It was a trip to Vietnam and Cambodia, following in his father’s footsteps, which first inspired multimedia artist Rachid Ouramdane to make Loin/Far.

His Algerian father had been a soldier in the army, serving in the former Indochina to protect French interests.

“When I was travelling in Cambodia I met someone who described me as an ex-colonial, assuming I was French,” says Rachid. “I was quite struck by that because I realised I was perceived through my French nationality in Cambodia, but when I am in France I see myself as a colonised person.”

He describes the resulting perfor-mance Loin – or Far in English – as: “A self-portrait written with fragments of other people’s stories.”

Loin was written as he travelled and interviewed different people from different generations who had similar experiences, to see how they perceived the heritages of the wars in Indochina, which later went on to become the Vietnam war.

“It is not so much an historical project about the colonial period,” he says. “It is more about dealing with memory or amnesia to escape the past.

“The Vietnamese Boat People who went to the US, when they came back home to Vietnam they realised they had become Americanised. They had no trace of their past. Then there are others who are trying to revive the past. Those are what interested me.

“People often underestimate the impact those histories can have, especially when it is through to a second generation. It still surrounds us and is present in everyday activity.”

This also forms the reason for the piece’s title, an ironic nod to the fact that although an event or conflict can seem far away in terms of time or place, there can still be taboos in families and issues that never get solved.

On stage, Rachid uses his training as a dancer and choreographer to work with video footage, sound and Beats-inspired poetry to explore the ideas thrown up by the show.

“I’m dialoguing with the interviews, there are some metaphorical pieces when I’m swallowed by an image or use a section as a mirror,” says Rachid.

“We often think that something is far away, but if we really look closely we realise they are always quite connected with all these things, or we can identify ourselves with these histories.

“After the show, when I talk to the audience, I realise how much it reveals the relationships everyone has with such subjects. When I do a show in the US the Vietnam aspect is really strong, in France people are more sensitive about Algeria. In Vienna one audience member told me it made him think about his father in the Second World War.”

He has followed a similar path for this later work, creating the show Ordinary Witnesses when he discovered his father had been tortured by the French after returning home from Indochina.

The follow-up to Loin interviews different witnesses to torture and examines the way they look at life and the world, compared with the more naive attitude the rest of us have.

And for his latest project he is planning to examine the phenomenon of climate refugees, forced out of places such as Bangladesh and Africa because of flooding and drought.

*8pm, tickets from £12.50, 01273 709709