The Live Art Issue | Female Performers | Thank you for Laughing | Suspension &

Awakening | I feel love! | If its not Live Art, its dead art | Reviews | Opportunities

Female Performers
exploring issues
using the body
Kate Farrell
As we move further into the 21st century and art
becomes increasingly interdisciplinary, it seems current
Live Art practice is going to extreme lengths to portray
issues that are pertinent to the society we live in; female
artists self mutilate, reveal naked flesh, and place
themselves in great danger for their art. They shock and
court controversy, and often leave audience members
and critics alike dumbfounded as to their motives.

movement in the early 20th Century, parallels can be

drawn in the way women directly implicated their bodies
to vocalise their crusade during hunger strikes and high
profile marches-their voices couldnt be heard so they
had to make sure their bodies did the talking, and this
was reflected within the art of the 1970s. Gender politics
were at the centre of their social struggle and this was
reflected in the issues they tackled within their work.

But what are their motives? Since the 1960s and 1970s
when performance and body art practice was becoming
ubiquitous for both male and female artists, women
were trying to achieve an equality within a period of
furious feminist activity, fighting, as they had pre World
War II, the continuing degradation they suffered within
political, social and economic contexts. Women were
striving for their equality in life, and this was imitated
in their art. In this context, they were using an artistic
environment to continue their plight for freedom. When
considering the suffragette campaign of the feminist

But why do female artists within the 21st Century

continue to use the practice as a tool for gaining a
freedom from the restrictions they face in life, when they
are supposed to have achieved full emancipation? What
do the Live Art practitioners of today have to achieve
through presenting their bodies in the often desperate
and gratuitous ways they do? The issues the artists
explore may have changed, but the essence of what
they communicate through their art remains the same.

Rhythm 0 (1974) Marina Abramovic

Mixed media

In the 1970s seminal artists such as Ana Mendieta, Gina

Pane and Marina Abramovic all engaged in shockingly
gratuitous acts, exploring themes of physical pain and
resistance through the self exploration of their bodies
within this period. The artists focused on issues of
rape, and the manipulation of their bodies physically
and mentally. In an artistic context, they acted out the
issues pertinent to the time they made their work. They
self mutilated, put their bodies at the mercy of audience
members and took drugs which would completely alter
the functionality of their bodies to raise an awareness of
the issues that controlled and restricted their existence.
By presenting themselves at the centre of their works,
the artists explored a duality which allowed them
transcendence from their everyday lives. The artists
were able to gain a perspective and an understanding
of the issues they investigated through their work, and
what this represented in a wider socio-economic context.
When Marina Abramovic allowed audience members
to use a selection of objects as they wished against
her body in Rhythm 0 (1974) - paint, a loaded gun,
a razor blade - she was commenting on the material
objects that surround her, that she has no access to or
ownership of. In this scenario, the artist also comments
on the unavailability of her own body to herself as the
audience take ownership of her - her flesh slit with
razor blades, and the loaded gun placed at her head.
The artist goes to extreme lengths, arguably putting
herself at risk of death for the cause and perhaps
reflecting the feelings of women who existed to an
extent but were experiencing a death of their freedom.

inthewrongplaceness (2006)
Kira OReilly
Mixed media

Similarly, Ana Mendietas seminal work Rape Scene

(1973), a photographed performance produced by the
artist within her own apartment in Iowa, demonstrates
lengths artists would go to communicate the degradation
women suffered. With her fellow students invited along
as her audience, the artist responded to an act carried out
against a young woman at Iowa University. The female
body, a solitary figure at the centre of the performance
and subsequent documentation is naked from the waist

down, her flesh covered in blood and clothing ripped,

offering a glance at a narrative that is taking place.
Mendieta presents this snapshot of a narrative which is
spoken through the female body, and as such comments
on the silence of women who have been raped and have
suffered abuse who feel their voices cannot be heard.
Within a social or political context, womens voices had
historically not been listened to. Here we witness the
voice of the body, which in this example communicates
the most extreme act of subordination of the female form.
These artistic acts correlated with the fight for liberation
of women in the 1970s. Because women were less vocal
about the ways in which they remain oppressed socially,
the overt representation of their bodies in an artistic
context fits less neatly into an understandable language.
When Kira OReilly performed an intimate, naked
duet with a pig cadaver within inthewrongplacesness
(2006), she invited audience members one by one to
witness the act, but what did the artist want to provoke
through the voyeuristic environment she constructed?
The naked female flesh next to the flesh of the pig of
course raised questions around societys depiction of
the non-idealistic female form being compared to that
of a pig, representing greed and gluttony, or perhaps
that the woman must love her own flesh therefore
magnifying the pressure surrounding the aesthetic of
the female form, and the constrictions women live within
as a result of this supposed rule of social acceptability.
Helena Goldwater employed a similar technique within
Hot Soak (2006). Again, the artist presents herself in an
intimate space permitting one audience member at a time
to share the space with her. Goldwater is lying in a bath
wearing a red sequined dress, its dye slowly seeping into
the water. When each audience member enters the room
she passes them an ice cube which they are instructed
to position over her mouth, which, for the five minutes
they are present within the room the ice cube melts into.
The recurrence of the artist inviting one audience
member at a time into their performance space within

contemporary practice raises interesting questions

about how the artist wants her body to be perceived.
There is an exclusivity attached to being the only
person permitted to share the space with the artist
and this implies the treasuring or protecting of the
womans own body. In a culture where the body is
constantly scrutinised, it is apparent that female Live
Artists of the 21st century are commenting on this and
raising an awareness of the female body as sacred.

surrounding the female body is Yoko Onos 1967

performance at the Bluecoat in Liverpool where the
artist invited the audience to wrap her body in tissue. In
2008 she performed at the same venue, emerging on
stage this time ready-wrapped, inviting an audience 42
years older to unwrap her. Ono uses the practice quite
literally to continue the issues that were relevant to her
work, highlighting the fact that these issues have not
disappeared.

Legacy is an important concept within the expression

of socio-political concerns through the body; reinforcing
these issues so they do not disappear from art as a
result of their ubiquity within society. A number of the
artists prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s continue to
perform; referencing the issues they tackled the first
time around-further verification of their practice as an
essential tool for voicing the concerns surrounding the
female body.

At a time when women are considered to be fully liberated,

female Live Artists illustrate issues that continue to run
through the bloodstream of the practice, revealing Live
Art as a powerful voice for the communication of social,
political and economic issues that women, in normal
life and within ongoing restraints, could not otherwise
express.

The lineage of the practice from the 1960s to the

present day is strong, and concerns within their work
continue to resonate within their practice. There may
not be a contextualisation of the work of practitioners
today as there was within the furious feminist activity of
the 1970s, but I do believe the longevity of the practice
presents an adequate framework for the continuation of
the implication of the body in this way. Female artists will
continue to seek transcendence within public and artistic
spheres for as long as society dictates women and the
female body to be the subject of gender discrimination.
We may be witnessing female performers exploring
socio-political issues using the body for some time yet.
inside its structure.

When Marina Abramovic performed Seven Easy Pieces

at the Guggenheim in New York (2005), she paid homage
to seminal works from this period which revolved around
the artists body and dealt with self mutilation. Not least
of these, Gina Panes The Conditioning (1973), where
the artist lay directly over naked flames- placed the
issues raised in the earlier days of the practice very
much in the present day. Abramovic highlighted the
artistic and cultural relevance of the issues tackled
within the piece and alluding to the fact that the issues
the female artists raised over 30 years ago, were still as
pertinent. By tackling the issues raised by other female
artists, Abramovic verifies the need for the continued
awareness of the cause, in Panes case, a true legacy
is achieved following the death of the artist.
Once the objectation of the female body is no longer in
existence, it doesnt mean of course that the problems
regarding their subjugation disappears-what Abramovic
does is reinforce the need for future generations of
artists to see what the forerunners of the practice did,
ensuring others will follow suit.
Another example of a durational continuum of issues

Seven Easy
Pieces, (2005) Marina
Abramovic

Thank you for Laughing

Holly Bodmer
Set-Up
Whilst trying to work out how much my own art practice
is to do with being funny, I find myself querying the
subject of laughter in relation to Live Art. I write this
article therefore in an effort to gather and document
some of my initial thoughts and research and in
doing so, broaden what started as a personal artistic
endeavour.
I am interpreting what it means to a performer to be
funny and what it means to an audience that they laugh.
I am attempting to decipher the language of giving
and receiving funny moments, and questioning the
presence of laughter in the context of performance. In
particular I am proposing a correspondence between
laughter and Live Art, providing examples and
suggestions of how this relationship might be utilised.
Henri Bergson explained laughter to be a strange,
isolated phenomenon, without any bearing on the
rest of human activity . An analysis of laughter
should then sit interestingly within the subject of Live
Art which is also deemed more eccentric than its
comparable traditional art forms, to be surprised by
the unexpected, always unorthodox presentations that
the artists devise (Goldberg)
The radical nature of Live Art comes from a postmodernist approach to rebuilding traditional moulds.
Its re-structuring function has manifested various
threads of art forms (performance confronting theatre,
noise art resisting music). It has opened up the seams
of previously separated and easily definable art forms;
giving artistic vocabulary to alternative practices such

as ritual, celebration, body art and the everyday;

a permissive, open-ended medium with endless
variables (Goldberg)
Representing many different kinds of practice injected
with an element of live (performance, time-based
systems, interaction) Live Art is by design tricky to
define. However, when reading Tim Etchells Step off
the stage I stumbled across a description that is of
particular suitability to this enquiry. He suggests:
a theatre that thrives on the unstable and on the
trembling, on the thrill of live decisions on the collision
of different materials and different narratives
These words amongst others were performed by
Etchells at the opening symposium of SPILL festival
in 2007 and documented in an almanac published
by the Live Art development agency. Materialising
from this context, it is intended to illustrate something
about Live Art but could also illustrate something
about laughter. Picture if you will a trembling as the
physicality of laughing, the unstable moment of live
decision as the spontaneity of it, the thrill as the
pleasure it exudes, the materials and narratives as
the various mechanisms working together to set it off,
and finally the collision as the triggering punch-line.
It is not only from Etchells words that I come across
such parallels between Live Art and Laughter. There
are other connections as well as disparities that I am
negotiating and will develop further on. But for now
the resemblance above captures the sort of quirky
phenomena of both entities, and this I anticipate,
provides an apposite starting point.

