Temple of Confessions – Mexican Beasts and Living Santos

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

This article presents the research and performance practice behind ‘The Performing Solidarity Project’.

Contemporary Theatre Review Volume 32 Issue Number 1 February 2022

p61-80

Based on real events, The Island Nation is a visceral, revelatory new play by Christine Bacon, artistic director of the pioneering human rights theatre company ice&fire.

We need to talk about racial injustice in a different way: one that builds on the revolutionary ideas of the past and forges new connections.

In this incisive, radical and practical essay, Emma Dabiri – acclaimed author of Don’t Touch My Hair – draws on years of research and personal experience to challenge us to create meaningful, lasting change.

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.

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.

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.