Have you been contemplating a mini-break? Don’t waste money on overpriced buses to distant airports: get yourself a train ticket to Birmingham and indulge in the supernow atmosphere of Fierce Festival. The international festival of live art is taking the city over between 2 and 12 October: expect underage restaurant critics, former and failed pianists, Syrian oral histories, Forced Entertainment celebrating their 30^th birthday and much, much more.

With almost twenty years behind it, Fierce is resisting the temptation of settling for the same old. Instead, the festival keeps refuelling the intense give and take relationship with its hometown, promoting exciting live art and collision of styles, themes, contexts and ideas. Plus, it’s a celebration of supernow. And here to discuss the supernow (amongst other things) is Laura McDermott, one of the two Artistic Directors behind the festival.

Run Riot: Fierce has two joint Artistic Directors, you and Harun Morrison. What does working in a duo bring to the festival?

Laura McDermott: I think working as a duo brings a very different quality to ideas and to the tone of the programme overall.  The festival is curated from the space between Harun and I.  We expand each other’s knowledge and challenge each other so that ideas stretch further or become more robust.  Years ago Ant Hampton told me about a text by Heinrich von Kleist called On the Gradual Production of Thoughts Whilst Speaking. This is a real inspiration for our approach - so much development of our work happens in conversation. Working as a duo also doubles our capacity for rooting out new voices from unlikely places, which is an important role that Fierce plays.

Run Riot: From start-up artist led initiatives to National Portfolio Organisations – there has been a proliferation of theatre and performance art festivals over the last several years. What makes them such a popular ‘choice’ for programmers and audiences alike?

Laura McDermott: It’s very interesting to experience the intensity that festivals offer.  As a curator it’s great to imagine the journey from morning until late at night and what additional qualities that might bring.  Works sitting alongside each other resonate or rub up against one another. We are fascinated by that friction - by the energy and the conversation it ignites. I think the very best performance festivals deliberately make space for context, conviviality and debate around the work – we are lucky to work closely with many of them: SPILL (Ipswich, UK), In Between Time (Bristol, UK) and Next Wave (Melbourne, Australia). 

Run Riot:  Supernow: it’s one of Fierce’s key words, referring to emerging art forms, new ways of seeing and thinking and an ‘intense sense of presence or awareness in a moment’. Let’s focus on the last meaning: how does Fierce echo the zeitgeist?

Laura McDermott: Yes – it’s a key word and a totally made-up word, which we are trying to get into the dictionary with guerrilla tactics.  You can help us by dropping it into conversation now and then! The political potency of live art is often derived from that ‘intense sense of presence’.  My favourite works of art have a way of creating a rupture that can help you see your current moment from a different perspective.  We have never curated Fierce Festival around a proposed theme – but the theme if anything is the zeitgeist.  The festival is an attempt to create a space where we might capture, comprehend, question or challenge the spirit of our times.  In this year’s programme I think The Cyborg Foundation capture ‘supernow’ – they really question what it means to be human in the age of technological possibility we live in now.   

Run Riot:  Rather than (only) importing pieces that originated in other cities, Fierce has a reputation of being thoroughly embedded in Birmingham. What role does the city play in your curating process and the events in this year’s programme?

Laura McDermott: Birmingham is an incredible canvas. The city is full of unusual buildings and subcultures and we have used these as a provocation for the festival programme over the years.  We’ve sited work in the old science museum, in a former metal factory, on canals and under Spaghetti Junction.  Sometimes particular sites assert themselves with a sense of urgency – like when the brutalist Central Library was closing in 2012.  This year we are presenting a series of events and installations at the beautiful Victorian Grade II* listed Moseley Road Swimming Baths, which are under threat of closure. The Croatian artist Dina Rončević is deconstructing a car with a group of 12-year-old girls in a car mechanic’s garage in Digbeth. The project examines gendered spaces and connects with the city’s heritage of manufacture as well as its current situation as the city with the most youthful population in Europe.

Run Riot: Dance is on the offensive this year – at the very least the festival features more of the art form than the previous editions. What made contemporary dance resonate so well with the Fierce ethos?

Laura McDermott: Many of the artists we have worked with in the past – like Kate McIntosh or Eva Meyer Keller – trained in dance, although you might not always be able to tell from the form of their work.  I think internationally, ‘dance’ can function in much the same way as ‘live art’ functions in the UK – it is an umbrella term or cultural strategy within which artists are given freedom to mash things up and create new forms.  Dana Michel’s Yellow Towel (we are presenting the UK Premiere with DanceXchange) is extraordinary – she creates such a weird, distinctive language of images and movement, exploring racial stereotypes. They created a special prize to recognise it at ImpulsTanz this year.

Run Riot: You introduced festival-specific commissions to Fierce. Can you tell us about how the festival works with artists? What does the process – from pinpointing an idea to bringing it to its final form  - entail?

Laura McDermott: It can vary so much – there isn’t a set formula.  Firstly, we are always on the lookout for interesting sites and possible contexts for performance within the city.  Or thinking about groups of people we’d be interested to collaborate with.  Similarly we are always looking for artists whose practice might connect with Birmingham in some way.  Then it’s time to start the process – lots of dialogue – emails and skype, hopefully a visit to walk around the city, matchmaking with presenting partners.  At its best, the final presentation of the work in the festival is the celebration of the end of a journey and the artists feel like they are having a homecoming rather than crash-landing in an alien city they won’t get to see or explore.

Run Riot: Fierce is an Unlimited Ally; can you tell us about this collaboration? (If you missed it, give Run Riot's blog on Unlmited a read.)

Laura McDermott: This has been a fantastic collaboration.  Unlimited aims to continue the momentum for disability-led arts that was generated by the 2012 Cultural Olympiad commissioning programme.  Working as an Ally organisation we’ve had loads of dialogue and support from the core team.  We’ve discovered new artists and we’ve pushed ourselves further in the way we do things organisationally – everything from how we communicate with artists to how we design our website.  We’ll be showing work by the vacuum cleaner,Jo Bannon and Ian Johnston & Gary Gardiner. On the final day of the festival (Sunday 12 October) Aaron Williamson, Noemi Lakmaier and Nicola Canavan will present some of their research and development of new ideas funded by Unlimited. That is followed by the launch of Manuel Vason’s brilliant new publication Double Exposures (photographic collaborations with live artists), which features all the artists from the Unlimited Salon.

Run Riot:  From 2015 the festival is switching to a biennial model; what are the reasons behind this decision?

Laura McDermott: The biennial model feels more suited to a performance festival that aims for distinctiveness in relation to place.  It will allow artists to propose new ideas for specific sites and for those working with relational practices to give the care and time that those projects require. The magical energy of a festival comes from the fact that it is temporary and transient. I think this can be even more so with a biennial – it’s something you have to wait for, something that has time to incubate before it explodes into life. 

Fierce Festival is Birmingham's international festival of live art, in venues across the city from 2 - 12 October 2014