Hard (2008) Nathan Walker

Mixed media

Delay

Death to Grumpy
Grandads
(2002) . Anne Bean

I started to think about laughter in relation to my own

performance practice which has in the past been
labelled as funny. It is interesting - in respect to
receiving and giving feedback - what effect that will
have on both the artist and their work. Particularly
intriguing in regards to expressing that something is
funny is that the feedback is in the form of laughter,
and can be given in the moment of the event itself. It
too is a live and physical form of communication:
this particular logical relation, as soon as it is perceived,
contracts, expands and shakes our limbs, whilst all
other relations leave the body unaffected Bergson
That is not to say that alternative kinds of feedback
(empathy, distaste, compassion, intrigue) cannot be
read or sensed by a performer during the event, but
rather that they are not so audibly expressed. In fact if
a person had a sudden urge to shout Get off, I love
you or Well done it is likely to be a more rowdy event,
like a music festival. But laughter on the other hand is
delivered, built-up and reverberated throughout even
the stuffiest of theatres. Anybody and everybody will,
if tickled, laugh.
Sigmund Freud suggests that what the joker delivers is
a psychical relief for both himself and his audience.
By behaving in a childlike manner, by desiring and
drawing out pleasure, the joke will materialise from
and thus expose his unconscious. Freud portrays
how the act of performing funny has an instinctive and
automatic function; that is just as human as its reactor
- the act of laughing.
If telling jokes is an innate quality of human routine
and if art is meant to be reflective of life, then it makes
sense that humour has a historical relationship within
the arts and that it is particularly prevalent when there
is a live audience. A communication is set up and it
is the audience that Freud suggests completes the

transmission of the joke, it achieves general relief

through discharge. The psychical liberation is thus
received, recognised and fully and finally delivered in
an outburst.
The art of funny is extraordinarily likeable. It seems
greatly to please people and to affect them in a way
quite unlike other forms of expression. This appears
to be the case whether the comedy is intended or not.
If a person attends a performance advertised as a
comedy, she expects to laugh and is therefore satisfied
when that happens. If the same person attends a
performance that is not advertised as a comedy, but
is nevertheless induced to laughter, it is arguable that
she may equally be satisfied because (although not
expected) the act of laughing in itself is a pleasurable
experience.
Bergson suggests that we laugh when there is a degree
of empathy or recognition towards the performing fool
these madmen appeal on the same chords as within
ourselves . The flawed clown figure has a familiarity
that we understand in the same way as we have
become accustomed to certain kinds of recurring gags
or comic etiquette. Examples of these would be the
proverbial pantomime characters or the identifiable
structure of a joke as set up, delay, punch-line
I fear a generic function for laughter that acts upon
these accustomed etiquettes and structures. If laughter
happens purely because it fits - we go to the theatre,
we are quiet, we sit down, and we laugh at the punchlines then laughter is hardly epitomising the fact that
it is live and human.
Because laughter is often accepted by performers as
a sign of appreciation from the audience, this almost
detaches them from having any other critical standpoint
on what they have seen. It is often heard the phrase at
least they laughed as if that somehow makes up for
everything and anything of what performing is about.
With this in mind, it is reasonable then to suggest that
some laughter has in affect, produced a sort of

laziness in both performer and audience. There is also

a breakdown in communication between audience and
performer during some of these funny moments, and
the interaction appears a little dated. The audience let
their guard down by allowing themselves to laugh but
the performers do not. The conversation ends there
and the performers do not react to us laughing (which
in real life would happen). This peculiar communication
needs to develop in a less rigid format especially
considering the ubiquitous use of humour across art;
in some cases it is not being used to its full potential.
If laughter is unconstructive, lacking in creativity and
becoming a bit stifled then what grounds does it have
to be present in performance that comes under the
genre of Live Art, which by its own definition goes
against those things? I am arguing for a revival of
laughter and feel that there may be a new opening for
performed humour within the field of Live Art. Before
I delve into examples of this, perhaps it is important
to understand my own perspective of what exactly
laughter is.
Like love, laughter can occur as a sort of falling, lack
of control or almost weakness. It takes affect on us
humans, exudes pleasure and can therefore be taken
for granted that we enjoy it. Laughter somehow commits
me to the moment. It is one of the few instances where
I can submerge myself in a little ovation for that one
funny thing. Nevertheless I wonder how many of us
actually take note of laughter enough to prioritise it, to
acknowledge its affect. It is only when I stop to think
about it that I stumble across its profundity

Punch Line
Both laughter and Live Art are fundamentally real and
focus on the human as a subject and object. Laughter
takes on physicality, and Live Art (because of its
emphasis on the live) features the presence of the
body. It is specifically the double employment of the

body as the artist and the art (a site, canvass, object

as well as interacting, doing, creature) that propels its
significance to the art form. A development of the use
of laughter within Live Art and beyond theatrical farce
is to utilise it as a double employment of the body, to
disembody it in fact, as a subject and not simply an
effect.
In 2002, artist Anne Bean reformed her performance
group Bernsteins in order to re-create the 1973
piece Death to Grumpy Grandads as part of the
WhiteChapel Gallerys Short History of Performance
exhibition. The piece was an hour-long act of laughing;
the performers sitting on chairs in a circle with the
audience forming an outer circle beyond this. It starts
with the performers entering and sitting on whoopee
cushions which in turn set them off laughing.
A complex production of laughter thus ensues from
one performer to another, from performer to audience
and back again. The laughter is at first triggered by
the Whoopee cushions as comedy props; although
it may also be set off by the performers (reunited
after thirty years) finding humour in this bizarre task
of remembering, reproducing and re-connecting with
each other. Or, because it is the task in hand, it may
have started falsely by a pretend laugh that made
someone else really laugh, entering the slippery
area where authentic response and self-conscious
theatricality merged (Bean) .
The bubbling and resonating sounds of the inner circle
soon spread to the edges of the outer circle so that
laughter is chaotically flowing all over the place. This
also presents a multifaceted role for the audience who
(also facing each other in a circle) can see each other
like they can see the performers and seem to be doing
precisely the same activity as the performers. They
could just as well be laughing at each other and this
poses the question, would they carry on laughing after
the performers leave?
Beans piece works the use of laughter within Live

Art in a way that captures the physicality of laughing

as an everyday bodily function, spreading and
communicating in various means. She portrays an
undefined sense of funny as one is at a loss as to who
is laughing at whom? Who started laughing? What
were we laughing at? And what are we laughing at
still? By prompting these questions she shakes up and
tests the interactive qualities of Live Art, and the role of
laughing as both a reaction and performance tool.
I witnessed another alternative engagement with
laughter as part of the Red Ape event at the Plymouth
Arts Centre. The piece was Hard (part of a trilogy
Hard Poor and Dead) performed by Nathan Walker.
Walker comments on his work as not to do with being
funnyAlthough sometimes people do laugh at it.
This ironically suggests that his work is somehow
affected by humour and laughter, despite not being
immediately obvious or (as he implies) intended. This
disposition subverts the condition that laughter is an
achievement and separates the act of laughing from
the act of clapping. If artists step back to consider why
audiences laugh when we are not supposed to, this
might present an alternative method of working with
what is or is not funny. It may also persuade overlaps
between art that frames itself as serious, and art that
frames itself as funny.
In hard Walker allows this intrigue to seep into the work.
The first example of this is that he himself laughed
quite unexpectedly. He was awkwardly holding himself
from a beam on the ceiling attempting to jiggle metal
nails out of his pants and onto the floor. We laughed
because he was in a comically uncomfortable
position and attempting to do something that is
difficult. However, the sight of Walkers own quietly
amused smile affected this moment much more. The
ridiculousness was emphasised because he himself
was acknowledging it.
Pretending to be flawed is not that funny anymore, but
getting your self into a position of real flaw, exposing
this and accepting that you are performing it, somehow

is laughable. An element of seriousness was put aside,

forgiven for a moment so that we (him and us) could
release a small chunk of appreciation (not just for the
work but for the sake of laughter). It moved it beyond
a superior sort mockery (correcting a fool), and bought
us in to a closer degree of intimacy; as if we were
all dangling from a beam with nails falling out of our
pants, chuckling away with neighbourly empathy.
Coincidentally, at the end of the performance I heard
him say to somebody Thank you for Laughing. Walker
neither feigns, desires nor requires laughter, but he
does play with it. By smiling he opens up his face and
exposes something otherwise inaccessible.
Live Art deals with laughter in an alternative way (as it
deals with every other theatrical device; making it not
art, not theatre, but something else - the very nature
of what it is). There are many connections between
laughter and Live Art that provoke issues of the body
in performance art, confront the subject versus object
and unsettle the roles of audience and performer. In
particular I am addressing the act of laughing rather
than the act of being funny and suggesting playing,
prioritising, sensing and wallowing a bit in being
tickled.
Engaging in this you will find that what is happening
is tickling you more and more, in the places where
you feel it most, in the places you dont normally allow
to be tickled for fear of what might happen. This is
the correspondence between Live Art and laughter,
the bubbling productivity of an equally engaging and
edgy game. It is the alternative moments of humour
where the performer makes them-self laugh or when
the impact of a resounding punch-line is tested and
stretched that puts laughter as a subject of innovation
and somewhere beyond theatrical farce.

Suspension
and Awakening
Mark Greenwood
Cover image: Collaboration # 1 Francesca Steele & Manuel Vason

The act of levitation is not an easy one.

Hands are cold and boots muddy as we wander around
the grounds of a Victorian dockyard. Pushing open
rusty gates and shifting peeling paint doors, brushing aside cobwebs and skirting around the edges of
pools where moss and lilies float, clinging to taut and
stagnant surfaces. Entering damp and dank sheds
our cold hands touch old tools feeling for weight and
worth. Eyes seek out objects pinned to walls, mucky
gloves hang on frayed washing lines against a backdrop of blunt saws and scattered nails in dusty jam
jars. Collated materials and objects are added to defunct wheel barrows with punctured tyres. Old rope
stained with salt and seaweed coils around withered
wood and rusted chains that lock and deny access.

canny. Reality and dreams merge together in images

that convey hope and restoration.

Francesca Steeles work explores fragile boundaries,

the unsayable and autobiographical. In this instance
her work investigates experiences of mental and
physical trauma and how this trauma can be reconciled through horticulture; the art of cultivation and
management. Alternatives to medicine are sought in
practices that foreground care and nurturing, healing
and patience in opposition to science and medicine.
Honesty, sincerity, intimacy and trust figure in Steeles
artwork evoking fantasy worlds, sorcery and the un-

In the Live Art form, conventional language is discarded in favour of mannerism and gesture. Aesthetic
reduction, flesh, bone and topographies of skin configure to relate importance in a temporary elevation from
the mundane. Other identities are inhabited in order to
articulate emotions and thoughts that escape semantic orders, restrictions of speech and written words.
Images are immortalised and isolated moments are
etched and indented in space and time like sounds on
magnetic tape or ghosts that inhibit and haunt ancient

Gathered in a prodigious space within the dockyard

papers are signed to secure secrets of the magic circle.
Drinking coffee and smoking to fight the cold, passive
objects and technology are gathered, as we await collaboration between artist, magician and photographer.
The act is rehearsed and repeated; clothes and errors
are ironed out in preparation of a final image where
focus and complete silence are necessary. Tension
and discomfort, impatience and stress surround the
activities of preparation. Manuel Vason arrives and we
are ready to begin.

