Wednesday 11th - is the last day of the joyous productivity of The Pod. We need to hit 12 hours. You need to do your bit. Open from 9am. KPIs people. Don't be shy. This is life. by @juliapond_

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This is it! Wednesday March 11 - Metabolizer closes with a 12 hour dance marathon, concluding Optimizer! Performance from @bryonygillard - free but do book with the 🔗 in bio - and the best art hosts at @37looestreet

Join me to dance for 1 minute, 1 hour, or all day and don’t miss the evening performance it’s gonna be special!

From 9am: dance marathon (KPI: 12 hours!)
6pm: bar opens
7pm: performance
Followed by dancing and hangout

#whatsonplymouth taken in Looe Street by @juliapond_

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Don’t miss the LAST Optimizer! Intervention with the fabulous @bryonygillard this Wednesday 11 March.

This is also the CLOSING PARTY of Metabolizer’s time @37looestreet

Grab a free spot with the 🔗 in bio
💦 🪩 💦

Upstream is an essay-performance interweaving domestic plumbing failures, bodily illness, protest and wastewater infrastructure
Upstream is an essay-performance that interweaves domestic plumbing failures, bodily illness, protest and wastewater infrastructure to explore containment, leakage and control. Through humour and discomfort, the performance examines how waste, illness and toxicity are managed, hidden or displaced, and how responsibility is deferred “up (or down) stream.” Foregrounding embodied knowledge and sensory experience,
Upstream questions where care, agency and accountability reside within systems designed to make waste disappear. The performance (15 mins) will be followed by an opportunity for conversation about wastewater and Bryony’s research.

Bryony Gillard is an artist and PhD Candidate at University of Plymouth. Her current research uses artists’ moving image to explore wastewater as an aesthetic, metaphor, material and method. Framed by a multi-disciplinary approach to theory and practice, her work asks what wastewater can teach us about bodies, responsibility and care. Recent projects include a solo exhibition at East Quay, (Somerset, 2026), a commission with Focal Point Gallery (Southend, 2025) and an essay and performance for Mirror Lamp Journal (Dublin, 2025). Her work has been presented nationally and internationally including ESTUARY (Kent), Jerwood Arts (London), Playbill (Amsterdam), Ocean Archive at TBA21 (Venice), Tate St.Ives (Cornwall).

@whatson_plymculture taken in Looe Street by @juliapond_

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Eavesdropping on the archives with @heni_hale @37looestreet

This penultimate Optimizer! Evening brought rich questions and Heni’s work on archives, consent, what embodied research can really do, worker relations and repetition. All through the lens of an embodied, creative engagement with archival footage of a simulation experiment conducted with Jebsen’s merchant navy shipping company in 1977.

Metabolizer is open Friday 6th March and Saturday 7 March and for our closing Wednesday March 11 with our LAST evening encounter featuring the fantastic @bryonygillard and essay performance Upstream (book a free place with the link in bio) taken in Looe Street by @juliapond_

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Cannot wait to host @heni_hale @37looestreet this Wednesday.

This is a free event, but please book a ticket with the link in bio 🔗 💚

Industrial Democracy in Suspension: video performance lecture

🪩Wed 4 March
💥from 6pm gather / bar/ Metabolize
➰7pm performance
🥂Followed by discussion / dancing / hanging out

Through video assemblage and performance practices, artist-researcher Heni Hale shares her encounters with a set of unedited video records of a ‘simulation’ experiment, conducted in 1977 with a merchant navy shipping company Jebsens. The experiment programme, devised with Tavistock Institute of Human Relations action researchers, simulated a ships environment and proposed hypothetical problems to be solved by the group, aiming to develop new decentralised, democratised work systems, to improve conditions, and work relations in the contained environment of industrial sea life. Mobilising a visceral and felt- sense responsivity, Heni tussles with affective impacts of witnessing and touching these suspended fragments of a world seemingly halted in time and heavily defined by a gendered class system. At the same time, she explores the thorny ethics of re-use and mis-use (a term coined by Jaimie Baron, 2021) of archival images, and lack of consent from original participants.

Heni Hale is a movement and performance artist whose practice navigates the space between bodies, histories, and technologies. Through her collective Dog Kennel Hill
Project and current post graduate research at the Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University, she explores how movement can activate archives and reimagine past encounters with automation and industrial systems. Drawing on the
Tavistock Institute’s 20th-century studies, her work embodies and re-enacts historical moments to explore how technological change continues to shape contemporary working lives. She has also served as co-director of Independent Dance in London,
and leads its MA/MFA Creative Practice partnership with Trinity Laban.

