Actress – St John-at-Hackney, London 29/08/13

Part of a summer season of cross-platform events in St John-at- Hackney, tonight sees underground techno-head Actress in collaborate with choreographer Eddie Peake and visual artist Nic Hamilton.

A much-respected figure in the very British dub-steppy techno scene (think Burial, Kode9, Lone) only recently did I discover that Actress is actually a bloke, namely Darren Cunningham. With new album R.I.P following 2010’s groundbreaking Splazsh, Cunningham’s profile has risen recently having been signed to Ninja Tune. Wanting to expand his music in collaboration with other artistic mediums Cunningham founded the Werkhaus project, part of his own Werkdiscs label, which presents tonight’s one-off performance. And it’s a marked departure from the club and warehouse raves where Actress made his name.

Titled A Shared Cultural Memory tonight explores “the decomposition of faith and truth” and consists of four minimal, brooding soundscapes with Hamilton’s visual projections and six dancers throwing shapes on the central floorspace. Whirring images of London’s skyline, bleached-out fragments of rubble and steel girders throw pretty patterns on the back wall, while Actress himself is menacingly obscure in his black hood. However, for label-literate music nerds the words “decomposition” and “decay” are hardly truthful definitions of our urban lives. The audiences ‘shared cultural memory’ is not the redundant social function of the church, nor wider urban decay. It is more the deconstruction and eventual merging of the boundaries between religious, musical and artistic spaces.

And what is the dominant ‘shared cultural memory’ that elevates tonight’s performance beyond mere abstract electronica-versus-conceptual dance? It’s our contemporary experience of going to church – meaning, churches that aren’t mere churches anymore. Nowadays they double-up as folksy gig venues (Islington’s Union Chapel, St George’s in Bristol), established art galleries (St Pancras Crypt, the Zabludowicz Collection in Chalk Farm), eco-exhibition spaces (St Luke’s in Liverpool), or else have been wholly converted into yuppie flats.

St Johns-at-Hackney is very much a fully-functioning place of worship and has been for 700 years, embracing ‘inclusivity’ and ‘diversity’ as they open their doors to everything from dub-step to tai-chi, from Tim Hecker to alcoholics anonymous. Indeed tonight’s St John Session is ‘inclusivity’ and ‘diversity’ in action, as Hamilton’s future-apocalypse swishes and swoons over the Ten Commandments plaque and biblical engravings on the wall.

Does it matter that our ‘shared cultural memory’ is a kind of default atheism that only goes to church when there’s techno and dancers writhing about on the floor? No, because tonight’s performance works so well because it includes the religious setting. Actress’ ricocheting sonics, Hamilton’s urban abstractions and the dancers’ frenetic movements work with the space, not in spite of it. Here audience and performer share the same floor, each dancer having to skip over a trailed leg and the odd beer can. Equally the music and visuals harmonise within the architectural space, built in 1792, inducing a lovely meditative – it not exactly religious – feeling that’s shared by the whole audience. Or are we a congregation?

Photograph by Jara Moravec / Inverted Audio.