WAKING UP IN SOMEBODY ELSE’S BED Thinking about Live Art in unfamiliar places Live Art UK Associates Gathering Friday 22 June 2012 10.30 – 18.00
Welcome to WAKING UP IN SOMEBODY ELSE’S BED, the first annual convening of Live Art UK members with an expanded list of invited Associates. This is a gathering for everyone interested in exploring new possibilities for the presentation of Live Art and experimental performance in the UK and beyond.
Live Art is a many-headed monster; a diverse community of artists and an extraordinary array of forms and practices. As such it is uniquely positioned to swim across the many streams of the present British art scene, through all manner of independent and institutional theatres, galleries, festivals and environments. Whilst the collection of organisations that constitute the core membership of Live Art UK demonstrate the range of contexts in which that work is already thriving, we believe that there is incredible potential to be even bolder, braver and more imaginative in the homes we find for this work.
We hope today will be an event where people with a passion or a curiosity about Live Art can think about under-acknowledged and unfamiliar contexts in which this work might thrive, where ideas and models of best practice can be shared, where connections and collaborations can be made, and where we can all map the current and future landscape of Live Art in the UK.
Today’s invited Associates represent a wide cross section of presenters and producers from across the UK who engage with Live Art in some way, ranging from major festivals and institutions to small artist-led initiatives. Other invitees include Arts Council England and other funders, and key representatives from Higher Education.
Live Art UK is a national consortium of 21 venues, promoters and facilitators who collectively represent a range of practices and are concerned with all aspects of the development and promotion of the Live Art sector.
Current core members of Live Art UK are: The Arches, Arnolfini, Artsadmin, BAC, The Basement, the Bluecoat, Chapter Arts Centre, Chelsea Theatre, Colchester Arts Centre, Compass Live Art, Fierce Festival, Forest Fringe, hÅb, home live art, Inbetween Time Productions, LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre), Live Art Development Agency, Live at LICA (Nuffield Theatre Lancaster), New Work Network, Theatre Bristol, Wunderbar.
Live Art UK is directed and coordinated by the Live Art Development Agency. www.liveartuk.org 1 WAKING UP IN SOMEBODY ELSE’S BED
11.0 0 For a venue like the Bluecoat, Introductions and welcomes with its unusual formal and Lois Keidan and CJ Mitchell, informal, indoor and outdoor, Live Art Development Agency/Live Art UK intimate and very public David Micklem and David Jubb, BAC spaces, Live Art represents a rich and unpredictable 11.20 intersection between art Artist presentation practices, which makes it for Stacy Makishi us well suited for engaging with new audiences. 11.25 The Bluecoat Live Art & Technology A panel considering examples of the ways artists working with Live Art are using digital media as a creative platform and to Any arts venue worth its salt engage with new audiences. (though I’ve never really Ju Row Farr, Blast Theory understood that expression) Boo Chapple, FACT needs its own imagination, its James Early, Lucky PDF dreamcatcher, its playmaker Panel Chair: Harun Morrison, Fierce (Paul Scholes), its philosophy, its integrity. Colchester Arts 11.55 Centre without Live Art Artist Presentation wouldn’t exist. Geraldine Pilgrim Colchester Arts Centre
12.00 Live Art & City Limits A panel considering examples of the ways artists working with Live Art are exploring rural, or non-metropolitan, locations and contexts as creative sites and to engage with new audiences. Matt Ball, National Theatre Wales Amelia Beavis-Harrison, Lincoln Art Programme, Gary Winters, Lone Twin Panel Chair: Anthony Roberts, Colchester Arts Centre
12.30 Artist Presentation Richard Dedomenici
12.40 Live Art & Activism/Interventions A panel considering examples of the ways artists working with Live Art are using activist and interventionist strategies as creative platforms and to provoke debates amongst wnew audiences. Aaron Williamson & Katherine Araniello (The Disabled Avant-Garde) Tania El-Khoury, artist – ON FILM Kevin Smith, PLATFORM Panel Chair: Andy Field, Forest Fringe
13.10 Artist Presentation Dickie Beau
2 13.15 LUNCH BREAK
14.15 Artist Presentation Sylvia Rimat (via Skype)
14.20 Live Art & Main stages A panel considering examples of the ways artists working with Live Art are increasingly embracing the possibilities of main stages and ‘mainstream’ contexts as creative Hunt & Darton Café platforms and to engage with new audiences. 16.45 - 18.00 Louise Jeffreys, Barbican Emma Gladstone, Sadlers Wells “If there had not been any Lyn Gardner, critic cafes, there would have been Panel Chair: Mark Ball, LIFT no Jean-Paul Sartre.” Boris Vian 14.50 Artist Presentation “We love good food and drink Harminder Singh Judge and the social occasions that are created by this.” 15.00 Hunt & Darton Live Art & Festivals/Spectacles A panel considering examples of the ways artists working Hunt & Darton Café is a pop with Live Art and experiential practices are responding to up café and interactive the new multi-disciplinary contexts of festival culture, and art installation, a place of the possibilities of spectacle and mass participation, as a engagement, spontaneity, creative platform and to engage with new audiences. action, artists and great food Emma Underhill, UP Projects & drink. All