Image credit – stills from Borgnes Seminar. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Source:
Wellcome Collection. SA/TIH/B/2/52/13/1 Tavistock Institute of Human Relations taken in Looe Street by @juliapond_

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I can’t believe this installation is at the halfway mark. Metabolizer is open @37looestreet for two more weeks and then our closing event 11 March.

So far our most productive day saw over 4 hours of dancing in the pod. Let’s keep that number growing Plymouth. Watch your dance affect the data in real time.

The Optimizer! Companion performances continue tonight with @bred.company, 4 March with @heni_hale and 11 March with @bryonygillard

@whatson_plymculture #plymouth #whatsonplymouth taken in Looe Street by @juliapond_

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“Who cares if I do performance in public? No one gives a fuck. But I do.” - Pope.L

Dancing solo in the Metabolizer pod can feel a bit like that some days! I love the artist Pope.L’s work and this line, from a @louisianachannel interview not long before he died, has really stuck with me as a reminder to keep giving a fuck, and to soak up all the facets of having placed a work pod in @37looestreet in order to make dancing my work but make it disappear and creating a dashboard to track the data produced by the dancing.

So! I’m still dancing. 126 minutes so far today.
Anyone can join, no experience necessary.

Metabolizer Hours:
Thurs - Sat 10-5
Late opening Wednesday at 1 pm with performances at 6pm - this week @bred.company shares new film and solo performance.
All free but booking links in bio x taken in Looe Street by @juliapond_

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The Optimizer! performance series continues on 25 Feb.

Can’t wait to screen the first preview of @bred.company new film Distributing Dough, a short and typically sticky take on the ethics of patronage commissioned by the Science Museum research project Museums and Industry; Long Histories of Collaboration. This will be a chance to see it in the intimate setting of @37looestreet in Plymouth before an official outing later this year.

I’ll also perform the Manager-festo, a solo about how to stay at your most productive, as a veneer of corporate lingo slowly cracks to reveal fleshier, doughier underbellies.

Plus bar open, general hangouts, etc 🪩

Come through! Book a free spot with the link in bio.

Installation open from 1pm, bar from 6, film & performance at 7.

Amazing film team:
@manualbrecht (performer, creative collaborator)
@ted_dy (film, creative collaborator)
Jess Latowicki: writing, dramaturgy, performance
@heidirustgaard Movement consulting taken in Looe Street by @juliapond_

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"All dances are too long..." So said American Modernist dancer and choreographer, Doris Humphrey, 100 years ago (when a typical full-length dance performance was around 30 minutes)...

🪢🪢🪢

Such a treat to spend time at 37 Looe Street, bringing my work UP, ACROSS AND ALONG into conversation with Julia Pond's thought-provoking, fun-inducing installation, Metabolizer, and anti-scarcity collaboration series, Optimizer! - examining dance, economics, productivity and exhaustion

Between us, me, special guest performer @angusbalbernie and the generous, attentive folks that gathered with us last night generated over 3 hours of movement, and some really rich conversation around dance, time and value. Oh and we had a super micro disco. Because of course

⚡⚡⚡

And! I'm so grateful to Julia for catching this few-seconds glimpse of my solo that began the evening. Heading home from Plymouth feeling encouraged and inspired. Metabolizer continues for 3 more weeks, with some fantastic guest artists... Go get involved!

@juliapond_
@37looestreet

Music heard here by @kathbuckler

🪢🪢🪢 by @juliapond_

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What if your body was the data?
What if dancing counted as work — and work became music?

Metabolizer is now live at 37 Looe Street, and everyone is invited to take part. Created by artist and researcher @juliapond_ this free, interactive installation asks you to step into a private pod and dance however you like — no experience needed, no audience watching.

Your movement is never seen, but it is counted. It becomes sound, data and a growing visual dashboard tracking collective dance-time across the city. It’s playful, thoughtful and surprisingly freeing; a chance to slow down, move your body, and quietly question how we measure value, productivity and growth.

You can drop in, dance for two minutes or twenty, attend an Optimizer! Wednesday evening event, or just spend time with the work. It’s open, welcoming and totally free.

📍 37 Looe Street
🗓 On now until 11 March (Weds to Saturday)
💃 No dance experience required — just curiosity

Come and metabolise Plymouth. #LetsDance #LetsDancePlymouth taken in Looe Street by @juliapond_

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