Collaboration #5
Francesca Steele, Christopher Howell &
Manuel Vason

sites. Actions in this life resound in eternity. However,

specific conditions must be determined. Objects, the
body, site and duration convene to emit intensities that
resound and synthesise in an instant that captures the
artists intentions, burning bright in the snap of a camera shutter or the blink of an eye; testament to an equation of lived experience and the recognition of trauma.
How might we deal with the after effects of trauma and
what happens when this trauma takes our memory, our
capacity for speech or the ability to function as we did
before the traumatic event? Steele invests time with victims of trauma, collecting their thoughts and experiences
as research for this current project. What is interesting
about Steeles work is that while the majority of live/performance artists make work around points of trauma,
it is often from the point of the personal and private.
While Steele herself has endured trauma akin to the
people she has consulted and shared experiences
with, she is nonetheless willing to endure and position their experiences within the model of her working
methodology. This collaboration therefore reverses the
ontology of performance practice where the individual
artist articulates a traumatic experience and amplifies this through the performed event. In effect Steele
re-mediates not an individual or singular experience
of trauma but a collective notion of convalescence; a
working through of multiple traumas to communicate a
shared encounter in reaction to methods of reconciliation, of remedy and recovery. Through this working
practice Steele exposes and legitimises the tears, the
futility, the frustration and the difficulties endured, not
only with the restoration of mental and physical capabilities, which in some cases can never be attained,
but also through a sustained empathy which reiterates the social and political complications arising from
the traumatic event. Restoring a sense of community and stability parallel to notions of coping and reawakening becomes pivotal to her working ideology.
Collaboration #8:
Francesca Steele, Stuart Core &
Manuel Vason

Interstice and Steeles subsequent collaborations with

the magician Chris Howell describe an awakening

of this kind while also illustrating opposing poles of

dominance and passivity in relation to the rehabilitation process; the giving up ones body to others, the
sense of having to place trust in others, the need to
obey strict instructions in order to fulfil a complete and
satisfactory recovery programme by compliance. Conversely the trauma patient has to find inner strength,
to assert their own individuality in order to restore a
sense of normality and a level of accomplishment.
Not only is a recovery essential in a socio-communal
sense, but also in the re-establishment of ones own
autonomy. Interstice therefore works on a number of
abstract levels. The journey from darkness to luminosity, the awakening from a deep sleep as encountered
in fairy tale and myth, the relationships between trickery and magic which suggest a difference between
quick fix methods of medicative rehabilitation and
long term natural healing processes. The magician
and assistant affinity also opens up dichotomies of
the carer and cared for, doctor and patient. These
polar opposites (underscored by a male/female representation) question the traditional relationships, ambiguities and complexities that exist in an exchange
between these coordinates to a point where the binaries collapse. Can the subject/object reliance be separated into axis of dominance and submission when
it appears none can exist without the other? Steeles
images extend a symbiosis a profound connectivity where cultures of revival and repair are practised
and sustained in magic rituals and spiritual ceremony.
Set in the ceiling of the warehouse are structures of
hollow horny shafts fringed with barbs and veins that
form an assemblage of geometric paths and broken
hexagrams. Steeles supine body inhabits the space
prone, outstretched and floating in mid air. Magicians hands mysteriously elevate her from a table; her
dark dress and black hair hang in the space between
her and the floor. Our encounter with this spectacle is
filled awe and curiosity. For a moment our empiric belief systems fail to uncover illusion and trickery. Sorcery and the sublime are manifest as notions of the
religious and the performed miracle are induced. This

temporary enticement into the supernatural echoes

the dreamlike states we inhabit in illness the dark
corners of perception where real life and fantasy collide and distort as we navigate consciousness, slipping
and sliding between states of awareness. In Steeles
dramatic and fastidious re-enactments, breathing and
cautious blinks of the eye signal the initiation of the self
into a pragmatic realm of being. A pale lily that is held
in the left hand is gently caressed, opened and closed.
In between the careful collation of materials and profoundly intense periods of Steeles performance, Manuel Vason sips a cappuccino and continuously sketches on napkins and scraps of paper. The intimacies that
are staged in Vasons photographic work challenge
models of representation, disseminating modalities
of visual language until meanings are remodelled to
uncover improbable and provocative depictions of human experience and the divergent relationships between performed subjectivity and compelling environments. The relationship between Steele and Vason
is a volatile one. While he is preoccupied with a fevered pursuit and persistent embroideries of materials and situations, Steele patiently awaits a realisation of her ideas which rely on an intuitive sense of
timing and cathartic impulse as opposed to Vasons
hectic and energetic manipulations and re-workings
of relative signs and cultural signifiers. There is a
sense that her composure and endurance will lead
to an extended session. Innovative and interrogative collaborative practice converges to assure a respective instant where the paradoxical ontologys of
photography and performance combine. While Vason frantically battles with the disappearance of light,
Steele contends with a rapid drop in temperature.
Lost and Found
The desire to explore the female body, to cut beneath the
skin and open it to the admiring gaze of fellow observers
(whether poets, painters, or anatomists) was impossible to resistHesitation before the female formis a
nineteenth century invention, one entirely foreign to the
ruthless dynamism of Renaissance explorations of the
human figure particularly the female human figure.

John Sawday, The Body Emblazoned, 1995

This writing provides a background concern for my
reading of Steele, Core and Vasons collaboration.
Stuart Core is a local body builder, at ease with lending his persona and physicality to innovative and abstract exercises in aesthetic experimentation. Looking
over the resulting photographs my eyes are drawn to
references inscribed through the natural and unnatural components that interweave through a series of
paired portraitures. Visual codes and gesture re-animate figures from classical literature and painting, consequently questioning literary and artistic descriptions
of heroic masculinity whilst, at the same, repositioning
a feminine counter text. These representations configure a site where psychological states, degrees of control and helplessness are wrestled in a triangular flux
that oscillates between the explicit, viewed bodies and
the viewer. The antagonistic scene of Steeles physical
and psychic rebirth with its disruptions and maimed
rites radically subverts idealised depictions of the female as passive and dependant on heroic male support. Steeles body forces a speculation and a ruthless dynamism which opens it up to the viewers gaze.
There are allusions to sexuality suggestively inscribed
in the images, not only manifest in the interaction
between Steeles and Cores bodies, but also in the
natural elements of the images the green moss that
clings to the surface of Steeles white skin in Collaboration #9 provides not only a revival or rescuing from
drowning but a emphasis on the erotogenic qualities
of human surfaces sensitive to touch and stimulation.
The classical, emblazoned body is fractured, decomposed, posing questions around wholeness and material substance. An ashen, fragmented arm juts across
an architecture of gorged muscle and stretched skin,
threatening to strike at an Adams apple suspended
in a taut and exposed throat while Cores stony and
unaffected stare returns our gaze. The potential for
a double gesture in each image is heightened by
Vasons framing. Orthodox iconography and composition figures Steeles body as fragile, female, cata-

tonic Cores as strong, male and diligent. However,

these readings are inverted as an apparently herculean male body becomes acutely vulnerable to an
outstretched female hand that threatens to usurp his
position with a violent downward pull. While these images are romanticised to an extent they traffic alternative readings. Could the fingers that wrap around
the throat also be seeking a pulse in portrayal of reassurance and affection? The recognisable boundaries between violence and intimate care become
as entangled as the salty ropes that coil around the
bodies that assert themselves in Collaboration #8.
Collaboration #8 is a palimpsest of motifs and motivations. On one level it implies the salvation of the fallen
woman with the male providing a form of redemption;
we are confronted with an immediate jolt of horror at
the recumbent headless body a lifeless broken doll
decapitated and uncanny. The image yields a dark annunciation of rescue as the male despondently tries to
reanimate the female body. Blood vessels strain and
frayed ropes strangulate Steeles pale and stiff limbs.
The desire to reactivate a shattered anatomy only results
in the enactment of a castration complex where repetitive anxiety and desperation articulates a disavowal of
death. Our gaze is not returned in this stark vision; instead we are trapped and paralysed in a cathexis where
danger and phantasy corrupt desire and pleasure.
Weeks after, the minute details of each photograph
from the collaboration are examined. Endless dialogue, ethical considerations, and anxieties have been
bargained with, tussled over and thrashed out over
bottles of red wine and kitchen tables conversations
in the backs of cabs contribute to decisions that have to
be made in terms of process and issues of authorship.
We meet with the clients of the horticultural healing
centre within the dockyard. Crammed in like sardines,
butane heaters blow hot air against scarred grey walls
with cracks as long as branches. Traces and remnants
attest to choreographies of daily labour, walking, watering, nurture and care. Old dirt clings in threads to
blunt metal implements. We examine Vasons photo-

graphs; passing them around with cold hands. Fairy

tales, myths and obscenity figure in the clients responses; disturbing and stimulating, dark and beautiful. Suggestions of violence fluctuate around the bodies on show. Some responses are mute while notions
of entrapment and release, recovery and healing are
sensed and enunciated by the group. The clients agree
that the images are provocative in their depictions of
mastery and slavery but also unnerving in their rendering of bodies as raw material to be speculated upon.
This latest collaboration between Steele and Vason
confronts the alienation and helplessness experienced by the bodys endurance of physical and mental
pain through a series of exhaustive and circumstantial
episodes of aesthetic experimentation, enacting and
understanding. The artists body is a conscious material object, self evident and self reflexive in Steele
and Vasons work. Whether viewed in real time or
contemplating it in photographic form as documentation or artefact, the viewer is unable to hold a purely
objective position to the artists body. Knowledge of
ones own body into that other body is projected. We
are caught transfixed in an act of voyeurism. The Live
Art form is largely considered within the discourse
of identity politics and ideologies that are inscribed
and resisted in bodies and selves. The dynamics
of space, temporality and the artists body are combined as compositional tools to describe and disturb
evocations of the uncanny against experienced realities. Steele invites us to join her on journeys to dark
corners where the air is black with pain and despair.
Only through slow levitations and gradual releases
from trauma and its associated stigma can Steele initiate rescue and restoration from wounds and scars
that refuse to fade and disintegrate in an orphic gaze.

Images shown courtesy of Francesca Steele,

Manuel Vason and Groundwork South West

I Feel Love!

Interview With George Chakravarthi

Adelaide Bannerman
Artist George Chakravarthi promulgates a crossdisciplinary exploration on the mutability of identity in
performances realised for video, the public realm and
printed media. History and culture are the narrative
contexts that propel and inform his investigations,
resulting in a series of works that collapse and
collide worlds, moments, and events to form new and
hybridised territories that the artist situates his body
within.

Images: I Feel Love! (2008)

George Chakravarthi
Photo Pau Ross

Chakravarthis latest work I FEEL LOVE! has been

commissioned for SPILL Festival of Performance
(2-26 April 2009), and is a six hour dance enacted
in public space that examines the revered body as
portrayed in commemorative public sculpture, dance,
and popular culture. The work is a contemporary
exploration of the marathon dances popularized in the
United States during the Depression era of the 1920s
and 1930s, where the lure of cash prizes and fame
predominantly attracted individuals hit hard by the
economic crisis. What is poignant about this piece that
enlists Chakravarthis latest persona Johnny Shekontai
is that it bears a direct correlation with our present
moment that similarly apprehends another large-scale
economic meltdown, and a widespread fascination
with celebrity culture. In a brief conversation with the
artist, we discussed aspects of his previous works,
and this new work being prepared.

that accommodate figurative sculptures as dedications

to memory and loss. Im making the connection through
the piece to relate to the fragility and endurance of the
body, personal experiences of go go dancing in clubs
during the 80s and 90s and the pre-Aids hedonistic
queer culture of the 1970s. In relation to contemporary
art and events Im referencing the coming of age and
emergence of second generation Black and Asian
artists during the 80s, and how they sought to create
space for themselves as part of the art world. These
events are very relevant to consider and are close to
my heart.

Adelaide Bannerman: Barflies (2004) was your first

work enacted in the public realm where you explored
transgendered identities, how does I FEEL LOVE!
continue your interest in making work for public
space?

GC: Yes, in a way it is but I think that you could say that
about much of my work, but the combat in this case is
really placed within my own body which presents its
vulnerability. In a sense it also carries all the virtues of
political demonstrations when ones body is used as a
tool to reach some form of negotiation.

