On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century

Performance making is a mode of enquiring about culture and a strategy to respond to societal emergencies. Collective acts of thought and expression are an existential urgency as they broaden our understanding of who we are. As the world grappled with lockdowns, fear has permeated our very beings. Notes from Isolation embodies an investigative journey wherein Andrea Pagnes —who, with Verena Stenke, forms the artist duo VestAndPage— explores the essence of existence during the COVID-19 pandemic. He then shares his notes in distant encounters with artists, poets and philosophers friends who navigate the non-linear realms: Marilyn Arsem, Lois Keidan, Joseph Morgan Schofield, Franko B, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Stelarc, Timothy Morton, Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, and eventually Ron Athey revisiting a conversation they had a while ago. At last, performance matters: politics and science to dissect, recurring patterns of suffering and pain to surpass, religion, colonialism, and gender fluidity found a voice within the societal crises that COVID-19 accentuated. Multiple remote visions and divergent creative thinking are pooled to inspect reality while caring for humanity, as to perhaps find a way out.

‘They close the glass door behind me and say I cannot leave this area. They gave me a blue protective mask and said I must wear it whenever I exit the room or someone enters it. The mask I have to wear closes my mouth but not my eyes. The border is a transparent glass door. We can look to the other side but not cross over. I let go a quiet steeping in being. Time makes me the process.’ — Verena Stenke.

Can Taiwan performing/performance art be an avant-garde strategy for cultural exchanging with Shanghai e-Art Festival?

-Referring to the changing face of British Live Art.

Research study by Catherine Jiang.

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.

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.

Gómez-Peña Unplugged is an anthology of recent and rewritten classic writings from Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a figure who stands alone as unique and ground-breaking in the history of performance art and as the artistic director of transdisciplinary performance troupe La Pocha Nostra.

La Pocha Nostra: A Handbook for the Rebel Artist in a Post-Democratic Society marks a transformation from its sister book, Exercises for Rebel Artists, into a pedagogical matrix suited for use as a performance handbook and conceptual tool for artists, activists, theorists, pedagogues, and trans-disciplinary border crossers of all stripes.

Bodies move freely through an ambiguous urban “utopia”…or do they? Shot on 16mm film and digital video.

7 mins

An evening with artists readings of extracts from significant books held in LADA’s Study Room. Part of LADA at 20.

Tells the story of the theatre blogosphere from the dawn of the carefully crafted longform post to today’s digital newsletters and social media threads.

A performance-based short film, in which the artist inquire through bodily actions the creation and function of visible and invisible signs in response to the geologic.

Includes the film, trailer, stills, and film description.

A performance-based feature film produced and filmed on location during the month-long performance walk from Northern Germany through Poland to the Russian region of Kaliningrad, in May/June 2015.

Includes feature film, trailer, poster, stills from the movie, and film description.

Captured during a weekend-long workshop held in Glasgow as part of DIY16.

Part of the Library of Performing Rights (P3041)