Photo by Joe Mazza @Bravelux
Carolyn Defrin is an artist, researcher and facilitator born in the US, currently based between Austria and the UK.
With an early career in Chicago theatre and community development, she worked with several ensemble theatres, schools and organisations to develop a highly collaborative and interdisciplinary practice.
Since moving to London in 2012, she has been creating work across video, installation, theatre, music and dance in theatres, galleries, site-specific venues, schools and community contexts. With a practice that is rooted in creative conversations about socially relevant content, her work has focused on community cohesion, migration, identity politics and women's empowerment. Often using audio-recordings of these conversations in her practice, she makes work that aims to illuminate, activate and humanise complex issues through expressive and poetic means. Her work has been presented and/or commissioned by The Barbican, The Yard, Ovalhouse, The Albany, performing.borders, LADA, Westfield Shopping Centre, Borough Road Gallery and Camden People's Theatre. Outside of the UK, she has created and presented work in the US, Germany, Greece, Iceland and Tanzania.
She holds a PhD in co-creating culture and policy from London South Bank University and an MA in performance design from Central Saint Martins. She is also co-founder of Kissing Project- a multimedia storytelling platform that celebrates diverse humanity through audio-recorded stories that begin with a kiss.
Currently, Carolyn is a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Graz, researching and developing work about the role of art in border zones as part of a project exploring the elasticity of Europe's Southern Borders (specifically in Greece, Tunisia and the Canary Islands.)
PUBLICATIONS
2023 Transformation across time and space Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, Volume 14
2023 Reframing migrant narratives through arts practice and its dissemination, Arts and Refugees: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (Vol. 2)
Centre for Ethnic and Migration Studies, Liege Université
2021 Third Nature: Embodiment of borders and thinking beyond: Surviving despite capitalism, Dr. Elena Marchevska, Dr. Carolyn Defrin,
Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices
2021 Project Finding Home catalogue
2021 Intra-vulnerabilities: An artistic strategy for co-creating culture and policy with communities, artists and funders, London South Bank University
2018 Make More Art; An arts practice based policy for co-creating culture, Hammersmith United Charities
2018 'Cabinet of Generosities: 'The Kissing Project' Performance Research Journal, vol. 23, no. 6
2013 The Monster Weekly created with John Francisco and Kyle Bice
PRESS
2022 Digital Art transforms Children's services at Tessa Jowell Health Centre, Dulwich Picture Gallery
2021 The joy of cats, the power of periods and #FreeBritney, Standard Issue Podcast
2021 Carolyn Defrin Talks about 28 Days Greater, Theatre Bubble
2021 Review: 28 Days Greater at Camden People's Theatre, LouReviews
2020 Interview with PhD student, Carolyn Defrin, London South Bank University, School for the Arts and Creative Industries
2019 Kissing Rebellion, Exeunt Magazine
2019 Kissing Rebellion, a very special piece of theatre The Spy in the Stalls
2009 Carolyn in the City, Timeout Chicago