George Chakravarthi: Barflies was a site-specific

piece made in the public realm and presented as
documentation in the form of a video installation.
I FEEL LOVE! is a live performance. The difference
between the two is the visibility of the performance.
I FEEL LOVE! is highly visible piece in that Ill be
performing solo on a plinth of which the dimensions
are similar to other plinths used in public sculpture.
In Barflies, the performance was more shifting in its
presence. Barflies was emotionally challenging and
sought to uncover prejudices and social behaviour in
different public contexts, which included two pubs and
a club. I FEEL LOVE! is physically challenging my
body during a 6 hour duration and the performance will
be blatantly visible as it will take place in Soho Square,
and is used by many different communities at different
times of the day. The work associates itself with those
constituencies, and celebrates history, memory and
art within an open public arena.
AB: Could you tell us a bit more about those histories
youre referring to and their relevance to you?
GC: Im referring to the histories and uses of sculpture
and performance in public spaces: monumental spaces

AB: Youve already remarked that I FEEL LOVE!

is an exploration of endurance and exhaustion. Its a
physically challenging work, of which you could almost
view it as combative...how would you respond to that
suggestion?

AB: Thats a strong association. Can you elaborate on

that link?
GC: Those are just some of the associations that Ive
thought about whilst conceiving the work. Durational
performance work challenges physical and mental
endurance. The same could be said of some Eastern
rituals and extreme religious acts of worship and
devotion. There is a profound history of the body as
a masochistic tool for communication, protest and
expression.
AB: The nature of the work will challenge audiences
in the sense that theyre not going to an event that will
resolve itself within a conventional time frame. How do
you think audiences will engage with I FEEL LOVE!
GC: I think the audience will respond to it in many
ways. Some might join the dance, others might take
on a more passive, voyeuristic role others may
simply walk by and think about it later. I think all those
responses are valid and indicative of our cultural
behavior and expectations.

If Its Not Live Art, Its

Dead Art: The Institution
As Public Performance
Andy Murray
My faith in Live Art died back in February when I
went to see a self-described unique happening,
called Smoke, at the ICA. The only unique thing that
happened was that during the interval a man in a very
large and elaborate robot costume with laser guns
and searchlight eyes came on stage and, in a this
is the voice of the Mysterons vernacular, told jokes
bad enough to make my lager go sour. Of course, Id
probably be asking too much from a self-described
10-piece glam death disco outfit to give me any
pause for aesthetic contemplation, but the questions
still remain: when did such events start being referred
to as happenings and Live Art? And since when did
institutions like the ICA start hosting them?

Artist terrified unsuspecting

men in adult-cinemas
(1969) Valie Export

Live Art used to achieve things beyond a Friday Night

piss-up. Looking back at Live Arts artistic pedigree,
we can see that it is hereditarily a highly politicised and
thought-provoking medium, with its historic precedents
in public demonstrations of Majoritarian power and
Minoritarian dissent. On the side of the Major, such
displays would follow the to encourage the others
formula, such as the excruciating public execution of
the supposed regicide Damiens, in Paris 1757, who
was burnt alive with oil and pulled apart by horses in

front of a horrified crowd. On the side of the Minor,

the demonstration would act to increase the volume
of the voices of those underrepresented, which
would usually involve amassing thousands of the
screaming, banner-waving proles at a civil institution;
but not necessarily, single protesters like the Buddhist
monk, Thch Quang Duc who immolated himself in
front of the Cambodian embassy in Saigon in 1963,
as captured in the famous photo by Malcolm Browne,
made one of the most effective demonstrations of the
20th century. What these examples illustrate is that
political demonstrations are designed visually, so
that the Major can control the discourse of its Major
narrative, or so that the Minor can force entry into that
narrative from which it is excluded. Damien Hirst was
forced to apologise a few years ago for describing the
destruction of the twin towers as a visually stunning
artwork. Although he was a bit callous in his delivery,
in essence he was right. By looking at its aesthetic
precedents in politics, and assuming that Live Art
would begin as a Minor activity within the arts, it is
clear that it was determined to be subversive medium
even before it was born.

It is no surprise then, that the Minor voices of post-war

sexual politics have a rich history of sophisticated Live
Art practice. A few examples reveal how Live Art was
exploited as a medium that confronted its Public directly
with what discomforted them. In 1969, VALIE EXPORT
would terrify unsuspecting men in adult-cinemas by
confronting them in a pair of home-made crotchless
trousers, a fag in her mouth and a toy gun: wanna see
a real woman, huh!? In 1975 Carole Schneemann
would read out her feminist writing from a long scroll
unrolled progressively from her vagina. Similarly,
in the late 80s ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash
Power) would organise large scale same-sex kiss-ins
in public places to confront the American population
with their own homophobia. These performances use
the same mechanisms as the demonstration of Minor
dissent that I outlined earlier-a visual display of the
voice of a Minor in the presence of a Major.
Sex lends itself well to Live Art. Performances on
other political issues, such as war and inequality, are
hampered on a technical level, as they refer to things
happening elsewhere to the performance. Excluding
the exceptional self-immolation of Thch Quang Duc,
war protests rarely differ in confrontational power than
the history paintings that line the Louvre. Live sex, on
the other hand, is right in your face. On this count, Live
Art puts the languid nudes of academic art to shame.
However, traditional fine art has the upper hand in
its longevity. It would take a special artist to keep a
Live sexual performance going on day and night. And
leaving a left-over unmade bed for us to ponder over
makes a disappointing compromise.
I think that last point gets to the essential difference
between Live Art and Institutional Art. Whereas Live
Art confronts the viewer with the present moment
of performance, the museum display is heavily
mediated, offering only an archaeology of events that
once occurred, and are now past. Testifying to this are
the mummies in the British museum. Wouldnt it have
been far better to have experience them as beautifully
bejewelled and erotically charged performers enacting

courtly rituals that decided upon matters of life and

death. But unfortunately, I can only reconstruct such
a fantasy by peering at their long deceased cadavers
and disused bangles from behind glass cabinets. Such
institutional art is the mirror in which Live Art sees its
polar opposite, and the state to which it is destined:
namely, the state of Dead Art.
Of course, many public institutions are not phased by
the label, Dead Art. On the contrary, the neo-classical
facades of the National Gallery and the British Museum
are designed to give them a look of antique authority
well beyond their actual years.
However, contemporary art institutions are less content
with being an artists graveyard. In such discomfort,
they jettison the classic role of the Institution as a
reliquary for High-Art objects and start wriggling in their
own Institutional performances. Such performances
alter the way art is made and presented on a more
fundamental scale that just the hosting Glam Death
Disco outfits. Like Live Art, they put greater emphasis
on the temporariness and interactivity of the event.
Unlike Minor Live Art, they dont do this to break
into the Major narrative, rather, by already being the
arbiters of the Major narrative, their task is to draw other
Minor voices within that narrative. Art, then suddenly
becomes very democratic and community orientated.
Naturally, the preview night gains greater emphasis,
as testified to by the monthly street parties that the
First Thursday scheme encourages on Vyner Street.
But it also means that there is a discomfort with the
traditional public monument, which has to be recycled
and renewed, such as the 4th plinth in Trafalgar
Square, and the Unilever series of installations in Tate
Modern. The most complete extension of this logic has
manifested itself in a institution in West Bromwich, The
Public. Nothing could be more opposed to the typical
neo-classical building: it is pink, has no vertical walls,
and its gallery promises the type of interactivity where
the visitor can change the art and the program.

Little Frank and his Carp

(2001), Andrea Fraser

Artist personally
cleaned the floors
of gallery
Mierle Laderman
Ukeles

Of course, not all institutions feel these inhibitions.

If your name happens to be Charles Saatchi you
can do what you damn well like. Compare the new
Saatchi Gallery, in The Duke of Yorks Headquarters
in Chelsea with all the bubbly nonsense that is The
Public, and we see that private billionaire patron has
few of the insecurities that publicly-owned institutions
fumble over. If anything, the architecture of the Saatchi
Gallery is trying to articulate itself as a central, Major
voice, on a par with prominent national institutions
like the National Gallery and the British Museum.
However, unlike them, The Saatchi still undergoes a
sophisticated institutional performance, it maintains
contemporaneity by continually attempting to pull
in Minor voices into its Major narrative. This is why
Saatchi had recently set his eyes on China, and is
now doing so for India and the Middle East. Its still
Brit-Art, buts it done by Chinese people.

I think the end-game of this movement has manifested

itself in the most recent Tate Triennial, Altermodern,
curated by Nicolas Bourriaud. In this show Bourriaud
argues that the Major Institutional artistic culture has,
with capitalist economics and politics, completely
globalised itself, so that it no longer has a central
Major voice, but is constituted entirely of a plurality of
homogenised Minor voices. It is no shock then, that
by coining the neologism, Altermodern, Bourriaud
inverts the usual creative narrative of culture, by
having museum displays precede and determine
artistic movements, rather than vice-versa. In such an
environment, creativity loses its potential for political
subversion. Art in such a narrative can only be the
movement of one part of this all-encompassing realm
to another, like Chinese Art brought to Britain. Art
cannot be an attack on the limits of that realm itselfon Institutional Art itself

This has been the fate of Live Art. After beginning

as a Minor art practice, Live Art had gradually been
captured and incorporated into the Major Institutional
language. This has occurred exactly because the Major
functions to capture within it that which is critical of it.
In Live Art, we therefore see the move from a political
critique of the Institution in the 60s and 70s, to an
artistic Institutional critique in the 80s and 90s. When
feminist performance artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles
personally cleaned the floors of gallery institutions her
emphasis was still a feminist one. However, in Andrea
Fraser institutional-critique, such as in Little Frank
and his Carp, in which she bring herself up to orgasm
against the walls of the Guggenheim, Bilbao; and
Untitled (2003), where she records herself shagging
an anonymous collector who paid nearly $20 000 for
the privilege; the nature of criticism becomes more
complex. When critique moves from a political position
external to the institution, to a critical position internal
to it, the criticism becomes dependent on that which
it is criticising. By literally fucking the institution, it is
ambiguous as to whether Andrea Fraser is critic, or a
fetishizer, of the Major culture.

What are we left with then, when the Major Institution

culture has globalised itself? Has captured all the Minor
dissenting voices? When Dead Art has completely
incorporated Live Art and we partake endlessly in a
global Institutional Performance? The Institutional
performance is an Art that is both Live and Dead It
is Undead: a limp cultural zombie that seems as if it
will haunt us to eternity. If Live Art is to continue to be
of value, it should no longer to try get minor voices
heard in the major narrative. Rather it is to find ways
for them to express themselves outside of it, outside
of the Major narratives Saatchi and Bourriaud sets for
them. In other words, to maintain its aesthetic value, it
should find a way to re-politicise itself.

