Small Acts of Great Import

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.

Performance Research Vol 6. No. 1. Spring 2001

Departures

The first of three related issues which engage with the migrations of people, performance and performance cultures, generating writing around differing geographies and histories of travel and travelling performance in a diversity of written and visual forms.

Between Journeys : an Interview with Lee Wen

Woon Tien Wei

pp. 3 – 7

Ron Athey is one of the most important, prolific and influential performance artists of the past four decades. Queer Communion, an exploration of Athey’s career, refuses the linear narratives of art discourse and instead pays homage to the intensities of each mode of Athey’s performative practice and each community he engages.

The Maternal in Creative Work examines the interrelation between art, creativity and maternal experience, inviting international artists, theorists and cultural workers to discuss their approaches to the central feminist question of the relation between maternity, generation and creativity.

Part of ‘series of rituals practicing ways to dialog with the natural world’ by Fernanda Branco, MA in Performance Norwegian Theatre Academy//Østfold University College.

This series of interviews, held by curator and writer Gilane Tawadros are focussed entirely on Stuart Brisley’s practice and directed by him. The artist’s narration of his practice demonstrates an unswerving resistance to controlling the narrative or fixing the meaning of his works.

An edited volume that explores the work of the innovative, experimental and internationally acclaimed performance artist Marilyn Arsem, with 200 images.

Issue No 4 of Substanz featuring text and drawings by Saskia Edens.

This performance arts issue is published on the occasion of Acción|MAD17-XIV Encuentro de Arte de Acción Madrid, November 2017.

Text in French and English.

Kindly Donated for the Swiss Live Art Study Room Guide.

Photographs of the work of Cécile Feilchenfeldt in collaboration with Elaine Rutishauser.

Text in German.

Kindly donated for the Swiss Live Art Study Room Guide.

A collection of essays on the artist Pascale Grau with dvd of Single-Channel Videos 1994-2008.

In German and English.

Kindly donated for the Swiss Live Art Study Room Guide.

“Writing the body with the body” consists of fragments taken from performance texts by Stefanie Knobel, which are juxtaposed with a series of pictures created for this volume

Kindly donated for the Swiss live Art Study Room Guide.

Documentation of the evening which featured a screening of short films and performance documentation by artists working around ritual, performance and queer futurity.