encompassing Helen Marriage, Artichoke hosts Hunt & Darton introduce Clare Patey, artist/curator their kind of ‘good’ service. Panel Chair: Laura Godfrey Isaacs, Home Live Art The food served, the people serving, the décor, the 15.30 profit/loss account, all are Artist Presentation considered and presented Brian Lobel as Art. A full programme of Artists as waiters serve 15.35 food like Battenberg and Live Art & Intergenerational/Participatory practices the roast dinner sandwich A panel considering examples of the ways artists working signature dish. Events can with Live Art are involving collaborators from all generations include BuggerBingo, their and the ways they are approaching ideas of participation slant on the much-loved as a creative platform and to engage with new audiences. game. This is serious business; Barby Asante, artist appetites will be satisfied in Joshua Sofaer, artist more ways than one. Rachel Anderson, Artangel Panel Chair: Ilana Mitchell, Wunderbar Hunt & Darton Café was recently presented for four 16.05 weeks in Cambridge in May General discussion 2012 as part of the Live Art Collective East programme, 16.45 – 18.00 supported by the National Afternoon tea Lottery through Arts Council Hunt & Darton Café England’s Grants for the Arts. It heads to Edinburgh with the support of Escalator East this August for the full run of the Fringe festival. 3 Strange routes A note about Live Art By Tim Etchells
When the ICA announced the closure of its LIVE ART programme in October 2008, Ant Hampton and I decided to put together an imaginary programme of performance events for the building and to announce them on a new website with a downloadable PDF brochure. You can still see the site online - http://www.anthampton.com/trueriches.html
Several things interested us in this mischievous, unilateral and unsanctioned venture. In one way, we wanted to celebrate the possibilities of Live Art by inviting a range of very different artists to offer projects real and imagined, possible and impossible, for the spaces at the ICA. Secondly, I think we were very interested in the energy and artistic potential of works created only as proposals – combinations of text and images which invited readers to imagine the works described, creating virtual performance events that only had life in the imagination of those encountering them. For both of us, this idea of virtual or imagined performance has been, and continues to be, a powerful one in thinking about live work in the 21st century – you see it in many of my works as a solo artist and in many of the projects I’ve made with Forced Entertainment, including the new work The Coming Storm; you see it in the many interactive solo projects Ant has done and in our collaboration for library spaces, The Quiet Volume. Indeed, we know from our experience in many different kinds of making, that the viewer’s engagement and participation (imaginative or otherwise) is what makes art exciting and vital, and following this understanding we’ve both found ways to explore the potential of work that is radically incomplete without a viewer or spectator to encounter, animate, imagine or dynamise it. Art is, at the end of the day, not best seen as a complete or completed statement but rather as an offer of something into a space or conversation – a kind of speaking, or perhaps, the creation of a new space into which speaking is invited.
Finally of course, though our project took the form of a set of virtual or imagined performances it was also, in its own way, a protest action in the real world – a manifest protest against the ICA’s decision and a public insistence that there really was (and is) a vital, intelligent edge and importance to the area of Live Art and performance. As a protest in the real world corralling the imaginary, the work was effective – enjoyable confusion and debate flowered around the project and it took weeks for the emails to subside – people joining the conversation about what was happening in the ICA, or asking that they too be included next time Ant and I were for some mysterious reason programming events there. And of course
4 things opened up in the real world because of the project – so when the ICA, months later, were backtracking slightly on their negative conception of Live Art it was to myself and Ant that they came, inviting us to programme a long intensive weekend of performances, debates and presentations. It certainly wasn’t the six-figure programme of new commissions True Riches had conjured in the space of imagination but it was a chance to bring together 30 or 40 artists and an engaged public for a weekend of new work and ideas.
Extrapolating from this small adventure, I’m inclined to think very much about the links between imagined space and real space, between imagined and actual action, between imagined change and real change. For me, the border between these things is a soft and porous one, and art I think, perhaps Live Art especially, has a unique capacity to open that border – on the level of individuals, and on the level of the wider culture. From small acts in quite specific local contexts, to ambitious national or international projects, to events in the digital sphere, what continues to excite me about Live Art is its capacity to open space, to open dialogue and to create a ground for change. Sometimes Live Art goes by what appears to be a strange or circuitous route – from virtual to real, for example – but at this point in time, at the start of the 21st century after all, the most effective and inspiring route from A to B may not be the fastest or the straightest.
