Restock, Rethink, Reflect One: on Live Art and Race

Restock, Rethink, Reflect One supported artists and audiences through a range of initiatives, including specialized professional development, resources, events and publication. The key components of the project are summarized below:

Lore and Other Convergences offered fifteen UK practitioners the opportunity to work alongside internationally renowned artist Janine Antoni, exploring the intersection between process and product through the creation of a 25m rope made of significant personal materials. The workshop was accompanied by a series of talks and a public sharing of outcomes at inIVA. Documentation of these events can be viewed in the Agency’s Study Room.

Open Nights were an innovative and exciting series of informal events designed to stimulate debate and a sense of community among artists questioning cultural identity through live and interdisciplinary practices. Open Nights included presentations and events by George Chakravarthi, Yara El-Sherbini, Sonia Boyce, Oreet Ashery, David A Bailey, Manick Govinda, Ali Zaidi and Janine Antoni. Events took place at a variety of different London venues and each had a unique structure that encouraged new ways of talking, engaging and asking questions. Open Nights were curated by Barby Asante and produced by Rajni Shah.

Documenting Live is a unique publication and dvd resource reflecting the work of key UK based artists working in the 1990s and 2000s, and placing Live Art practices that are informed by questions of cultural identity within critical and historical frameworks. Documenting Live was developed in collaboration with curator David A Bailey in response to the challenges of documenting Live Art, and particularly the influential work of artists from culturally diverse backgrounds in the UK. Documenting Live set out to address these challenges through the creation of an archival and critical document that maps a history; marks a territory; and looks to the future. Barby Asante, Ansuman Biswas, Malika Booker, Sonia Boyce, George Chakravarthi, Robin Deacon, Yara El-Sherbini, Harminder Singh Judge, Keith Khan, David Medalla, Harold Offeh, Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa and Ali Zaidi collaborated on this mapping project through the creation of biographical postcards and video commentaries, the selection of illustrative documentation of their work, and participation in round table discussions prompted by David A Bailey’s essay Documenting Live: Performance-Based Art and the Racialised Body.

Documenting Live contains David A Bailey’s mapping essay Performance-Based Art and the Racialised Body; the artists’ postcards; and a dvd featuring the artists’ commentaries, excerpts from key works, and documentation of the round table discussions.

Documenting Live was launched at Iniva.

This item is now OUT OF STOCK but can still be viewed in the LADA Study Room.

Documentation of the Restock, Rethink, Reflect One events is available in various forms in the Study Room.

Restock, Rethink, Reflect One was funded by Arts Council England and produced by Rajni Shah for the Live Art Development Agency.