Rachel Lois Clapham

Writing on performance:
A Performance Saga Riff
Performance Saga Festival, Arsenic Lausanne
February 14, 2009
Right here, right now I am at a desk in the Laboratory
of the Arsenic Centre of Contemporary Art in Lausanne
Switzerland writing away as part of Open Dialogues:
Performance Saga, a collaborative writing project
that produces critical responses to the work seen at
the Performance Saga Festival. Some of the festival
artists, Stuart Brisley, Simone Rssli, Monika Gnther
and Esther Ferrer and a few festival visitors are stood
around a supersize purple bean bag beside me. They
are chatting about Rsslis performance last night A
lme en secret. Outside the Laboratory window, I can
see a few footsteps in the fresh snow. Its sunny. A bird
flies onto the branch just outside where I am sitting.
I wasnt sure whether or not it was supposed to
happen..
It was a surprise....Oh no. It certainly wasnt invited...I
had no idea he was going to come on stage with me.
Myself and four other writers have been welcomed
into the heart of the Performance Saga festival;
accommodated, fed, and given work space along
with the artists. We have wireless internet, laptops,
sound recorders, USB sticks, one small printer and
one super-size photocopier. These are the tools of our
collaboration; participatory, mobile, responsive and
indebted to the right here right now. It is critical writing
that is conceived of, produced and disseminated in the
same time and space as the performances.

Yes, I hope you dont mind, I just felt really

compelled.
I put my foam earplugs in to block out the noise of
everyones chatter and concentrate on my writing. As
the foam expands the artists voices fade away to a
muffled, indistinguishable blurble, their mouths move
but no sound reaches me. I look back at the blank
document on my computer screen. To where my written
response to Simone Rsslis performance should be
but isnt, because I cant focus on what I want to say
amid all the comings and goings. I push my earplugs in
a bit more and think back to last night but now its the
inside of my head, my blood pumping that is amplified,
mixed in with the noise of my thinking.
Dun Dun, Dun, Dun I remember Rssli sporadically
walked around in the theatre, playing bits of music from
her ipod, then changing her mind, stopping mid track
and playing others. Dun Dun, Dun Dun. She casually
folded a series of rustic woven blankets that were dotted
around the space, she took some of the bottled water
that was centre stage and put it on a small camping
gas stove to boil. She did this and various other small,
everyday and seemingly insignificant gestures for 40
minutes. Dun Dun, Dun, Dun. Then suddenly something
happened, an event, if it had not been one already. A
member of the audience who had been sat next to me
debating whether or not to intervene- suddenly got
up, entered Rsslis performance space and lay down
on one of her blankets. He watched Rssli for

Simone Rssli, A lme en secret

Photo: Petra Khle &
Nicolas Vermot Petit-Outhenin

her reaction. Rssli promptly came over and gently

covered the interloper with a blanket and tucked him
in. Dun Dun, Dun, Dun. It was this unscripted moment
that revealed the real contingency and potentiality of
the performance. It highlighted Rsslis indecisive
actions in the space as deliberately undecided and
meaningful in their very lack of clear intent, they were
shown as actions that stemmed from a desire to fully
experience the abundance and precariousness of
potentiality live on stage. Dun Dun, Dun, Dun. The
critical and contingent nature of her performance was
due to its being rooted to its moment, being open to
its evental nature, in particular to any unanticipated,
background or outside agency it contained. Dun Dun,
Dun, Dun. In was in and by the porosity of the event
that we the audience, usually confined to our seats
as necessary witness to the live, were affecting the
performance, and vice versa.
Still sat in front of the blank document in front of me,
Im thinking about the possibility of a writing that might
match, or speak the event that we experienced. How
to write an event in which the collective exchange and
community is beyond one subject, or identity? How to
produce a writing product that is an act or process of
something in the making? I am too distracted to try and
answer these questions. Outside the window the same
little bird is making tracks in the snow. The blurble of
the artists voices are seeping through the plugs and
mix with the pumping and the buzz of my thoughts in
my head. I take my earplugs out. And then I hear it.
The one who thinks and writes must take the other of
knowledge seriously. Noise is always already part of
the signal
Michel Serres talks about noise, more specifically
background noise and how it is crucial, it is the flipside or other of knowledge where being and thought
truly lie. He articulates a mode of hearing in which we
should not try and block out what is ordinarily assumed

as background or uncritical, rather we should be

open to the event of our thinking and writing, and listen
intently to the sounds that surround it. He reminds me
to stay alert or listening to the event of our writing
here at Arsenic; that paying attention to the moment
and conditions of the writings production, the noise in
which it is situated as well as the sounds it produces,
is crucial. In order to hear this, we writers have to tune
into that which is traditionally or formally out of range.
We must pay (un)due critical attention to our complicity
within the Performance Saga festival, embrace the
proximity of our writing to the performances and all
the comings and goings that blurble around me here
in the Laboratory. I hear Serres loud and clear: these
distractions are critical. We must let them in, not try to
block them out.
.....Yes, but after it happened most of us just ended
up sitting there in some kind of tense limbo. It was like,
faced with the choice, I felt frozen to my seat.
Now Im all ears, and underneath the blurble I can just
about hear another voice. Yve Lomax is chattering
away straining to be heard ....
Isnt an openness towards being affected what is
asked for when one acts to make with something or
someone else?
Porosity then, is critical to both writing and performance;
the potential to intervene in both is transformative. This
is not simply to analogise writing to performance. It is
a recognition that something is equally at stake, live
and improvisatory in the process of writing as it is in
performance. Coming in on the backbeat, John Seth
now speaks up and joins the mix [improvisation is]
constituted by the very weave of the moment, place
and circumstances of enunciation. Improvisation then,
is performative: a subversive riffing or speaking of an
existing structure or object in the moment of utterance.
In doing so, it occupies the separation between the act

of improvisation and that which is being improvised

upon. It enacts and simultaneously manipulates
existing products and speaks wider social conditions.
So too, by rooting writing to the event of performance,
and enacting its chance, performative or contextual
dimensions to create something else - something that
is constituted by the moment, place and circumstances
of its enunciation- writing is signalled as an adulterated
riff, skewed scat or impure travesty upon an existing
lexicon. Such writing is noisy, and easily distracted, it
allows us to playfully wrestle with the literary nature,
or object, of writing: to unpick some of the patriarchal
power that is invested in it after the stage lights go
down.
It made the rest of the performance
uncomfortable, I mean- what were we to do?

really

Audience is also inextricably linked to both

performance and writing; as meaning, witness and
collaborator. As the intervention enabled by Rsslis
performance shows, the agency and potentiality
endowed to the audience in the live event even if
not realised by the majority- is crucial in order that
the performance be considered as such; that it the
function as a contingent event. Equally, the reader
needs to be endowed with the agency to intervene,
improvise upon or riff on the text in the moment of
the texts reception in order for the writing to exist as
such. For theorist Michel De Certeau to read is not to
simply receive an authors written product or meaning.
Rather, the reader physically manipulates the text she
reads: she productively scripts her own meaning and
her own writing - in and by the act of reading. Again,
the agency of this improvisation for De Certeau, relies
upon, a distinction between the forms used in a system
and the ways of using this system. In other words, it
relies upon a definition of the performative as the gap
between words and what words do, the difference
between speaking and speech act. In this way, De
Certeau highlights the porosity of text and radicalises
the utility and consumption of writing.

Writing that is wholly porous to the distractions,

background noise or unanticipated nature of the
event signposts itself as that which might be critically
improvised upon by the reader long after the moment
of its conception and long after the moment of the
performance has passed. It is writing that, in its proximity
to performance, embraces the groundlessness of
collaboration, a situation in which the performativity of
meaning is explored, and a writers complicity with her
object of study is laid bare.
And here at Arsenic, amid the events, voices and
exchanges that cling to this text, we can try and write
differently, responsively and perhaps unexpectedly
within performance. To produce writing that is
contingent, discursive, and not accumulative; writing
that gives way to meaning in and by its evental nature.
And in doing so, ask how performance can shape the
event of criticism, and vice versa.
Rachel Lois Clapham is a curator and Co-Director
of Open Dialogues: a UK based collaboration that
produces critical writing and debate on Live Art.
www.opendialogues.com

Lorena Rivero De Beer

Who are you?

A workshop by Franko B
2 - 6 March, 2009

Under the title, Who are you? Franko B led a

workshop at the Tramway in Glasgow. It was part of
the mentoring scheme by the New Territories Winter
School, produced by New Moves International that
also holds the National Review of Live Art. We were
fifteen participants who came came from all over
Europe, whose practices could be framed by the wide
definition of performance art. We came from diverse
disciplines such as philosophy, fine arts, theatre, music
or social sciences.
Through this mentoring scheme Franko B brought us
through a journey into the self and its aesthetics that
was shaped by the defining character of his work. He
is one of the essential artists that have shaped the
meaning of Live Art from a raw, radical space that is at
the same time totally embedded in the history of visual
arts. As he says:
Im essentially a painter who also works in performance.
I come from a visual art background and not Live Art
or theatre, and this is very important to me as it informs
the way my work is read. In the last 20 years or so I
have developed ways of working to suit my need at
that particular time, in terms of strategy and context,
by using, installation, sculpture, video and sound.
The workshop consisted of five non-stop days full
of images, that were both visual and conceptual.
The visual journey came both from the participants

creative input and by the persistent streaming of

video images that Franko made us flow through.
Throughout the days we watched films such as After
Life by Hirokazu Koreeda, The mirror by Andrei
Tarkovski and documentaries about Nan Goldin, Bob
Flanagan, Larry Clark, Louise Bourgeois, etc. All of
them, in different ways, tried to grasp the essence of
the creative process and the links with the personal
histories of the authors. Looking individually to the
films but in a collective space, generated the possibility
to develop a new form of looking. This process was
interwoven with the different exercises done through
the workshop. For example we read out loud a long
piece of text that incorporated the five hundred words
texts that each participant had written anonymously
responding to the question who do you think you are?
In other exercise each participant brought in a memory
or an object that was fundamental to them and talked
about it for a few minutes. This was followed by each
participants presentation of their previous work. These
simple collective exercises together with the films and
documentaries created awareness of the close links
between memory, the sense of self, the history of art
and the creative process.
The third day the participants started the creation of
a piece of work that had to last between five to ten
minutes to be presented the next day. We were not
Aine ODwyer, Ireland
Workshop participant

allowed to eat during the whole day, we were asked to

talk only the minimum, remain in the space as much
as possible and use what we had on hand to create
our piece. The day was only broken by the one to one,
twenty minutes conversations that each of us had with
Franko. We had to use three elements to create the
piece, somebody else object or memory, something
from the films and documentaries and any section
from the collective text we read. The use of these
three elements made us focus our awareness on the
creative act as a process of remembrance conducted
by the personal feelings and mind state at the moment
of creation.
The workshop structure was so open that in moments
seemed non-existent. This generated feelings of
confusion in the participants and it was an important
element of the work we were doing, confronting
ourselves and our doubts about the creative process.
I had a strong sense through out the days of going
through a process of rediscovering my personal
creative form all alone, but being given the courage
to do so by the strength of the other participants
and Frankos presence which strongly defended the
individual process. For me this was strongly reinforced
by the one to one conversation with Franko, in which
he gave me a raw and sincere response. It was not an
easy, straight forward experience, but a profound one.
The response moved me out of the comfort zone into
a different place, just a slight move of perspective that
I experienced as a massive challenge.