Tim Etchells, on the road between Sheffield and Zurich, June 2012. www.forcedentertainment.com
5 Live Art is… By Andy Field
· Live Art is not a discipline. It is the space between disciplines. It is the fractures in the categories we construct for art. Live Art is a celebration of those fractures, the people who create them and the people who fall into them. Live Art is an encouragement for people to continue to erode sometimes playfully sometimes fiercely always politically the recognisable shapes that art takes on stages in galleries and elsewhere. · Live Art exists as a way to accommodate the unpredictability of artists. It is a way of saying we want to be surprised. A way of making space for performances without needing to know in advance what they will look like and how they will be made. Live Art is a home for deviant artists and fugitive practices. It is an answer to the question ‘what is it?’ when you cannot think of any other. · Live Art is an art that paints with bodies and time. Sometimes it uses the artist’s body and sometimes the audience’s. It is bodies in unlikely locations and unlikely positions. It is people in a room together feeling the sound of their own breathing and people navigating through unfamiliar landscapes. Live Art is a fascination with playing in time and with the body not simply as a tool but as a material. · Live Art is a concern with the present moment. Both the present moment you are experiencing as your eyes follow the contours of the lines on this page and the present moment we are all living through its turmoils and its inequalities and its fragile details. Live Art dismantles the world in the hope we will figure out a better way to put it back together. ·
6 Who’s who Live Art UK core members
The Arches Live Art should strive to The Arches is housed within seven Grade A-listed Victorian be a clash of multiple railway arches in Glasgow city centre, and is both an arts perspectives, a cacophony receiving and production house with an international of voices, resisting dogma reputation as an exciting hub of ground-breaking creativity. - perhaps resonating with www.thearches.co.uk Samuel R. Delaney’s notion of “multi-chambered Arnolfini computers, macrosocial Based in Bristol, Arnolfini is one of the UK’s major contemporary structure, fragmentary social arts spaces combining galleries, live, dance, film, literature and portraiture.” education programmes, and presenting the bi-annual festival Artsadmin Inbetween Time. www.arnolfini.org.uk BAC’s mission is to invent Artsadmin the future of theatre. It is an Based in London, Artsadmin is a unique producing and ambitious goal. Thankfully presenting organisation for contemporary artists, working failure is allowed. Some might locally, nationally and internationally. Artsadmin runs say that failure is inevitable. an education programme, a Summer School and offers But despite the tough task we various support resources and services for artists including have given ourselves there is a a free advisory service, our weekly e-digest, mentoring and spirit behind our mission which development programmes and a bursary scheme. is inspiring and can focus our www.artsadmin.co.uk efforts – it is about questioning established approaches BAC to making, presenting and Based in an old town hall in the heart of Battersea, BAC is engaging with performance renowned for making some of the most cutting-edge new and it is about theatre that theatre in the UK. Its mission is to invent the future of theatre, radically challenges the way integrating artist development with a programme of theatre, we look at the world. Very participation and events, in a place that enables complicity, often when we are looking for brokers new connections between communities, and where risk this spirit we find it in practices and adventure are celebrated. that might be called Live Art. www.bac.org.uk BAC
The Basement Located in the heart of Brighton, The Basement is the South East’s leading purveyor of innovative and experimental performance. Presenting a programme of leading national and international artists alongside the Brighton’s most exciting experimental performers, The Basement is a vibrant hub for all things subversive and idiosyncratic. The Basement has a structured programme of support for a community of Supported and Associated Artists who develop and present new work in the venue. www.thebasement.uk.com
7 The Bluecoat Forest Fringe is a square peg Based in Liverpool, the Bluecoat is a combined arts centre of an organisation, made located in a 300-year old building in central Liverpool, up of unconventional artists presenting a year round programme of exhibitions and live art, and fugitive practices. Live music, literature, dance, and participative projects, much of Art gives us a way of talking it delivered in partnership. Housing a creative community of about ourselves and talking to artists, designers, shops and cafes, it is a creative hub for the other people. It’s a common city and hosts festivals such as DaDaFest, Liverpool Arabic Arts language; a shared look and Festival and Liverpool Biennial. a nod of understanding. It’s www.thebluecoat.org.uk a way of making ourselves and our artists feel a part Chapter Arts Centre of something bigger than Based in Cardiff, Chapter is Wales’ flagship centre for the ourselves. contemporary arts with an all year round programme Forest Fringe of performance, cinema and visual arts from Wales and internationally. www.chapter.org It’s a kind of compulsion Chelsea Theatre I can’t escape, maybe it Based in West London, Chelsea Theatre is dedicated to derives from an upbringing commissioning, producing and presenting the most innovative that avoided traditional artists, both nationally and internationally. We are dedicated celebrations - for some to fostering new voices, with specific attention to Live Art, and strange reason I feel the host a dedicated community programme of complementary need to create events and workshops, activities and events. moments, to fill spaces with www.chelseatheatre.org.uk things that shouldn’t be there, to enter people’s lives with Colchester Arts Centre random occurrences that Based in Essex, Colchester Arts Centre is housed in a converted make them think twice and church and presents a year round programme of performing to see imagery in theatres arts, specialising in Live Art. that isn’t pretending to be www.colchesterartscentre.com anything it isn’t. hÅb Compass Live Art Based in Leeds, Compass Live Art aims to further develop Live Art in Yorkshire and the Humber, bringing together a critical mass of Live Art activity to strengthen and sustain the ambitions, diversity and vitality of the art form. Established in 2010, Compass encourages new work, new conversations and new audiences. www.compassliveart.org.uk
