A PERFORMANCE piece praised at the Venice Biennale will feature in a mini festival exploring the physical body, artificial intelligence and the post-human.

Slug Horizons, a performance duet by artists Florence Peake and Eve Stainton centring on the intimacy of their relationship, was one of the most “thrilling” pieces at last month’s prestigious exhibition, according to international arts journal Art In America.

The piece will open Present Futures, a weekend of performances, workshops and discussions intended to “push the boundaries of what dance is”.

The festival is curated by Colette Sadler, a choreographer whose research and practice often explores possible futures.

Premiered in February, her Ritualia, a commission by Scottish Dance Theatre, was an androgynous, hyper-modern re-imagining of 1920s ballet Les Noces.

Sadler, who is based between Berlin and Glasgow, says many artists across different disciplines are looking at ideas around the future and how technology will continue to impact on our lives.

“Artists are experiencing the world and society that they live in,” Sadler says. “As my daughter said to me the other day: ‘Mummy, everyone has a phone nowadays.’ Most of us can now hardly remember what it was like not to have a device.

“Clearly we’re on a road with technology that is not stopping, and you can see concerns about that, about how we perceive ourselves as humans and how we interact with the natural world, in the work of many artists.”

Dance has particular potential in expressing our relationships with technology, Sadler says.

“As a dancer, as a performer, we’re experiencing the world in a particular way relating to movement and perception and embodiment,” she says. “I think the relationship with technology is particularly relevant to dance when we’re looking at things like virtual realms and disembodiment. Dance is deemed almost a primitive way of expressing the body’s natural, embodied power. In looking at the future of technology and the body, dance is certainly something of interest, even if it’s speculative.”

Other Scottish and international artists appearing at Present Futures include Edinburgh artist and choreographer Mark Bleakley, Polish performer Ola Maciejewska and three recipients of the festival’s micro bursary scheme: performance duo Annie Lowry Thomas and Anna Danielwicz who explore art under capitalism in their piece Performore! and Alex Miller whose Holy Motor blends myth and machines to imagine the future.

SADLER says there’s a prevailing mood of apprehension about the future, from having spoken with a number of artists involved in her festivals.

“There is a feeling that we’re living through a dystopic moment,” she says. “Because of the impact of environmental change and a sense of things not getting any better, the global political situation in terms of Trump and the rise of fascism, there is this fear of the future. Definitely dystopia feels like something people are trying to deal with and channeling into their work somehow.”

We’d be mistaken to get too despondent, she cautions: developments in medicine and social attitudes mean we live much freer and healthier lives than at any other point in human history.

And perhaps there will still be a place for humans in a post-human world. The point is, it’s all up for grabs.

Sadler says the festival grew from Fictional Matters, a multi-disciplinary event she hosted in 2016, and from Present Futures Berlin, which took place earlier this year.

In Berlin she presented two new works which will also feature in Glasgow: Body A, a video installation collaboration with German artist Mikko Gaestel, and dance piece Temporary Store.

Leah Marojevic will perform an excerpt from Temporary Store twice on June 8 at the city’s Gallery of Modern Art, where Body A will also feature throughout June 8 and 9.

The remaining bulk of the programme, which is presented by adventurous producers Feral Arts, will be presented across town at the Centre for Contemporary Art.

There, American composer and choreographer Colin Self, who also featured at Present Futures Berlin, will present XOIR, a vocal workshop for “individuals to connect with voice and vocality on an individual and collective level”.

Self will also join Sadler, Peake, Stainton, Maciejewska and Dr Laura Bissell of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Hybrids and Visionaries, a panel discussion considering the politics surrounding bodily representation.

IT’S one of three free talks to feature at Present Futures, alongside a discussion examining “past futures” and another titled Encountering Otherness, in which Stewart Laing will give insight into Them!, a new performance event for the National Theatre of Scotland which premiers at Tramway later in June.

Sadler wants Present Futures to help encourage discussions between artists, and between artists and audiences.

“It’s the same as with Fictional Matters, to have performances as well as talks sharing ideas around the themes in the work,” she says. “I remember doing at one where someone asked: ‘So what exactly is the post-human?’ which is great to have someone say essentially: ‘Hold on, what exactly are you talking about?’”

Sadler adds: “It’s not a mystery, it more about using art as a bridge by which to communicate and talk about things, an imaginary future. And it’s important to realise it can be a positive imaginary.”