Stefan Adamski, Poland

Workshop participant

The last two days the participants presented and got

feedback from their work. There was a real commitment
and energy flowing from each participants work, there
was a sense of risk and many of the participants gave
a step with more or less confidence into an unknown
different creative direction. The feedback was received
through group discussions and different exercises. For
example each of the participants wrote anonymously
five words describing what they saw the previous day.
Then the words were taken from a bag, one by one

by each participant, and read aloud while directing

the gaze to the person whose work we thought the
word described. Here we were exercising our ability
to respond sincerely to others and take in feedback.
An important aspect of the workshop was to observe
the process each participant went through, the
transformation of their work or sometimes the absence
of transformation and the surprising or not surprising
character of that. The different performances or
installations that people made were read, in the context
of the workshop, as part of a process that made sense
in relationship with the individual who created it and
her relationship with the context and the history of the
form.
The feelings that each participant had to the overall
process we went through the workshop was very
different, shifting all the way from great enthusiasm
to disappointment. Personally the workshop help
me to reinforce the personal commitment that the
artistic process demands. It also made remember the
importance of constantly looking back and rethinking
the history of art from different positions.

Anne Lena Msken

Nasan Tur
Tanas Gallery, Berlin
3 January 14 March 2009

Tanas Gallery hides in the backyard of an auto dealer

in the deserted area behind the new Hauptbahnhof.
This is Moabit. Not exactly the place where you would
expect an art gallery. And therefore it might be the
exact right place for Nasan Tur to show his work which
is a as edgy and rough as the surrounding.
Nasan Tur, a Berlin based artist whose parents were
part of the first Gastarbeiter-generation in the 1960s
plays with irritation in the public sphere using urban
daily life situations as the basis of his works. His current
exhibition Komunismus, Soziallismus, Kapietalismus
displays a variety of what he has done in the last
couple of years: performances, videos, photography,
installations, always full of humour making the visitors
smile and think at the same time.

Speaker Backpack
(2006) Nasan Tur
Mixed media

You can look Nasan Tur in the eyes in his Selfportrait.

Its a copy of his German identity card. Tur looks like the
clich of a Turk with his black piercing eyes, deep black
curly hair and most important a thick black mustache.
The photograph was an experiment: Tur deliberatly
grew the mustache before having his picture taken.
In a text on a wall displayed in Geman, English, and
Turkish he talks about that after changing his look he
was received completely differently in his daily life with
even friends treating him somewhat more distant then
before. Tur exposes peoples prejudices and touches
one of Germanys most discussed political topics of
the last years: integration. Turs picture of the clich

turk is juxtaposed with the letters on the ID that tell the

spectator that Tur was born in Offenbach in 1974 and
in that way deconstructing the idea of linear identities.
Irritation and surprise is the golden thread of Turs
exhibition. The installation Backpacks offers a
selection of backpacks all filled with the necessary
utensils to go out and protest on the streets. There is
one backpack loaded with a wooden box, a microphone
complete with a portable speaker, and a bottle of
water. In a video next to the backpack you can see
how a young woman walks the street with it stopping
at one point, putting down the box, stepping onto it,
and starting to hold a speech. The words get lost in
the street noise. People are passing, some stop for a
second before they move on. Tur wants visitors to take
one of the backpacks and actually go out with it. There
are different models for different kinds of protests.
One backpack is filled with graffiti cans and plain
transparents, another one carries all kinds of tools and
a mask to hide ones face, yet another one seems to
be made for a sit in filled with a selection of camping
supplies. The backpacks inspire the spectators
phantasy. What would I protest against? Would I go
out and convince people with my arguments or would
I throw stones at shopwindows? And what stops me
from actually taking one of the backpacks and go out
to do something against anything?

Its the power of Nasan Turs work to initialize a thought

process that is very obvious and subtle at the same
time. Tur opens up imaginary spaces. And whatever
it is that you see, whatever is triggered by the image
you perceive it is never totally congruent with what
is in front of your eyes. Like the piece Somersaulting
Man - one of the visitors favorites getting them to
keep watching for more than just a few minutes. Its a
set of TVs each displaying videos from different cities:
Frankfurt, Tokyo, Istanbul, Paris. The visitors can see
airports, parks, town squares. People are passing by.
And then suddenly Tur comes in casting somersaults
through the scenery. You can see him in front of
the glass pyramids of Louvre, on an intersection in
downtown Tokyo, next to a conveyor at Frankfurt
airport. And even more interesting to watch than Turs
somersaults are peoples reactions some of them
showing none at all carrying on what they were doing.
Its like on candid camera but at the same time Tur
poses the question of what is normal and how people
react to someone stepping out of the line in the context
of mass anonymity.
You walk back to Hauptbahnhof through Moabitno-mans-land with a slightly changed view of the
city surrounding you after having seen Nasan Turs
Work. You look out for someone casting a somersault
or wonder if you should engage in spontanous civil
disobedience, raise your hand and yell Socialism.
You leave Turs exhibition having the strong feeling
that the city is yours - you just need to take possesion
of it.

Selfportrait (200o) ,
Nasan Tur
Original German passport 7x10 cm

Harriet Mitchell

Fressen oder Fliegen (Feasting or Flying)

Hebbel am Ufer (Hau 1)
November 2008. Berlin.
He who laughs last laughs longest
(2006), Phil Collins
Production still
Courtesy the artist

The doors were locked at Hebbel am Ufer when I

turned up in time for the evening opening. I eventually
managed to catch the attention of a tall man who let
me in and had me wait a few minutes before beckoning
towards the main auditorium and instructing me to sit
where I pleased. On the screen, looming in front of
me, were giant faces contorted and sweating in strains
of laughter. Inexplicably, since the place was deserted
and the film only 730, we had been ushered in halfway
through the Phil Collins piece He Who Laughs Last
Laughs Longest (35mm Film loop) depicting a small
stage-full of people, egged on by a crowd of spectators,
competing to laugh for as long, as hard and as loud as
they physically can for a cash prize. The sound was
up so loud that my guest and I spent a few moments
distractedly shouting over the maniacal chorus onscreen while deciding where to sit. Making the most of
having a cavernous theatre to ourselves, we sat in the
very centre encircled by grand wood panelling beneath
a canopy of tiered seats. The faces of the competitors
hung agape, quivering with waves of forced shrieks
that rose up inside them as if possessed. The sounds
omitted were cracked and strained, the impression
recalling for me the cackling cries of one of Charcots
hysterics, rather than genuine mirth. The experience
was overwhelmingly intrusive and dizzying and I felt
nauseated by the grotesquely-enlarged corporeality
of the competitors sweaty, upper lips, flecks of foam
and spittle, filled molars and loose strands of hair
plastered to their faces. Just when I began to fear I
would develop a kind of hysteria-by-proxy, it finished
abruptly, announcing the winner (who had laughed
for an hour and forty minutes - an endurance test I
wouldnt have liked to watch). The film makes manifest
an endurance test of both audience and performer,
and in so doing, recalls the aggressive participatory
artworks of Bruce Nauman.
Emerging from the film, we began to explore the
building, the echoes of other installations on the
periphery of our hearing. We came across the video
of Phil Collins piece Art Flavours, originally made for

the 2007 Manifesta 7 in Italy. Due to the unstructured

nature of the show at Hau1, the installation wasnt
shrouded by a curtain and there was no indication of
when it had began, so we sat down anyway. I was
beginning to enjoy the feeling of displacement; as if
walking around a travelling show a few minutes behind
everyone else.
The bulk of the film is taken up with a conversation
between two men, the Italian art curator and critic
Roberto Pinto and gelato maker Osvaldo Castellari,
although since I had missed the beginning the only
thing apparent to me was that one was an academic
and the other a very patient and silent listener. Pinto
delivers a concise introduction to four conceptual
themes prevalent in contemporary art: The Body, The
Archive, The Spectacle and Memory - while Castellari
listens patiently. When Pinto discusses Spectacle he
uses the theoretical backing of Guy Debord and for The
Body introduces artists (such as Marina Ambramovic)
who have inserted their bodies into their live practice
to visceral and confrontational affect. I enjoyed the
lecture, and absent-mindedly wondered where it was
headed. After about fifteen minutes, Pinto rounded
up his discussion and came to his point: he and the
artist Tim Etchells hoped that, having been party to a
whistle-stop tour of the four concepts, Castellari could
attempt to translate what he had heard, and the ideas
it instilled in him, into designing and making four new
flavours of gelato.
The moment in the watching of the film when
everyone understood (for another few pairs of
bewildered-looking people had filtered into the room
by now) the impracticality of the task was my favourite.
Everyone threw back their heads and laughed at the
preposterousness of it all; the sense of an impossible
task engraved on poor Castellaris face, but also the
deliciousness of the idea. Understandably, Castellari
protested, stating simply: I cannot do it... I just cant.
But as it turns out, Pinto is not only a good orator but
quite the persuasive diplomat. He gently and

smilingly encouraged Castellari not to worry too much

about the grandness of the task but to try and translate
the ideas in a subjective and elemental way; and to
apply his many years of experience in flavour-design.
The task was plainly improbable, predetermined by
a degree of failure but also with a paradoxical sense
that it could not fail; since Pintos theory would be
transformed by Castellaris very subjective cognitive
comprehension of how he felt they ought to look and
taste, a process akin to that of the perfume-designer.
Having built a dauntingly solid introduction to the four
art concepts and subsequently torn the seriousness of
it all to shreds in a moment, Pinto somehow managed
to coax Castellari into giving it a go, to have confidence
in his practice.
The scene, filmed by Etchells beneath some cherry
trees on a balmy Italian day finishes then, skipping to
the next morning and a noticeably-bolstered Castallari
at home in the familiar environment of a sterile
kitchen, surrounded by silver mixing-implements and
neatly segregated tubs of ingredients. During shots
of the colourful gelato being slowly folded, mixed and
whisked, Castellari talks us through his reasoning
behind each of the flavours with aesthetic enthusiasm;
as if talking about the ideas behind a painting he
was working on. On his web entry for the project,
Tim Etchells talks about his favourite flavour The
Archive, one he had been concerned would turn out
somewhere between dust and yellowing book pages
. Castellari avoided this literal translation though
and instead reasoned that the human brain was the
most effective archive we have in common, and that
the flavours used (orange juice, strawberry and fresh
peach) should make for a complex flavour that forces
the taster to trawl through ones mental taste-archives
to locate and define its elements . Unsurprisingly, the
most entertaining to watch was The Spectacle flavour;
adorned as it was with hundreds and thousands, sprayon edible gold leaf and chunks of multicoloured candy
and chocolate wafer. Given the enormity of the task,
Castellari looked justifiably pleased with himself at the

successful conclusion of his icy test. When the film

finished an ice-cream cart was wheeled into the space
which contained, to our delight, the four flavours.
I opted for The Body which tasted of vanilla and
something nutty. My friend went for The Spectacle
which was satisfyingly, fittingly, outlandish. There was
also something fantastical about leaving the theatre
on a freezing cold November evening with a cone of
conceptual gelato.
Given the Live Art theme of this issue, and the fact that
both works are video-based, my review might appear
a surprising choice. However it was the experiential
element of both installations and how the environment
in which I viewed them helped to blur the lines between
the audience and the performer on-screen that I
enjoyed. I was reminded of one of one element of a
2007 event at the Manchester Royal Opera House
(curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Phillipe Parreno)
called Il Tempo Del Postino that I enjoyed; a work in
which the plush red velvet stage curtains suddenly
burst into life and dance to music, in an untitled piece
choreographed by Tino Seghal. The works in Fressen
oder Fliegen orchestrate a similar dialogue between
the visual arts and the theatre-going experience.
For me, the Phil Collins piece was like a nightmarish
pantomime turned-ugly, and also reminded me of
the prolific tendency towards enforced-participation
in many contemporary art events, an aspect I rarely
feel good-humoured enough for. I was glad of the
separation that the screen provided and would have
hated to have endured the maniacal performance of the
competitors in real-time. In the second piece, Etchells
mimetically imitates the theatre-going tradition of icecream sellers and employs the theatrical device of
suspension-of-belief to blur the line between audience
and participant, the scientific and the artistic, the
practical and fantastical. In both cases, the grandiose
setting of the theatre in which I experienced the works
work seemed to add another layer to two artworks
that appear to be equal parts performance, video and
experience.