Fierce Festival Based in Birmingham, Fierce produces an annual international festival of Live Art in venues across the West Midlands and year round education and professional development programmes. www.wearefierce.org
Forest Fringe Based in London, Forest Fringe is a growing community of artists working together to explore new ways of supporting and presenting unconventional performance work at the Edinburgh Festival and beyond. www.forestfringe.co.uk
8 hÅb Why Live Art? Because life is Based in Manchester, hÅb is a producer, developer and brief and fragile. Art at its best advocate of contemporary performance, live art and sited reminds you of this. Live Art work in the North West. greenroom’s key partner for over a at its best rubs your nose in it. decade, hÅb aims to maintain its performance legacy, working Screaming right in your face, it in collaboration with a range of venues to produce showing beautifully, seductively pierces opportunities, platforms and artist development projects like your armour to remind you emergency, Turn, Hazard and Works Ahead and, from 2012 to that, for this moment, you are present a new public-facing brand: Word of Warning, a regular really here, and you are truly, bulletin and peripatetic programme of contemporary live work urgently alive. in Manchester and beyond. Inbetween Time Productions www.habarts.org home live art Based in London, home live art is a leading creative production Live at LICA is a distinctive company in the UK: specializing in innovative live events with cross-arts organisation in contemporary artists and performers, which explore diverse an academic context – contexts and spaces, create new forms of cultural experience Lancaster University – an and emphasize interactivity, entertainment and participation. environment that supports www.homeliveart.com the questioning of what constitutes the artistic, the Inbetween Time Productions social, the political and the Based in Bristol, In Between Time is an international production personal. Live Art has become company creating extraordinary art works and the In Between a linking thread across our Time Festival. IBT encourages artists and audiences to do things theatre, music, dance and they have not imagined. It explodes out of the art institution visual art programmes. It to revel in new curatorial models, technologies and critical enables us to move across discourse around an impressive programme of live, digital, spaces, contexts and forms, architectural and sculptural works. and to challenge and shift www.inbetweentime.co.uk disciplinary boundaries. Live at LICA LIFT, London International Festival of Theatre Established in 1981, LIFT, London International Festival of Theatre, has risen to become one of the most important events in the British arts scene, with an influence that reaches far beyond London. Working with artists from across the world to find new ways of seeing the city, LIFT’s rich and varied programming has presented extraordinary events in both conventional theatres and in more unusual spaces such as disused power stations, churches and canal basins. www.liftfestival.com
Live Art Development Agency Based in London, the Live Art Development Agency offers resources, schemes and initiatives for the support of the Live Art sector. www.thisisLiveArt.co.uk
Live at LICA (Nuffield Theatre Lancaster) Live at LICA (Nuffield Theatre Lancaster) is a key UK venue for the research, development and presentation of contemporary theatre, performance, live art and dance. www.liveatlica.org
9 New Work Network Live Art is the radical, vital and Based in London, New Work Network exists as a ‘community’ creative force behind some to expose, investigate, profile and share ideas and knowledge of the UK’s most exciting, regarding pioneering arts practices (historic & contemporary) innovative and important and the significant roles they play within society (past, present artists, and home live art, & future) and to encourage dialogue and activity across as a company of creative generations around the sustainability, custodianship and producers, is privileged legacy of these practices and works. to be part of the sector’s www.newworknetwork.org.uk development. home live art Theatre Bristol Theatre Bristol’s ambition is to make Bristol the nexus for theatre makers and audiences of new work. We do this by working in partnership locally, nationally and internationally to make Live Art and performance’s theatre in Bristol better, fitter and healthier. ability to inhabit diverse www.theatrebristol.net contexts and spaces within culture and society keep it Wunderbar vital and questioning in terms Based in Newcastle upon Tyne, Wunderbar produces dynamic, of its form and content. It is creative projects that place the audience at the heart of this diversity of practice that the experience. Our projects are led by artists, but fuelled by New Work Network places unique contributions from those who take part, and respond at the centre of its ethos in with creativity and playfulness to issues of relevance to real order to continue to foster people, real places and real time. Every two years these questions, dialogue and projects are celebrated in a festival involving performance, debate surrounding culture, installation, extraordinary happenings, interaction, social events community and politics. and games. New Work Network www.wunderbarfestival.co.uk
10 CONTRIBUTORS’ BIOGRAPHIES
Rachel Anderson is a Katherine Araniello works (video and performance) freelance producer and as a multidisciplinary that is informed by the social joined Artangel in 2007 where artist producing films model of disability. That is, she is Producer, Collaborative and performances, and the Disabled Avant-Garde’s Projects. She develops site- collaborates with other artists work is an intervention specific works with artists in (with Aaron Williamson, she into society’s perceptions collaboration with a broad makes work as The Disabled and expectations of range of communities. Avant-Garde). Her work disabled people. Thus DAG Projects include Did you examines contemporary deliberately create confusion kick the foot that kicked issues relating to disability, or inspire debate through you? by Ruth Ewan, which creating frameworks that humorously distorting or involved the co-ordination of challenge and subvert subverting the traditional a hundred musicians along preconceptions. This ‘medical model’ stereotypes the City of London commuter is often done through of disability (that defines routes, The Museum of Non dark humour, presenting disabled people by their Participation by Karen Mirza disability in contexts that impairments). Their work and Brad Butler, who