Restock, Rethink, Reflect Four: on Live Art and Privilege

Restock, Rethink, Reflect (RRR) is an ongoing series mapping underrepresented artists, practices and histories. The series aims to mark the impact of Live Art practitioners and practices, whilst supporting future generations through artist’s development opportunities, resources, projects, and publications.

Following the first three Restock, Rethink, Reflect projects on race (2006-08), disability (2009-12), and feminism (2013 -15) Restock, Rethink, Reflect Four (2016-18) is on issues of Live Art and privilege.

Restock, Rethink, Reflect Four

Restock, Rethink, Reflect Four was a collaboration with Dr Amit Rai of Queen Mary, University of London, aiming to mark and map the ways in which Live Art has developed new forms of access to, and understandings of, knowledge, agency, and inclusion in relation to the under-represented, marginalized and disenfranchised constituencies of:

• the young
• the old
• the displaced, and
• those excluded through economic and social barrriers

Restock, Rethink, Reflect 2018 activities

An event to mark the end of Restock, Reflect, Rethink Four on Live Art and Cultural Privilege took place on 30 October 2018, with contributions from Kelly Green, Scottee, Barby Asante, Fox Irving, and Amit Rai of Queen Mary University of London. Kelly Green presented two new resources on Live Art and class developed through an RRR4 Study Room research residency and collaboration with Canterbury Christ Church University – Let’s Get Classy, a Study Room Guide and Ways of Getting Classy, a Toolkit of Methodologies. Scottee presented a project to celebrate his ten years of making art and making trouble, and particularly The Outsiders’ Handbook, a free zine and survival guide for queer and trans young people written by Scottee, Travis Alabanza, Selina Thompson and Emma Frankland. Barby Asante presented a short film documenting the collaborative performance of Declaration of Independence at LADA in summer 2018, a project bringing together women of colour to perform collective recitations addressing issues of independence, justice, and the role of the artist in a climate of heightened racism and violence. Fox Irving, an artist taking part in LADA’s subsidised desk scheme, launched her Working-Class Working Group and plans for a body of work exploring engagement and collaborations with working-class communities. Amit Rai responded to the artists’ presentations and to wider issues of the ways privilege is addressed with and within Live Art.

The Library of Performing Rights Commission: originally developed in 2006 for PSi:12 Performing Rights, the Library of Performing Rights (LPR) is a unique resource of materials examining the intersection between performance and Human Rights. The LPR was reactivated and reimagined in collaboration with the artists/researchers Lois Weaver and Elena Marchevska in 2017 and includes a range of new activities and resources including an annual commission in partnership with the Study Room in Exile in Liverpool. The first Library of Performing Rights commissioned artist is Barby Asante whose project, a Declaration of Independence on the present day legacies of slavery and colonialism was realised at LADA in Summer 2018. More information

Scottee 10: to mark his ten years of survival as an artist we collaborated with Scottee on a book, Scottee: I Made It, full of recollections, dialogue, archive material and interruptions from Scottee and his collaborators on the ways his work engages with issues of fatness, queerness and class; a free zine, The Outsiders Handbook, for queer, trans and questioning teenagers; and a retrospective of his cabaret and short performance work, Scottee: From Your Retrospective at the Roundhouse in London in September. More information

Scottee 10 and the Library of Performing Rights Commission also form part of LADA’s work for the Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme (CAPP), an EU-funded research project looking at collaborative practices within socially engaged contexts.

Restock, Rethink, Reflect Four 2016-17 Residencies

The first 18 months of Restock, Rethink, Reflect Four (2016 – 17) was research based: mapping the territories, unpicking the most critical questions, and developing new partnerships, resources, strategies and approaches.

This research primarily took the form of four artist-led residencies in LADA’s Study Room – see below. Each residency generated a new Study Room Guide and Toolkit of Methodologies which are now freely available as downloads or in printed form on request – more details here.

The four residency artists also shared their findings as part of CAPP’s Practice, Participation, Politics Gathering event in March 2017.

The residencies were also part of LADA’s work for the Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme (CAPP), an EU-funded research project looking at collaborative practices within socially engaged contexts.

The Young

Dr Sibylle Peters of Theatre of Research (Germany) undertook a residency exploring Live Art practices and methodologies in relation to intergenerational practices, especially with children/young people. The residency built on LADA’s collaboration with Sibylle on PLAYING UP, an artwork exploring the potential of Live Art to bridge generations in the form of a game played by adults and kids together.