Art Flavours (2008)

Time Etchells
Courtesy of the
artist

Emma Leach

Alone Time
Ollie Smith and Phoebe Walsh,
the SPACE, London
10th - 14th March,
I left a friend and had a couple of hours to kill in an
unfamiliar part of London before reviewing this show.
I tried to plug the gap with a couple of friends who live
(kind of) on the way to the theatre, but it was not to be.
So there I was: alone on Commercial Road with no
plans except to find a place to eat. I had no book in my
bag and it occurred to me, while labouring over a box
of chips, how often I remove myself from a situation by
reading something. Arrived early for a meeting? Get
out your book! Someone shouting in the Post Office
queue? Read the paper! I suppose everybody has
different methods for using these lonely, unexpected
blocks of time, whether its with a book, an iPod or a
good imagination.
Time alone can be precious, necessary, difficult,
embarrassing or any number of things. Personally, Ive
always avoided loneliness perhaps its that, coming
from a large and close family I am used to having
people around all the time. Ive never felt that need
for time alone that many do, and fear that my quest
to cram empty time with other people is a personality
weakness. This is why, with particular interest, I
travelled to see Alone Time by Ollie Smith and Phoebe
Walsh.

Alone Time (2009)

Image Courtesy of
the artists

According to the publicity, Alone Time playfully

explores varying stages of loneliness with all its
delights and dejections, whilst simultaneously probing
the ironic miscommunication that occurs when a
performer is supposedly unaware hes been watched.
Unfortunately, this show was far from probing it barely

dipped below the surface and I was left wanting

something more rigorous that took me further than my
idle wonderings in the fish and chip shop.
Thats not to say this show didnt have its moments. The
narrative of the piece described a meeting between two
friends and a party where one (Walsh) got drunk and
the other (Smith) sat, in steadily deepening discomfort,
alone on the sofa. There was a neat comparison
between this type of alone and the pleasurable alone
time Smith had spent in a bubble bath before the party.
But this is as far as the reflection went, and before long
we were back to bland descriptions of the contents of
his fridge.
Throughout the show, Smith was seated facing the
audience and wearing a blindfold which inexplicably
had two fabric eyes stitched onto it. Walsh stood
sideways on, looking across the stage towards Smith.
They spoke in isolation, making the point of separation
and miscommunication but with a narrative that
overlapped at times. Moments of connection between
the two descriptions of one nights events were clunky,
but could have been interesting if refined. Sadly the
writing just wasnt up to scratch. At one point Walsh
was actually reading from the sleeve of a Savage
Garden CD (you need some pretty fancy footwork to
get away with this kind of thing.) The staging was very
spare, with just two performers and a handful of props.
This just served to turn the spotlight more brightly on
the writing.

The one time during the piece when they turned to

face each other was squandered it could have been
a moment of dramatic emphasis, as a rule they had
set up (that they were in isolation) had been shattered.
Similarly, the climax of the narrative (when Walsh ran
from the party and out into the night) fell flat because
it was linked to a flight of fancy shed had earlier in the
piece (that she would run and run on a film set, to great
acclaim.) This made it seem unreal, so how were we
then to empathise with Smith, left alone and worried?
I was left unsure what I was meant to be feeling. It
felt like a great shame, because they are capable
performers particularly Walsh, whose charm and
ability to cavort around the stage in thermal underwear
really stole the show.
Henri Bergson, in his Essay on the Meaning of Comic
said, However spontaneous it seems, laughter
always impliescomplicitywith other laughers, real
or imaginary. How often has it been said that the fuller
the theatre, the more uncontrolled the laughter of the
audience! Had the audience been fuller had I been
less alone perhaps I would have found the funny bits
funnier, the sad bits more sad. But this piece, while
well conceived, needs more strength in script and
staging.

Pippa Shaw

Stage Fright
Centre For Contemporary Arts, Glasgow,
4th April 23rd May 2009

I spotted the STAGE DOOR sign from fifty yards

away, strolling as I was that wet and windy
Glasgow day.
The exhibition spilling out onto
the street; I entered the theatre, a puppet in the
play the second I stepped through the door.

mediately upon entering the viewer is confronted by

a large steel cage, within which a solitary actress
sits quietly recalling some form of motor accident.

The gallery space was engulfing upon entrance, a

backstage at the front of the gallery, surrounded by
the clutter of the dressing room: hair products, make
up, clothing, mobile phones and all that other stuff.
This limbo-like space attacking the audiences confidence and projecting an ambiguity making the viewer
question the legitimacy of their presence. Hurriedly
we pass through the space trying to escape the discomfort and eventually meet the stage curtain; an imposing black screen separating the backstage from
the infinitely imagined expanse of the theatre beyond.

Her daughter, she says, has her legs stuck in the

car door following an incident involving another car
which did not have its lights on. Pleading for someone to save both her daughter and her ipod speakers, the girl in the cage stares both blankly into the
space beyond and into the eyes of her spectators;
like an animal in the headlights herself. Her repetitions fluctuate throughout the duration of her performance and with it the meaning of her words. The
passage, so striking at first, quickly loses impact
through its reiteration, much like the repetition of a
play might diminish its significance if seen every night
it was performed. Words are, after all, just words.

Visitor enters stage, looks around, looks up.

Passing through the curtain the buzz of the cafe fills
the open dining hall like an amphitheatre, and looking
up I see Graham Eatoughs Performance in Progress
bearing down on me; a leafless forest suspended from
the ceiling. Eatough sets the scene with his transition
from the backstage-entrance through into cafe, inviting
the audience to become the actor within the exhibition
as they take centre stage; the cafe acts as a central
hub from which we make our departure into Gallery 2.

Visitor circles cage, looking directly at the actress.

Visitor moves towards the outside of the room and

looks intently at the images on the walls.
Continuing round the room a collection of macabre images strike next; three figures dressed in some distorted
attempt at national dress and a podgy man in his underwear standing amongst them, it recalled the bizarreness
of a Matthew Barney cycle. Traversing across them
we meet a monitor, opposed by a pink circular bench
at which a (rather attractive) loudspeaker is aimed.

Visitor enters Gallery 2.

Visitor sits and watches.
Echoing throughout, several voices layer, creating
an eerie resonance that punctuates the space. Im-

Sitting in this most privileged position, the carni-

valesque film plays, with the narration from Helen

Zahavis novel, Dirty Weekend, playing from above;
between them describing the massacre of the three
twisted figures, although in this rendition of the story
the gender of the characters has been reversed. I
found this work, DW. by Luke Collins, of great merit
in the show. It questioned the position of theatricality within the context of the gallery space by presenting an adaptation, that might usually be reserved for
the theatre, onto film and into the gallery, creating an
ambiguity between what one might class as video
art and theatre, and also questioning whether there
really is (a need for) a distinction between the two.
Visitor stands, and continues into Gallery 3.
Three exhibits fill this largest of the gallery
spaces, the first of which is set on the world
stage,
Patrick
Macklins
www.treegrid.co.uk.
Visitor moves over to a desk upon which a computer sits. Visitor takes a seat at the computer and
plants a tree on REX, Rexam packaging.
Illustrating the movements of the stock exchange across
one hundred companies using the model of tree growth,
viewers are invited to plant a tree on a particular grid
square of the world stage and can be emailed updates
of its growth or decay depending on the days results.
Unfortunately I visited on a weekend so the stock exchange was closed, but let there be no doubt that I will be
following REXs development over the coming weeks.
Set centrally in the space we find David Greigs The
Moment When, consisting of a desk, chair and laptop.
Visitor sits at the desk, scrolling through text on
the laptop.
Viewers are invited to sit and scroll through the text on
the screen which reads as a narrative and ensuing dialogue. The screen on the right shows a man sat at a
desk with a bottle of wine speaking in character, whilst

the monitor on the right shows a different man typing

on the laptop at which we now sit. Scrolling through the
text it eventually becomes apparent that the dialogue
from the left hand screen is in fact the text that is written on the laptop, and that the man on the right hand
screen is typing it out. Sitting here we experience the
moments of conception and delivery, and as we sit inbetween we begin to question our own role within the
scene; we are sat at the desk at which the text was written, yet we are reading the text and not composing it;
next to the wine glass from which the actor drinks as he
speaks, yet we are reading the text and not speaking it.
At this stage, it becomes clearer than at any other point
throughout the exhibition that as the viewer, we are
playing an integral role, we are both actor and audience, and it is the transitions between these two roles
that heighten our self-awareness within the space.
Visitor stands and walks towards the final object
in the room
Jonny Dawe and Nick Powell provide the last piece
in Gallery 3, Automated Scene-changer; a pair of
canvases upon which a door is painted, that scroll
alternately by use of machinery that whirs alongside. In contrast to the other exhibits in the show, this
piece had less direct involvement and perhaps suffered for it. Although undoubtedly an aesthetic and
mechanically sound piece of work, within the context of the other more interactive works, this piece
was perhaps a bit too easy to walk straight past.
Visitor turns and leaves, traverses Gallery 2,
turns again and enters Gallery 4. Visitor removes shoes and stands on the padded floor.
The final work in the show, Beat Your Block is from artists Felicity Croydon and Sharon Smith. In this video installation, the pair responds to the theme of the theatre
via audience participation, inviting viewers to perform
within the environment presented. The performer in the
video itself carries out a series of exercises designed

to make the audience ultra-relaxed and inhibition free;

the text on the walls tells us that we have all that is required to become an actor, the tools have been provided, all that is required now is a participant; the viewer.
Throughout the entirety of Stage Fright viewers are
invited to participate on all levels. I was told that
this exhibition was a performance event and indeed it is, but what I didnt realise before visiting
was that I was to be the performer. The artists here
have tackled the medium of performance art alongside audience involvement, a sort of participatory art
that has been grappled with since Naumans work
in the sixties; and with the artists experience in the
world of theatre, they have managed to present an
exhibition that is highly successful in this respect.
As a group show, Stage Fright was well considered
from the moment of entering through to departure.
Each work allowed for varying degrees of participation from the audience with enjoyment on many levels, and each explored the relationship between theatre and visual art in their own individual way. The
CCA provided a pleasant alternative to the static
works that we are used to seeing at such prominent
institutions. Encouraging involvement throughout
the show was refreshing and invited the audience
to interact with the work on a more personal and altogether more exciting level, it taught us something
not only about visual art, but about theatre as well.
The stage has been set.
Visitor puts shoes back on and turns, walks
back through the cafe and exits the stage.

tratratra

UK Residencies

NORTH

A guide to some of the most significant residencies, commissions,

and fellowships from within the United Kingdom

1 - S1 Artist in Residence

4 - Durham Cathedral Artist in Residence

6 - Berwick Gymnasium - Fellowship

This summer S1 Artspace will host its fourth artist

residency from 24th July - 27th September 2009.
The residency will be followed by a solo exhibition
in October / November 2009. The residency is supported by a 1,500 production fee, a 500 travel
budget and accommodation in Sheffield.