worked may be unfamiliar to an fits the category of ‘crip with collaborators in London audience; this in turn humour’, being both pitch- and in Karachi and included creates a fresh discourse black and self-knowing. the production of an English/ on the representation of www.the-disabled-avant- Urdu newspaper with the physical difference. Her garde.webs.com Daily Jang Broadsheet work has been shown in distributed to 60,000 galleries including Tate Barby Asante shifts freely European readers, and Modern and Tate Britain, between roles as artist, Smother by Sarah Cole, and her videos have been curator, educator and developed with young screened at film festivals facilitator. Her work invites parents and culminating in internationally. In 2009, she participation through a performed installation in completed Follow Me on exploring the importance a three sided house in Kings My Journey to Die, a digital of the dialogic and social Cross. March 2012 saw the short film made with 104 aspects of creative and culmination of a three-year Films, written and directed artistic practice. Asante is project with Mark Storor, who by, as well as starring, herself. interested in creating works worked with gay prisoners In 2010, she was awarded that stimulate dialogue and officers across the UK to an ArtsAdmin Bursary, from around the cross-cultural develop A Tender Subject – which she developed a new and multicultural and how a live devised performance performance, The Dinner we view and frame these in a disused cold storage Party, in which Araniello questions in contemporary unit below Smithfield meat starred both as herself and Britain, often using familiar or market. Rachel was previously as a selection of nightmare popular culture triggers as a Education and Outreach dinner guests. means to begin the dialogue. Manager at the South www.araniello-art.com. Recently, Asante has been London Gallery where she working on projects exploring established a programme The Disabled Avant Garde music and its cultural and of on and off-site artists’ (DAG) is a satirical arts social significance, with collaborations with the local organisation formed by the particular emphasis on black community, before which she Disability artists Katherine music and its importance in managed the Queensbridge Araniello and Aaron the creation of a post-war Youth Project. Williamson. Their concern is to British cultural identity. This www.artangel.org.uk create contemporary art work includes projects
11 such as the Funk Chorus, a sound, which he re-members and included commissions non-professional choir with and then embodies in the by Walker & Bromwich, a Funk repertoire which fabulation of new narratives. Matthew Cowan and began as a part of Harold He takes inspiration from Anthony Schrag alongside Offeh’s Mothership Collective the Deleuzian notion of films by Shezad Dawood and (South London Gallery, 2006); fabulation: “For Deleuze, Luke Fowler. Charter of the Barby’s Karaoke (Studio the fabulative function is Forest took place in local Voltaire, 2009), a karaoke the function proper to art, woodland; commissioned DVD made with Caribbean which projects into the world artists responded to the Elders group Stockwell Good images so intense that they woodland and associated Neighbours; and Bamboo take on a life of their own” historical and current Memories (Picture This, (Ronald Bogue). Dickie did politics, and artists included 2009), a film piece made a degree in Drama at the Richard DeDomenici, Tereza with people from Bristol University of Manchester, Buskova, Via Vaudeville!. The reflecting on Bristol’s first trained in physical theatre in Trivia of Eccentric England black music nightclub. She Milan, and has also worked publication will be launched has shown work in exhibitions in film and television drama this summer. and festivals nationally development. He has been www.ameliabeavisharrison.com and internationally and making solo performance www.lincolnartprogramme.co.uk has also been involved in work for the past six years, projects with the Live Art presenting in a diverse Boo Chapple is a jack of Development Agency, home range of settings, including all trades - artist, writer, live art, Hewitt and Jordan, museums, theatres, schools, educator, curator - whose The Serpentine Gallery and arts festivals and cinemas, conceptually driven practice 198 Contemporary Arts but principally gaining has been enacted across and Learning, where she is recognition within the a diverse range of media currently Associate Curator. traditionally “low” culture including performance www.barbyasante.co.uk spheres of cabaret, burlesque installation, food events, and nightclub spaces. video, social intervention, Matt Ball is Creative www.dickiebeau.com sound (installation, Associate at National performance, design), Theatre Wales where he Amelia Beavis-Harrison books and art/science manages WalesLab, NTW’s is an artist and curator projects. Her projects artist development initiative. based in Nottingham. In often take place through Before joining NTW, he was 2009, Amelia established community collaboration Artistic Director of Camden Lincoln Art Programme, a – from residencies that People’s Theatre from 2006- commissioning organisation have involved working 11. As a theatre maker, his based in the East Midlands. with scientists or university work includes Icarus 2.0, The organisation’s focus is students, to large scale events nominated for a Stage Award to site new work by national involving a production team and a Total Theatre Award, and international artists and and a many participants. Ariadne, Point & Shoot, practitioners in Lincolnshire. Her art work has been Wapping:audio and most The organisation seeks exhibited at Ars Electronica, recently Roy’s Wallet. predominantly to work with the Beijing Biennale of www.nationaltheatrewales.org live and performative artists Architecture and SF MoMA, www.bit.ly.com/waleslab who can interact with local and reviewed in a wide www.wappingaudio.org environments and situations in range of forums from Dutch @mattball_ntw a responsive manner, working newspapers to Taiwanese outside of gallery or theatre art blogs. Her writing has Dickie Beau, drag fabulist, is contexts. In 2011, Lincoln been published in Art of a queer clown whose work Art Programme ran two the Biotech Era (Milentie is informed by a range of programmes of activity, The Pandilovski, ed.), Plastic traditions, from low culture Trivia of Eccentric England Green (Pia Ednie-Brown, ed.) to high art, in the creation and Charter of the Forest. The and Second Nature (Hughes of distinctive performance first programme responded and Sunden eds.). She is experiences. His principle to the quirks of British currently directing a digital shtick is in the use of found behaviour and past times communities project – Open
