Bodies in Flight: Third Nature – a Sci-fi

Bodies in Flight bring Third Nature – a Sci-fi to Arnolfini on Saturday 7 November, a speculative performance that looks at memory, technology and life in the age of big data. It's a sci-fi piece, so the starting point is a world that isn't quite ours, and from there it works its way into how we remember things and how technology changes the way we live.

Bodies in Flight is the company behind the show, founded by Sara Giddens and Simon Jones in 1989. They've been working for over three decades, and they describe their approach as challenging and re-energising the relationship between audiences, performers and place. That's a good way of saying they don't just put on a show and let you watch from the dark; they're interested in how the people in the room and the space they're in actually shape the experience. They mix movement with new writing and collaborate across art forms and communities, so you're likely to see a few different things coming together on one stage rather than a single, traditional format.

Because it's a speculative piece, the sci-fi element isn't just window dressing. It's the framework they use to ask those questions about memory and big data, and the movement and writing are how they work them out in front of you. If you've seen their work before, you'll recognise that mix of physical performance and text, and if you haven't, this is a good place to start.

It's on Saturday 7 November at Arnolfini in Bristol. Doors open at 19:00, the performance starts at 19:30, and it finishes by 20:30, so it's a fairly tight window if you're planning your evening around it.