A 12 month. residency intended to provide time and

space for an artist, free of other pressures, to respond to the Cathedral as a powerful creative statement, a place for daily public worship, and the centre of a working community.

Successful applicants for this fellowship will be required to live in the historic Berwick Barracks producing a new body of work in response to the location. Each artist will receive a fee of 6000 for a
four-month period and a materials budget of 600.
The fellowship is not open to artists who have graduated in the last three years.

Visit www.s1artspace.org/homepage.htm to download further information.

2 - Henry Moore Fellowships
The Foundation awards grants worth up to 6,000
each to artists, supported by host institutions, for
fellowships or residencies between 2-6 months.
The number of fellowships awarded will depend on
the resources available in any year.
Post-Doctoral Research Fellowships of up to
21,000 for one year will be awarded to scholars who have recently completed PhD degrees
in order to develop publications. Please visit
www.henry-moore-fdn.co.uk for more information
3- Pavilion Commissions 2009
The selected artists will be required to collaborate
with Pavilion to research, develop and produce a
new body of work for exhibition as a group show
at the Djanogly Art Gallery. The commission fee is
2000 in addition to a production budget of up to
2000 per photographer.
Deadline for submissions: 12 May 2009, 5.00pm
Visit www.pavilion.org.uk/commissions09.html

Benefits include:
- a fee of 17,000
- a studio within the Cathedral precincts
- subsidised accommodation at St Chads College,
- The opportunity to teach in the School of Arts, Design, Media and Culture at the University of Sunderland.
- an exhibition at the Reg Vardy Gallery and Durham Art Gallery at the end of the residency
A typical applicant will be above the age of 25, be
in possession of a good first degree BA (Hons)
and is likely to have completed an MA course. The
Applicants are invited to submit a brief statement, a
current curriculum vitae, a telephone number where
they can be contacted, and the names and addresses of two referees. For full postal address, and application details please visit www.regvardygallery.
org/ The closing date for applications is 17 May
2009

Email: [email protected]
7 - Chinese Arts Centre - Residencies
Breathe; as part of Chinese Arts Centres commitment to developing artists of Chinese descent, the
aim of the Breathe residency is to give the artist
freedom to create, to allow artists time to reflect on
their practice, make new work and to benefit from
the support and guidance of Chinese Arts Centre
staff. Whisper residencies are much shorter than
Breathe and aim to provide artists with vital experience of more formal residencies schemes.
For more information on Residencies please visit
www.chinese-arts-centre.org
8 - Myerscough Outdoor Sculpture Show

5 - Public art seating: Artists Armrests

Leeds City Council invites applications from experienced designers / artists / crafts people with a successful record of delivery in the public realm.
14,000 subject to final confirmation of funding
Please visit www.leeds.gov.uk/arts

5 emerging and mid-career artists who live in Lancashire & South Lakeland are to be commissioned
to make site specific/themed work which involves a
local community group Please send: a brief CV, a
proposal outlining your approach, and a statement
outlining how taking part will benefit your arts practice. Contact: [email protected]

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UK Residencies

SOUTH & EAST

1 - Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowships

3 - Florence Trust Artist Residency

5 - ArtSway Production Residency

All British Citizens are eligible for this annual

Fellowship which includes Fellowship expenses:
return air fare, daily living, travel within the countries being visited and, in exceptional cases, certain home expenses. Grants usually cover a stay
overseas of 4-8 weeks. Categories for applications
vary but include, in Performing and Creative Arts,
choreographers, composers, writers, painters and
sculptors.

Interviews are currently being held for residency

places, with the successful artists receiving a bursary, plus additional funds towards production costs,
travel and marketing. The residency is offered to
emerging and mid-career visual artists working in
any medium, who wish to develop new work for presentation in a supportive environment.

www.wcmt.org.uk
Deadline: October 14th 2009

The Florence Trust offers up to twelve studio residencies a year, all beginning in August, and ending after the annual Summer Exhibition in July.
They deliver a bespoke program dedicated to the
creative and professional development of each individual Florence Trust artist. Subsidised studio
rent between 215 and 245 per month depending on size. Rent is all-inclusive covering insurance,
electricity, wireless internet, exhibition costs etc. To
apply, download and complete an application form
and return along with your full current C.V, 10-15
examples of your work on CD-ROM or DVD.

2 - ACME Fire Station Work/Live Programme

www.florencetrust.org
Contact [email protected]

The programme at the Fire Station provides

studios which include living space at low rents.

Deadline: Fri 29 May 2009

Programme 3 offered nine five-year work/live residencies at low rents, two bursaries of 5,000 per
year plus free work/live space for two and a half
years were awarded to Ming Wong and Ben Cove,
whose bursary was open to artists with disabilities.

4 - Byam Shaw - Cocheme Artist Fellowships

The fourth work/live residency programme at the

Fire Station, and associated bursaries, will be
launched in June 2009, with 12 selected artists in
occupation from April 2010.

Good studio space will be provided together with a

bursary of 3,600. The fellowships run from October to January, and February to June. For more information contact the School Office at Byam Shaw
School of Art: 020 7514 2350
[email protected]

www.acme.org.uk/worklive.php

Four teaching fellowships are awarded yearly with

generous support from the Cocheme Charitable
Trust.

For information on 2010 residencies please sign up

for email updates at www.artsway.org.uk
6 - Courtyard Arts - Artist in Residence
The Courtyard Arts and Community Centre, the visual arts venue in Hertford is looking for a new art
& design graduate to provide some creative workshops for children/adults on a theme linked to their
own practice. Gallery/studio space is provided to
make and exhibit his/her own art. Funding is being
sought to make this a paid opportunity, appointment
will depend on funding being in place.
Tel: 01992 509596
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.courtyardarts.org.uk
Deadline: April 30th 2009

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UK Residencies

WEST & WALES

1 - Bristol Meantime/Picture This residency
FLAMIN (Film London Artists Moving Image Network) and Picture This are inviting artists to apply
for an opportunity to spend July to September 2009
in Bristol developing new film and video work in a
unique supportive and creative environment. The
artist will be invited to both produce and exhibit a
new project within Picture This Atelier at Spike Island. Accommodation and travel costs provided.
Production budget of up to 4,000 and Artists Fee
of 3,000. Open only to London-based artists.
Website: picture-this.org.uk/residencies.htm

3 - Arts Council England : South West

Residency

5 - Artist Commission at Welsh Assembly Government Building Llandudno Junction

The Arts Council England: South West Residency

offers a UK based artist a three month production
residency and solo exhibition at Spike Island. This
annual award is advertised in May for a residency
that takes place the following year. Previous recipients include Alex Frost, Ged Quinn, James Ireland,
Ruth Claxton and Elizabeth Price

The commission is for an artist/s to create a permanent artwork that is available to the public at the
new Welsh Assembly Government building.
The artist fee for the design stage of the commission is 1,900 including expenses.

Spike Island has established a series of models for

artists, writers and curators which include Graduate
Fellowships, Production Residencies and Research
Residencies.

Deadline: April 14th 2009

4 - Gloucester Cathedral Artist in Residence
2 - Art Shape, Artist in Residence
Art Shape, Gloucesters community arts organisation and GARAS (Gloucestershire Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers) seek to create a safe
space for vulnerable refugees, asylum seekers and
migrant workers allowing them to tell their stories
and help them integrate into the community.
ArtShape is looking for an inspirational artist experienced in leading participatory activities and in using digital media, for six months from May to Oct
2009. The total fee is 5,200 including travel and
expenses, including VAT.
For application forms visit ptbd.wordpress.com

The residency at Gloucester was set up through

a partnership between the Dean and Chapter of
Gloucester Cathedral, the University of Gloucestershire (formerly Cheltenham & Gloucester College
of Higher Education) and Gloucester City Cultural
Services.
The residency includes lectures open to the public
and the wider University audience, exhibitions at the
Cathedral and elsewhere and work with students of
the Fine Arts Department of the University, and with
schools and other community groups.

The budget for fabrication and installation and any

additional builders work in connection with installation is 39,000 - to cover artist fee, materials, travel,
accommodation and planning application fee if required. The amounts above are inclusive of VAT.
The deadline for receiving applications is Friday 17
April 2009. Visit www.safle.com for further information and opportunities.
6 - Stiwdio Safle
Stiwdio Safle is a vehicle for experimentation and
creative risk taking, supporting a wide range of innovative activities
Proposed projects should take place in whole or
for a substantial part in Wales
Enrich the output of creativity in Wales
Explore collaborations and partnerships

Deadline: February 2010

Check www.glos.ac.uk/jobs for exact details

As a general guide, the upper limit for funding from

Stiwdio Safle for any one project is 15,000. Visit:
www.safle.com
Next Deadline: 30 September

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UK Residencies

SCOTLAND & IRELAND

1 - Royal Scottish Academy MORTON AWARD (for Lens based work)
Monetary award of 4,30 for artists working in lensbased media to develop and produce a new work in
a lens based medium around a theme selected by
the Royal Scottish Academy. The completed new
work will be exhibited at the RSA Annual Exhibition
in 2010. Open to artists who were born in Scotland,
have studied at a Scottish art school or are working / permanently based in Scotland. The Award is
not open to students who are currently studying at
either under-graduate or post-graduate level.
Closing date for applications: May 2009 (TBC)
2. - Royal Scottish Academy FRIENDS BURSARY
This bursary of up to 3000 is to enable artists to
continue and extend their creative development
and will be awarded to the artist who submits the
most meritorious and worth-while project for artistic
development. The bursary will be paid to finance
or assist in the cost of a specific developmental
project such as travel/research, attending a course/
workshop, or to supplement or replace existing income in order to permit a period of exploration and
experimentation.
Closing date for applications: July 2009 (TBC)
Please see www.royalscottishacademy.org to check
details given

3 - Residency Opportunity in Shetland

Shetland Arts invites applications from artists, applied artists, sculptors and craftmakers, working in
any medium, who are linked to Shetland by birth,
family or education, who are living away from Shetland and would like to return for one month to develop their work. The residency will be at The Booth
in Scalloway, from 1-28 August 2009.

5 - Seacourt Print Workshop Artist in Residence

As part of an ongoing programme researching non
toxic approaches to printmaking Seacourt Print
Workshop are seeking an artist printmaker with at
least 2 years professional experience.

Application packs are available from www.shetlandarts.org or email:[email protected]

The residency will last for 12 consecutive weeks,

beginning on Monday 7 September 2009 and ending on Friday 27 November 2009.
Artist Fee: 3,000 sterling

The application deadline is 5pm, Friday 8 May

2009.

All applications and accompanying materials must

arrive by Friday 29th May 2009.

4 - Cove Park Residencies

Please visit /www.seacourt-ni.org.uk for full

application details.

In 2009, six six-week residencies will be offered to

UK-based visual artists, makers, designers, critical
writers and curators to enable research, the development of new ideas and the creation of new work.
Each resident will be provided with a fee and a materials/research allowance, accommodation and,
when appropriate, a studio on site. The focus will
be upon individual research and work, but Cove
Park will enhance opportunities for the participants
through a related events programme which will promote discussion and exchange amongst the residents.
The residencies will take place between 3th of August and 11th September 2009. All participants in
the programme will receive a fee of 2,400 and a
1,000 materials/research allowance.
Deadline: Friday 15 May 2009
www.covepark.org/Residencies/Opportunities.aspx