Portraits: John Berger on Artists

From the special edition of Maska on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Contemporary Dance Association Slovenia. In Slovenian and English.

Art Review Issue 26  / October 2008

pg. 74-81

Feature on Elmgreen & Dragset : Inconvenient Truths

In November, 1781, the captain of the slave ship Zong ordered that some 150 Africans be murdered by drowning so that the ship’s owners could collect insurance monies. Relying entirely on the words of the legal decision Gregson v. Gilbert-the only extant public document related to the massacre of these African slaves-Zong! tells the story that cannot be told yet must be told. Equal parts song, moan, shout, oath, ululation, curse, and chant, Zong! excavates the legal text. Memory, history, and law collide and metamorphose into the poetics of the fragment. Through the innovative use of fugal and counterpointed repetition, Zong! becomes an anti-narrative lament that stretches the boundaries of the poetic form, haunting the spaces of forgetting and mourning the forgotten.

This fully-illustrated book brings together for the first time an account of Baker’s career as an artist – from her first sculptures at Central St Martins in the early 1970s to her most recent work, ‘How to Live’ and ‘Diary Drawings’ – with critical commentary by reviewers and academic practitioners.

Interviews with people at the intersection of disability, queerness, kink, sex work and survivorship.

Contemporary Theatre Review Volume 32 Issue Number 1 February 2022

p61-80

Contemporary Theatre Review Volume 32 Issue Number 1 February 2022

p46-60

Contemporary Theatre Review Volume 32 Issue Number 1 February 2022

p21-45

Contemporary Theatre Review Volume 31 Issue Number 3 August 2021

Unframing Photography: Performing the Image to See Otherwise is a new book by transdisciplinary artist Manuel Vason, and his third publication with LADA after the ground-breaking Exposures (2002) and Double Exposures (2014).

Common Salt was a performance around a table – a ‘show and tell’ by artists Sheila Ghelani and Sue Palmer. It explored the colonial, geographical and natural history of England and India taking an expansive and emotional time-travel, from the first Enclosure Act and the start of the East India Company in the 1600s, to 21st century narratives of trade, empire and culture.

In the performance Sue and Sheila activated insights into our shared past, laying out a ‘home museum’ of objects and stories about borders and collections, the Great Hedge of India, a forgotten naturalist – all accompanied by original Shruti box laments.

This book documents and explores the project, placing the performance text, images and reflections from both artists alongside writings by invited guests – from curators and artists to audience members.

Common Salt is designed by John Hunter (aka RULER) and published by LADA.

Based on real events, The Island Nation is a visceral, revelatory new play by Christine Bacon, artistic director of the pioneering human rights theatre company ice&fire.