Live Art Unpacked Geneva, 2008

Led by UK based artists and organisers, Live Art Unpacked, Geneva is a series of events about and around Live Art in the UK: what it is and what it can do.

Developed by La Ribot and Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève in collaboration with Live Art Development Agency, London as part of La Ribot’s Rite of Spring.
5 – 15 March 2008

Unpicking ideas and practices, and sharing a diversity of approaches, Live Art Unpacked, Geneva features a performance, video installation, lecture, and practice based workshop by Gary Stevens; a performance of The Performance Pack by Joshua Sofaer; an Everything You Wanted to Know About Live Art day with the Live Art Development Agency, Lois Weaver, Joshua Sofaer, La Ribot, Yan Duyvendak, Oskar Gomez Mata, and Andrea Saemann Bale; and screenings of documentation by Oreet Ashery, Franko B, Blast Theory, Anne Bean, Robin Deacon, Yara El-Sherbini, Jem Finer and Ansuman Biswas, Forced Entertainment, FrenchMottershead, Gob Squad, Stacy Makishi, Silke Mansholt, Howard Matthew, Kira O’Reilly, Rajni Shah, Joshua Sofaer, Station House Opera, Grace Surman, The Vacuum Cleaner, Aaron Williamson and selections from Manuel Vason’s Encounters.

Katya Garcia Anton – Director of Centre D’Art Contemporain Geneve writes:

The vast area of interdisciplinary and multimedia collaborations that we call ‘performance art’ has a history that covers over a hundred years, spanning the early actions of the Dada movement, to the engaged performance of the 1970s, and its multifaceted renaissance world-wide today. It is an art that has been located at the crossroads of interdisciplinary dialogues between film, theatre, dance, sculpture, painting, actions and music and is now, ‘unquestionably’, a part of institutional art programmes, collections and art fairs.

Yet the art world’s assimilation of performance art has not always been accompanied by a deep enough understanding of its theoretical, social and political concerns. The questions at its core, regarding showcasing the experiential, opening different kinds of engagement with meaning, transgressing the norm, questioning the art product and activating the spectator need to be fully analysed, today more than ever, so as to prevent performance art from merely becoming the spectacularised face of the current gargantuan art world.

Rite of Spring is a performance project presenting La Ribot and Live Art Development Agency, born from discussions held during La Ribot’s residency with the Centre d’Art Contemporain (2007-2009). This project provides a unique opportunity to promote critical understanding of performance art today (its theory, criticism, practice, reception, and funding), through a special programme created specifically for young practitioners, art professionals as well as being accessible to the public.