Leading York artist heading to Guadalajara

We’re delighted to be heading to Guadalajara with incredibly exciting young York artist, Lydia Cottrell

York Mediale is a key part of the city’s celebration of York as the UK’s first and only UNESCO Creative City of Media Arts. We’re in constant contact with partner cities around the world, from Sapporo in Japan, to Toronto in Canada, to Guadalajara in Mexico. We’ve got some very exciting plans and projects to announce for the festival later this year (21 – 25 October across York), but in the meantime, we were delighted to be asked to nominate an artist from the city to go to Guadalajara, to meet with and build connections with artists, companies and funders internationally.

Lydia Cottrell makes performance, curates, produces, writes and interrogates culture and technology through her work. She’s one half of SLAP, and we’re all incredibly excited about the return of their incredible ‘pay what you can’ festival of performance at York Theatre Royal on Saturday 15th February.

Lydia’s latest personal project explores the representations of gender and hyperreality on the internet – and you can catch her latest project this Saturday, right before she jets off to Mexico! Details here.

LYDIA COTTRELL – ‘LIKE THIS’

Post-Goffman, Post-Reality, Post-Internet, Post-on-Instagram.

Like This (or How I Became the First Ever Black Metal Beauty Influencer) is a performance lecture that explores what it takes to have Influence. It delves into the world of content creation, brand association and recreations of recreations. The lecture bypasses the creeps, defeats the trolls and confronts the commodification of identity.

Along the way, discover how to take the perfect image for online consumption, find out what your online persona is and learn how to stay trve to yourself when reducing your life into a series of little squares.

“Lydia is one of the most exciting young artists in York, in my opinion. She’s a key part of a generation of incredibly talented young artists in the city, and being able to provide them with opportunities to expand their practice and careers internationally, through the UNESCO Creative Cities network, is incredibly exciting.”

Tom Higham

Creative Director, York Mediale

Accompanying Lydia on the trip will be Elijah, our Creative Producer focusing on live programming for the festival this year. Elijah is a DJ, curator, producer and generational talent…He’ll be seeking collaborators, spreading the word about York, and trying to build new opportunities for more creatives to work internationally.

We’re enormously grateful to both the City of Guadalajara and to British Council Mexico for the opportunity and invitation!