Intellect Live
About Intellect Live
Intellect Live is a collaboration between Intellect Books and the Live Art Development Agency on influential artists working at the edge of performance. The series is characterised by lavishly illustrated and beautifully designed books that are created through close collaborations between artists and writers, and that are the first substantial publication dedicated to the artists’ work.
Joshua Sofaer: Performance | Objects | Participation
Edited by Roberta Mock and Mary Paterson
Joshua Sofaer works across boundaries, borders and disciplines to create artworks that engage with all levels of society. In cultural institutions or on the street, for art galleries or personal homes, staged as operas or cast as golden sculptures, Sofaer’s work weaves with and through social fabric to consider the ideas that hold us together.
More info Buy on Unbound![An outstretched hand holds a series of coloured noses attached to strings.](https://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/LADA_JS_COVER_FINAL_04-scaled-scaled.jpg)
Anne Bean: Self Etc.
Edited by Rob La Frenais
Anne Bean is a noted international figure who has been working actively since the 1960s. The art of Anne Bean makes strange our sense of time, memory, language, the body, and identity, particularly through solo and collaborative performances along a vital continuum between art and life.
“Anne Bean is a visionary artist who has troubled the boundaries of contemporary art for five decades. This book shows her to be a key and vibrant figure in live art.”
William Raban, artist, Professor of Film, University of the Arts, London
More info Buy on Unbound![Anne Bean's face edited into several squares with the text Self Etc. in the centre](https://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/self_etc-9.jpeg)
Kira O’Reilly: Untitled (Bodies)
Edited by Harriet Curtis, Martin Hargreaves
O’Reilly’s works have been exhibited and presented internationally, across many different formats, frames and contexts since 1998, and the publication encompasses that breadth and diversity. Bringing together newly commissioned and other writings by major thinkers in and beyond visual and performance studies, and extensive documentation of the artist’s work from two decades of practice, it navigates through and between performance, biotechnical practices, image-making, and writing.
“[a] sumptuous and wide-ranging examination of the work of an internationally significant interdisciplinary artist. Even before it is opened, the book makes a claim for the startling collisions of image, body and encounter at the heart of the work … vocabulary gushes up from Untitled (Bodies). While a significant proportion of the book consists of beautifully reproduced photographs, the attention to language is also a key commitment.” – Johanna Linsley, Contemporary Theatre Review
More info Buy on Unbound![The cover of the Untitled (Bodies) book of Kira O'Reilly nude falling from a red carpeted staircase](https://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/KIRA_COVER_245X220_LANDSCAPE_03a_copy-13.jpg)
It’s All Allowed: The Performances of Adrian Howells
Edited by Deirdre Heddon, Dominic Johnson
Adrian Howells (1962–2014) was one of the world’s leading figures in the field of one-to-one performance practice – the act of staging an event for one audience participant at a time. Developed over more than a decade, Howells’ award-winning work initiated new challenges and innovations in performance art, “intimate theatre,” and socially engaged art.
“an intimate response to Howells’s work, but one that is also a profound meditation on the potential effects of performance itself. Carefully curated with a significant eye to detail … This labour of love is a critical volume that will be useful to readers; it is also a beautiful object in its own right.” – Deirdre Heddon and Dominic Johnson win the TaPRA Prize for Editing 2017
More info Buy on Unbound![Image of the cover of It's All Allowed](https://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/its-all-allowed.jpg)
The Only Way Home is Through the Show: The Performance Work of Lois Weaver
Edited by Jen Harvie, Lois Weaver
Lois Weaver is one of the true pioneers in feminist and lesbian performance. The Only Way Home Is Through the Show explores her collaborative work with Split Britches and Spiderwoman as well as her solo projects, performance interventions, and work as a facilitator, teacher, and as Tammy WhyNot.
“The Only Way Home is definitively the richest representation of a feminist performance artist that I know of. The book honors Weaver’s work with its artistic design … while teaching the world about femme accomplishments that may have otherwise gone unacknowledged.” – Megan Shea, TDR: The Drama Review
More info Buy on Unbound![](https://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Lois_Weaver_Cover_for_unbound-9.jpg)
Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey
Edited By Dominic Johnson
Ron Athey is an iconic figure in contemporary art and performance. In his frequently bloody portrayals of life, death, crisis, and fortitude in the time of AIDS, Athey calls into question the limits of artistic practice. These limits enable Athey to explore key themes including gender, sexuality, radical sex, queer activism, postpunk and industrial culture, tattooing and body modification, ritual, and religion.
“A beautifully illustrated catalogue raisonné in which Athey’s extensive ouevre is analyzed, placing him alongside Jean Genet, Antonin Artaud and Yukio Mishima, as well as contemporary art-world figures Chris Burden and Bob Flanagan.” – John Killacky, American Theatre
More info Buy on Unbound![](https://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Pleading_in_the_blood-7.jpeg)
Throwing the Body in the Fight: A Portrait of Raimund Hoghe
Edited by Mary Kate Connolly
Throwing the Body into the Fight is the first English language publication dedicated to the choreographer and performance maker Raimund Hoghe (Germany). Curated and edited by Mary Kate Connolly, the publication operates as a collage, drawing together a variety of international voices to create a fragmented portrait of the artist.
“I love this man unconditionally and I know I don’t need to justify this as a quote or little blurb in a book about this man. This man is inspiring and uncompromising. Beautiful, generous and fierce.” – Franko B, artist
More info Buy on Unbound![](https://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/36_Avenue_web_resize-7.jpg)
Banner image credit:
An Independent Declaration, Anne Bean and Paul Burwell, 1982. Self Etc, edited by Rob La Frenais. Photo by David Dawson.
Also
This is Performance Art
Mel Brimfield’s spoof television series on the fragmentary nature of performance’s historical record
Read moreNot Just a Mirror: Looking for the Political Theatre of Today
Investigates the performing arts as a political laboratory of the present
Read moreWriting Not Yet Thought
Hélène Cixous and Adrian Heathfield discuss the practice of writing alongside its relation to painting, music and philosophy.
Read moreKira O’Reilly: Untitled (Bodies)
This publication is the first major survey of the interdisciplinary practices of Kira O’Reilly
Read moreOut of Memory – Hayley Newman Edition
One of the LADA’s tenth anniversary commissioned artworks exclusive to Unbound
Read moreThe Live Art Almanac: Volume 3
An international collection of ‘found’ writing about and around Live Art between 2010 and 2011
Read moreHINCH: A film about Ian Hinchliffe
Introduction to the strange and wonderful world of the artist Ian Hinchliffe
Read moreShortlist LIVE! #2
Four essays on the four artists shortlisted for the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art 2020.
Read more