12 CuRate It – at the Foundation interventions and live events. and collaborations for for Art and Creative Their recent project School the main stage, and runs Technology (FACT), Liverpool. of Global Art, showcased professional development www.opencurateit.org in Birmingham and programmes for young artists www.residualsoup.org internationally in Melbourne, linked to the theatre. Emma www.fact.co.uk invites artists, curators and was a dancer for many years thinkers from their peer- before becoming Associate Richard DeDomenici makes group to generate lecture Director at The Place Theatre, use of conceptual art and essay content for a new 1997–2003. She has worked tactics in combination with audience of online students. as a freelance producer, an irreverent pop sensibility www.luckypdf.com programmer and advisor for to critique and intervene numerous arts organisations in public behaviour and Tania El Khoury is a live artist and bodies such as the rhetoric. His work disturbs based in London and Beirut. Crying Out Loud, Southbank perceptions through humour She creates immersive and Centre, Cape Farewell, and confrontation outside of challenging performances the British Council and Arts normal spaces. DeDomenici in which the audience is an Council England. She is a weaves unexpected active collaborator. Tania has Trustee of Candoco, the connections between performed in spaces ranging integrated dance company different states of ideas, from the British Museum to a working with disabled and happenstance and current cable car and an old church non-disabled dancers. affairs all around the world. In once used as a military www.sadlerswells.com 2011, he performed in Tokyo, base during the Lebanese New York, Amsterdam and civil war. Her solo work Hunt & Darton Café is a Live Berlin. He was shortlisted has won awards in several Art collaboration between for the Arts Foundation international festivals. She is Jenny Hunt and Holly Darton. Fellowship, nominated for the co-founder of Dictaphone Having met at Central Saint Jerwood Trust Moving Image Group, a collective using Martin’s, Hunt & Darton have Prize, and was an Oxford urban research and Live Art been collaborating for the Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust in order to reclaim public past 5 years approaching Award finalist. Embarrassingly, space. She is a Forest Fringe performance from a Fine he lost all three. His 2012 show core artist. Art background. Hunt & is called Popaganda. www.taniaelkhoury.com Darton work with spoken www.dedomenici.com word, movement, sound Lyn Gardner tries to think and installation. Their work James Early is an artist about theatre for The comes out of a shared based in London, and Guardian and writes novels interest in what it means to alongside John Hill, Ollie for children. be human. They make work Hogan and Yuri Pattison he @lyngardner about common problems, has been working as one www.guardian.co.uk embarrassment, human quarter of artists’ collective behavior, love, life and LuckyPDF. Since 2009, Emma Gladstone is Artistic art. They tend towards the LuckyPDF has been working Programmer and Producer deadpan and the absurd. collaboratively with an for Sadler’s Wells, London’s www.huntanddarton.com ever expanding network Dance House, where www.liveartcollectiveeast. of cultural producers she has worked since com/hunt-darton-cafe and sometimes reality TV 2005. Her focus includes celebrities. LuckyPDF aims to programming experimental Louise Jeffreys has been re-negotiate the conditions work in the Lilian Baylis Director of Programming for the production of art Studio, commissioning at the Barbican Centre and the spaces that art can and producing large since August 2010 and exist in. Working inside and scale performances off- is responsible for the outside institutions, subverting site, and work for young formulation, implementation display traditions to achieve audiences. She directs the and delivery of its artistic their artistic ends, LuckyPDF Jerwood Studio at Sadler’s programme. Jeffreys works has produced online Wells research programme, closely with the Centre’s television programs, internet which test drives new ideas Managing Director Sir
13 Nicholas Kenyon, the Heads Countryside Commission, include Cruising for Art of Arts, and the Director of Channel 4 (winner of RTS (V&A Museum, Latitude, BFI Creative Learning, to deliver award), South Bank Centre, and Forest Fringe), Purge the Barbican’s strategic Home Live Art, The ESRC, The (London and Kuopio), Hold vision as the new model of New Economics Foundation, My Hand and We’re Halfway an international arts and The National Theatre, There (Sadler’s Wells, Shunt, learning centre. She also Artsadmin, Fuel, The Queen’s and with the LMCC, New works with the Barbican’s Diamond Jubilee Trust and York), Carpe Minuta Prima range of partners, including The Open University. She was (Brixton Village Market, its alliance for creative the creator of the Museum London, Compass Festival, excellence with the Guildhall Of, The Ministry of Trying to Brighton Festival and PULSE School and the LSO, and Do Something About It and Fringe), BALL (in over 70 on the Centre’s work in East annually curates Feast on cities internationally and London and for the Olympics. the Bridge for the Thames published by Routledge) Jeffreys was previously Head Festival. She is currently and An Appreciation of Theatre and Arts Projects working on Rare Earth, an (Duckie, Bristol Old Vic, PSi and has worked for the exhibition for ASU Art Museum Toronto and Purex, Lisbon). Barbican Centre since 1999 Phoenix 2013. Lobel has received funding when she was appointed and commissions from to run the newly-created Harminder Judge is an the Wellcome Trust (for bite (Barbican International artist currently based in Fun With Cancer Patients), Theatre Events). Bite has Birmingham. His most the Jerwood Charitable been recognised as one of recent project was The Foundation (for Carpe Minuta London’s most innovative Holy Mountain Party co- Prima), motiroti (for Purge) artistic programmes, curated for Fierce Festival; and from ACE (for the current bringing to the UK leading a multi-artform party in tour of BALL & Other Funny figures of international an underground reggae Stories About Cancer). He theatre and dance, and club taking its inspiration recently completed his PhD co-commissioning some of from the films of Alejandro in Performance at Queen the most influential artists Jadorowsky. He is currently Mary and from September and productions of the working on In This Strange he will be a Senior Lecturer in last decade. Jeffreys has House a solo exhibition Performing Arts at University been influential in