Autopsy Award
in partnership with Summerhall
The Autopsy Award (a collaboration between Summerhall and Feral) aims to help artists working in Scotland who make boundary-pushing performance work to undertake an Edinburgh Fringe run. It offers a supported deal with a cash award for the successful artist. Each year we look to support work that meets the following criteria:
Brave experimental performance
New work
Artists living and working in Scotland
Artists who are available to undertake an Edinburgh Fringe run and with the capacity to take advantage of the opportunity to showcase work to press and promoters.
For more information on the Autopsy Award visit: www.summerhall.co.uk/summerhall-performance-programme/autopsy-award/
Previous Autopsy Award winners are:
2014: Greg Sinclair, I Do, Do I
I Do, Do I is a series of Fluxus inspired musical scores written by children and performed by a man. Grown up sensibilities are left at the door as we join award winning artist and performer Greg Sinclair for a musical journey through the whims and wonders of childish imagination.
2015: Ellie Dubois, Ringside
Ringside. A girl on a trapeze. The ghost of every glamorous girl you have ever seen on a trapeze high up in the big top, performing to the roar of the crowd. But she’s up close in this intimate one on one aerial performance made for your eyes only.
2015: Mona Bozdog, Lost in Transition
Lost in Transition looks at Romania’s decretei: children born as a result of Ceausescu’s 770 Decree that forbade contraception and abortions. More than one million decretei have emigrated from Romania in search of a better life. This is the story of one in many.
2016: FK Alexander, (I Could Go On Singing) Over the Rainbow
With live accompaniment from Glasgow-based noise band Okishima Island Tourist Association, FK Alexander sings along to the recording of the last time Judy Garland ever sang Over The Rainbow, four months before her death. Stand hand in hand with FK, and witness others do the same. This performance is an intimate interactive live experience of undivided attention and love, for an audience of 20 at a time.
2016: + Mamoru Iriguchi, 4D Cinema
Sporting a screen and a projector around his face, Mamoru Iriguchi turns himself into a mobile cinema. He explores what is live and what is pre-recorded, fixed eternally on film, and looks at what liveness means when technology blurs actual and virtual realities.
2017: Amy Conway, Super Awesome World
Join Amy on a videogame adventure like no other. Battle the minions of fear, loneliness and despair using your collective powers of human connection and emotional resilience. Only together can we slay the Darkness! Become Amy’s allies in an interactive experience that asks difficult questions and quests for elusive sparks of joy in the deep dark multi-user dungeons of the soul. Super Awesome World explores, through the prism of gaming, what depression is like and what it is like to fight it.
2018: Katy Dye, Babyface
Hey baby! Welcome to a world of knee socks, bunches, lollipops, bubblegum and models adopting the childlike expressions of six-year-old girls. A daring exploration into the paradox of living in a society that continues to infantilise women. In this brave and outlandish performance a grown woman attempts to be your baby to discover if innocence really is as sexy as we’re told it is.
2019: Leyla Josephine, Daddy Drag
Daddy Drag is a show about dads, good dads, daft dads and dads who are not very good dads at all. How do the relationships with our fathers affect us for the rest of our lives?
2022: Zinnia Oberski 'Dreams of the Small Gods'
Dreams of the Small Gods tells the story of the awakening of Wild Woman. Naked, unaware and unselfconscious, she explores her surroundings, more animal than human. Her growing consciousness attracts the attention of a creature from the spirit world, a primal deity who sparks her curiosity and compels her to transform. She changes her physicality, drawing power from the merging of animal, human and spirit self. Inspired by the timeless wisdom of faerie-tales, mythology and ancient ritual, Dreams of the Small Gods is a blend of aerial circus, masked ritual and performance art.
2023: Katrine Turner 'An alternative helpline for the end of the world'
In 2020, Katrine Turner found herself newly unemployed and took up a temporary contract as an outsourced call handler on the Coronavirus Response Helpline. Handlers used an algorithm of 'yes' or 'no' questions to “diagnose” the problem of the caller. From this experience, Katrine created her own helpline for future catastrophes. Book a phone call to the Alternative Helpline for a personal diagnosis or watch the performance live in the Old Box Office in the Summerhall foyer. Each phone call will lead to an outcome recommended by a computer algorithm - a piece of advice for the end of the world.