Break New Ground: Recipient Announced

31 January 2024

Dublin Fringe Festival is delighted to share the news that after a whopping 100+ applications of exceptional quality we have awarded the Break New Ground bursary to an artist developing ambitious new ideas for live performance, Bill Harris. 

The bursaries will provide tailored support towards the creation of a project for a future Dublin Fringe Festival debut with a €4750 bursary, a €750 mentorship allocation and in-kind supports to the value of €2000. 

The many fantastic ideas we read in the application pool for this bursary got us excited for next year’s festival already! 

For the Break New Ground Bursary Award 2024, visual artist Bill Harris will be creating a new piece of work for Dublin Fringe Festival, this coming September. The work in question is an expanded piece of experimental theatre which will exist across multiple venues, streets and platforms in Dublin City Centre. Revolving around ideas of the engaged citizen and pleasure as a regulatory regime, this work will invite the viewer into a game of exploration. Players will be faced with decisions, tasked with performing actions and participation will be equally as important as narrative to this work. 

 

A double image of the same person in similar pose. The person wears a white t-shirt, a dark trousers and a faded pink baseball cap.

Bill Harris is an artist, DJ and organiser concerned with both the sonic and the visual. Their practice, usually beginning with a sound, looks into the politics, actions and people which can contribute to the arc of a particular noise; reflecting on the environments and atmospheres that are created for and by us through these layered relations. With mutual pleasure and moments of insurgence driving their practice, Harris often creates participatory artworks based upon these sonic relations, using a wide range of media including video, performance, sound, new media, craft and installation. 

One of the co-founders of Tender, a queer, nomadic, DIY party which focuses on creating intentional spaces for the community, Harris is simultaneously a resident DJ for Strawberries, and performs in spaces across Ireland and Europe under the alias Bull Horris.