building including installation, of Chichester. A collection relationships between performance, photography of his scripts (BALL & Other the Barbican Centre and and print at The New Art Funny Stories About Cancer) organisations beyond Gallery Walsall opening in was recently published its walls – from leading September 2012. Harminder by Oberon Books, and a international arts partners, was the winner of the 2011 DVD of his performance to local organisations and Arts Foundation Fellowship (entitled Cancer Cancer community groups. Prior Award in Performance & Live Cancer Cancer Cancer) is to the Barbican, Jeffreys’ Art and recently completed available from the Live Art previous roles include a residency in conjunction Development Agency. Administrative Director at the with IFICAN and Temple Fine www.blobelwarming.com Nottingham Playhouse, Head Arts, Kulala Lumpur, Malaysia. of Production at Bayerische He is also a co-founder of Stacy Makishi is a transplant Staatsoper, Munich, and Grand Union, an organisation from Hawaii, who found Technical Director at the housing artists studios and a paradise in East London English National Opera. project space in Birmingham. in 1994. Her present work www.barbican.org.uk www.harminderjudge.com is the result of much cross- fertilization between Live Art, Clare Patey is an artist and Brian Lobel is a New York- performance poetry, theatre, curator who creates social born, London-based film and visual art and is as spaces in the public realm performer who has shown complex as it is accessible; that bring people together work in a range of contexts, humorous as it challenging; to share conversation, often from medical schools visual as it is literate. Also a around food. Commissions: to galleries, cabarets to workshop leader and mentor LIFT, Friends of the Earth, The museums. Performances of international renown,
14 Makishi often opens her Geraldine Pilgrim is a She creates Live work for making processes to the Director/Designer and theatres, galleries and public public through creative Installation artist who works space. Her performances workshops alongside across theatre and the have been presented in the performances. Recent works visual arts; transforming UK and Europe, such as at include a Fuel and Wellcome buildings, places, theatres SPILL Festival at the Barbican Trust Commission to create and abandoned historic sites. London, Mayfest and Arnolfini a Body Pod Cast on The She is also Artistic Director Bristol, Inbetween Time Skin; With Love Roxanne, a of Corridor, a performance Festival and EPAF at Centre commission by Pink Fringe company she set up in 2000 For Contemporary Arts Brighton; Gilding the Lily, to continue to create site- Warsaw, Poland. Her projects performed at South Bank; specific events, often working often revolve around the and Love Letters to Francis, in collaboration with young places and times we inhabit a film made in collaboration people, older people and mentally, physically and in our with Nick Parish and inspired arts and community groups. imagination. Consciousness, by the works of Francis Her particular site work memory, personal histories Bacon, commissioned by Tate specialises in installations and risk are reoccurring Britain and B3 Media. In 2010, and performances in unusual themes and focus points. Makishi was commissioned buildings and landscapes She is interested in the Live to create a performance where the architecture of the moment of performance inside Miroslaw Balka’s epic site is used as inspiration and and likes to consider the sculptural installation How narrative, gradually revealing presence of an audience. it Is at Tate Modern and to memories and atmospheres Sylvia is a Supported Artist of make work for “…Louder that have built up over the The Basement in Brighton, an than Bombs”: Art, Action years, together with the Inbetween Time Associate & Activism, curated by history – imagined and real Artist and a member of the Stanley Picker Gallery – of the space. She trained Residence in Bristol. Sylvia and Live Art Development as a fine artist and theatre is also the Director and Agency. designer, co-founded and Co-Producer of You and www.stacymakishi.com became Artistic Director of Your Work, an adventurous Hesitate and Demonstrate, performance festival in Helen Marriage is a co- the influential visual theatre Bristol. Y&YW showcases director of Artichoke, which company which toured and commissions risk-taking she founded with Nicky Britain and mainland Europe, participatory Live works by Webb in 2005. Her previous and has since been making early career performance work has included a seven- installations, theatre based artists whilst striving to year period as Director of performances and large engage communities and the Salisbury Festival which scale site-specific events. audiences from diverse she transformed from a local She is also an Artsadmin backgrounds. affair to what The Times Artist, an Associate Lecturer www.sylviarimat.com described as a ‘miracle of at Wimbledon College of www.youandyourwork.org.uk modern British culture’. Art, and a Visiting Lecturer Helen went to Salisbury at Goldsmiths College and Ju Row Farr is one of the after creating the first Arts & Central St Martins. Geraldine founding members of Blast Events programme for the has held workshops and run Theory. There are three artists developers of Canary Wharf courses for emerging and in Blast Theory, including Matt in London. Prior to that she established practitioners and Adams and Nick Tandavanitj, was an Associate Director led both summer and winter and the company began of the London International schools throughout the UK in 1991. Blast Theory is Festival of Theatre. She and mainland Europe. renowned internationally as began her working life www.geraldinepilgrim.com one of the most adventurous with Artsadmin where she www.artsadmin.co.uk/artists/ artists’ groups using managed a variety of geraldine-pilgrim interactive media, creating independent artists in the groundbreaking new forms of early 1980s. Sylvia Rimat is a Bristol- performance and interactive www.artichoke.uk.com based performance maker, art that mixes audiences originally from Germany. across the internet, live