On Friday 16 December 2016 Sibylle invited artists of all ages to remember and share their very first piece of Live Art.

The Old

Professor Lois Weaver undertook a residency exploring Live Art practices and methodologies in relation to working with older individuals and communities. This residency built on LADA’s collaborations with Lois on Live Art and Feminism, particularly in relation to older artists, and to her own work on What Tammy Needs To Know and the Wellcome Trust People Awards.

The Displaced

Following an open call for proposals we invited the artist and researcher Elena Marchevska to undertake a residency exploring Live Art practices and methodologies in relation to the experiences of the displaced. This residency is a collaboration with Counterpoints Arts and built on our 2015 partnership on the dis/placed programme of events which was organised in response to global demographic shifts and unprecedented levels of human displacement.

As part of her residency, Elena has invited the artist Tanja Ostojić to run a free two-day workshop at LADA on ideas of displacement as part of Tanja’s ongoing Misplaced Women? project, on 13-14 December 2016. The workshop was followed by a public performance by Tanja and workshop participants, documentation of which can be viewed here.

Elena also invited artists to submit contributions to her Study Room Guide on Displacement in the form of anecdotes, stories, short observations, poems, photographs or performance texts on their experiences of the ‘state of displacement’.

Read Elena’s guest post for Performing Borders on Misplaced women?: The concept of hospitality in times of displacement.

Class and Cultural Privilege

Following an open call for proposals we invited the artist Kelly Green to undertake a residency exploring Live Art practices and methodologies in relation to issues of class and cultural privilege. This was a two stranded residency, in collaboration with Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU), and Sidney Cooper Gallery involving time in LADA’s Study Room followed by engagement with CCCU and community groups in Kent and the Rhondda Valley, Wales as part of a wider project with Tate Exchange.

Further information on partcipating artists

Dr Sibylle Peters is founder and director of the Forschungstheater/Theatre of Research situated at the FUNDUS THEATER Hamburg, a theatre where children, artists and scientists meet as researchers. Co-operating with schools and universities the Theatre of Research is a well known pioneer project for new forms of cultural education. Artistic practices are applied to make research more inclusive and bridge gaps between generations, cultures, social backgrounds and fields of expertise from kindergarten to the associated PhD programme Performing Citizenship. The Theatre of Research has been granted the Federal Award for Cultural Education 2012 (BKM- Preis für kulturelle Bildung) and the Hamburg Award for Urban Community Art 2015.

Professor Lois Weaver is a performance artist, writer, director, and activist. Her research interests include live art, solo performance, feminist and lesbian theatre, aging, performance and human rights, and the relationships between performance and public engagement. Weaver was co-founder of Spiderwoman Theater, Split Britches, and the WOW Café in New York, and Artistic Director of Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company and the AiR Supply Collective in London. She is professor of Contemporary Performance at Queen Mary University of London. In 2015 LADA published The Only Way Home Is Through the Show: Performance Work of Lois Weaver, edited by Jen Harvie.

Dr Elena Marchevska is a performance artist and researcher. She studied directing, performance, new media and feminism, and is currently teaching Performance Studies at London South Bank University. Her artistic work explores borders and stories that emerge from living in transition. She is interested in creating and researching work that provides means by which people can meet, human to human, in all their differences, in the most sensitive and sincere way possible. Much of her work is created through collaboration and sharing of stories and lived experiences. She has been involved in many international collaborations over the last ten years that explore issues of exile, war and post-conflict resolutions, including collaborations with CIE Kumulus and Nomad Dance Institute. www.elenamarcevska.com

Kelly Green is a working class, performance artist, academic and facilitator. She graduated from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2008, and then went on to do a Masters in Performance and Creative Research at the University of Roehampton. She is entering the second year of her PhD at Anglia Ruskin University. Her research project is entitled Chav Ballet: Developing a working class female aesthetic through performance. This is a practice-as-research project that is concerned with performance aesthetics, and how art forms relate to our cultural identity. Her practice is socially engaged. She has worked as an arts facilitator for the last 7 years, and has extensive experience in various settings developing creative projects with underrepresented communities who have been affected by their lack of cultural and economic privilege.  In 2011 she collaborated with academic Lynne McCarthy and developed a project for The Immigrant Movement International, organised by Tania Bruguera, where artists responded to the discourse of displaced communities. Their project, Soil Dispositions, has been cited in Professor Alan Read’s book, Theatre and Law (2016).