15 performance and digital publication ‘Not if but when – in 2010 with a mobile broadcasting – the group’s Culture Beyond Oil.’ pavilion by Raumlaborberlin work explores interactivity www.platformlondon.org that toured over 13 parks and the social and political www.liberatetate.org across 11 London boroughs aspects of technology. In hosting a range of cultural 2003, Blast Theory won the Joshua Sofaer is an artist who events, and in 2011 with the much coveted Golden Nica is centrally concerned with Floating Cinema (with artists for Interactive Art at Prix Ars modes of collaboration and Somewhere and architects Electronica, in 2001 received participation. Often with an Studio Weave) that toured an Honorary Mention at irreverent use of humour, he East London’s waterways Transmediale Awards in plays with established forms bringing screenings and Germany and has been of production, appropriating film events to a wide range nominated for many other and reconfiguring the chat of audiences; The Secret awards including four BAFTAs. show, competition, lecture or Garden Project, a trail of Internationally, the group has museum display. He acts as pop-up commissions and been represented at art fairs curator, producer or director events for lesser known and festivals including Festival of a broad range of projects, parks across London; The Escena Contemporanea, including large-scale events, Other Flower Show in the Madrid; the Dutch Electronic intimate performances and V&A Garden, 2004; and Arts Festival, Rotterdam; publications. After a BA in an ongoing programme Biennale of Sydney; ArtFutura, Drama & English at Bristol of Contemporary Art at Barcelona; International University, Joshua went on Festivals, in partnership with Festival for Dance, to complete an MA in Fine Shangri-la Glastonbury. Performance and Media Arts, Art at Central Saint Martins www.upprojects.com Koln; Palestine International College of Art & Design and Video Festival; Basel Art was subsequently awarded Aaron Williamson has Fair and Art Meets Media: a PhD from Dartington created more than 200 Adventures In Perception, College of Arts. Joshua was performances and video ICC, Tokyo. Ju is a painter a winner of the 2009 Bank of works over the last 15 years in and a trustee on the Board of America CREATE Art Award, Greenland, Japan, US, China, The Basement. She regularly and the first Artist Fellow on South America, Taiwan mentors other artists and the 2010/11 Clore Leadership and throughout Europe. He has received a One To One Programme. completed a Doctorate on bursary for her professional www.joshuasofaer.com performance and writing at development. Currently the University of Sussex, 1997. she lives with her family in Emma Underhill is a curator, His many Awards include Portslade, Brighton. consultant and founding a 3-Year AHRC Fellowship www.blasttheory.co.uk Director of UP Projects, at the University Central producing high profile, England, 2004-07; the Helen Kevin Smith works on issues independently initiated Chadwick Fellowship at of arts and oil sponsorship arts projects and events in Oxford University and the with Platform, an organisation the public realm, as well as British School at Rome, 2001– that combines art, activism, consultancy for a range of 02; the Cocheme Fellowship education and research private and public sector at Byam Shaw, University in order to create unique clients. Emma has over ten of London, 2008–09. He projects driven by the years experience in leading won the ‘Artist of the Year’ need for social and large scale, ambitious award from FACT in Liverpool ecological justice. Kevin has projects, often delivered (2007) and was the Adam collaborated extensively through complex partnership Reynolds Bursarist at Spike with Liberate Tate, a working. These include the Island, Bristol, for a residency collective of artists and ongoing Portavilion: Public between February to April activists whose unsolicited Art for London’s Parks project, 2010. Profoundly deaf, Aaron performance interventions which launched in 2008 with Williamson is the founder of in gallery spaces have been temporary pavilions by Toby the disability artist’s collective dramatically problematising Paterson, Annika Erikkson, 15mm Films and is one half Tate’s relationship with BP. He Monika Sosnowska and of the satirical Disabled is one of the co-editors of the Dan Graham, continued Avant-Garde with Katherine
16 Araniello. A retrospective of Williamson’s video works, The Bell Clapper & Bestiary, was a full-length exhibition at Spike Island, Bristol, in 2010. A monograph, Aaron Williamson: Performance/ Video/ Collaboration was published by Live Art Development Agency in 2008 and a compilation DVD Quick Clips and Short Cuts in 2011. www.aaronwilliamson.org
Gary Winters is the co- artistic director of Lone Twin, one of Europe’s leading performance companies. Celebrated for creating a broad range of projects, from theatrical productions to participatory public events, the company’s work is regularly shown across the world to popular and critical acclaim. Now in its 15th year, Lone Twin are embarking on a series of truly ambitious new works: The Boat Project, a commission from the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, Beastie, a unique live experience for children and Street Dance, an innovative new public dance work. 2010 also saw the premiere of The Festival, the resolving work in Lone Twin Theatre’s Catastrophe Trilogy. Current and recent commissioning partners include the Barbican, London, the Melbourne International Festival, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels, Steirischer Herbst, Graz and Sadler’s Wells, London. www.lonetwin.com
17 CREDITS & THANKS
Produced by Live Art Development Agency on behalf of Live Art UK.
Live Art UK Associates Gathering working group Andy Field, Anthony Roberts, Laura Godfrey Isaacs, Laura McDermott, Francis Alexander, Harun Morrison.
For the Live Art Development Agency Directors, Lois Keidan and CJ Mitchell Company Manager, Aaron Wright Coordinator, Katy Baird Digital Manager, Alex Eisenberg www.thisisLiveArt.co.uk
Production Assistant, Edd Hobbs Documentation, British Library
For BAC Producer, Rosalie White Deputy Production Manager, Sarah O’Connor Technician, Jesal Padia Catering, Fran Du Pille, Alex Sheppard Chef, Ville Oikari
For Hunt & Darton Café Helen Stratford (not menus), Low Profile (loyalty cards and newspapers), Christopher Bond (take away art), Erica Bôhr (Salt and pepper bearers). Supported by Arts Council England Grants for the Arts, Artsadmin, Escalator East to Edinburgh, The Junction, LACE. Special thanks to home live art, Sarah Wilson, Liz Hilder, Duckie, Natalie Randall and Georgie Meagher for their support of the Café today.
With thanks to all contributors, to Live Art UK colleagues, especially Andy Field for the concept of WAKING UP IN SOMEBODY ELSE’S BED, to BAC for hosting the Gathering and Rosalie, Sarah and Fran for all their support and enthusiasm, to Forced Entertainment for use of their set, to Artsadmin for the use of Edd Hobbs, and to Stephen Cleary and Eva Del Rey of British Library.
Live Art UK is supported through the Live Art Development Agency’s status as a National Portfolio Organisation of Arts Council England.
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