LIVE ART

DEVELOPMENT
AGENCY:
A CENTRE
FOR LIVE ART
ANNUAL
REVIEW
2019-20
www.thisisliveart.co.uk
Welcome to the
Live Art Development Agency’s
2019-20 Annual Review

The Live Art Development Agency (LADA) supports LADA – and Live Art itself – gives agency to
contemporary culture’s most radical and inventive artists who often don’t have a voice in more
artists, practices and ideas. mainstream practices; it refuses to be defined
We champion new ways of working, legitimise by traditional categories of what people think
unclassifiable artforms, record untold histories, and of as art, instead challenging that very idea.
support the agency of underrepresented artists. LoveEast Magazine
We believe in Live Art as a means to challenge the
status quo and initiate meaningful social change. What is Live Art?
Live Art is a cultural strategy to make space for experimental
Whether you are an artist, curator, writer, producer, student, processes, experiential practices, and the bodies and identities
educator, researcher or activist, LADA is here to help you that might otherwise be excluded from traditional contexts.
understand, appreciate, dig into, and take inspiration from
a huge breadth of Live Art and performance practices – Rather than a description of an artform or discipline, Live Art
contemporary and historic. is a way of thinking about what art is, what it can do, and where
and how it can be experienced. Some may experience Live Art
All our resources, opportunities, projects, publications and in a gallery, others in a theatre, and others still in forests or town
events are driven by our commitment to experimentation and squares, or as a process in which they are involved.
risk, to the sustainability of our planet, and to difference and
diversity in all its forms. From intimate encounters to civic spectacles, from
attendance at shows and installations to mass participation
in virtual events, Live Art practices are concerned with all
2019-20 was a packed year: we celebrated our 20th anniversary kinds of interventions in the public sphere and all kinds of
with publications, films, artworks, events and a spectacular interaction with an audience.
fundraising Gala; we collaborated on an epic intergenerational Whatever it might look like, and wherever it may take place,
and interspecies project for Manchester International Festival; Live Art always explores the possibilities of the live event
we launched an unprecedented research project into the and the ways we can experience it.
histories and futures of Live Art in partnership with Arts Council
England and Live Art UK; we facilitated 24 artist-led professional
development DIYs across the UK; we produced an expansive
body of new publications and online resources; we hosted all
kinds of activities at our home at The Garrett Centre; and we
welcomed a new LADA team.
Like everyone else, LADA’s 2019-20 ended under the shadow
of the Covid-19 pandemic. Although we closed the doors of
our space on 17th March 2020 and postponed all planned
events, the LADA team continued working remotely – acting
as a resource for our communities, providing information
and advice for artists and arts workers, keeping calls for
ideas open, developing online programmes, and setting up
commissioning opportunities for artists in order to support
them through dark days.
We send our deepest thanks and appreciation to all those who
supported and engaged with our work in 2019-20, and to all the
artists who make everything we do possible. Our thoughts are
with everyone who has been hit the hardest by Covid-19, and to
those whose lives have changed beyond recognition.

Lois Keidan, Megan Vaughan, Ben William Harris, Finn Love,

Joseph Morgan Schofield, Natalia Damigou-Papoti Front cover: Joshua Sofaer, Mouse Palace. Image Joshua Sofaer

and Rosaleigh Harvey-Otway

Live Art
AND ANIMALS
Live Art has always been interested in
encounters between humans and non-humans,
partly because animals, like Live Art, disturb
the production of meaning in art by ‘keeping
their realness’.
Sibylle Peters
They say you should never work with children and
animals. In 2019, LADA worked with both.
Building on our PLAYING UP (2016) and KAPUTT
(2018) projects with Sibylle Peters of Theatre
of Research (Germany), both of which had Live
Art and children at their core, we collaborated
with Sibylle again on Animals of Manchester
(including HUMANZ).
Commissioned and produced by Manchester
International Festival (MIF) at Whitworth Gallery
and Park, Animals of Manchester was an interactive,
intergenerational and interspecies project that
set out to pose questions about the relationship
between human and non-human animals.
It was a real pleasure and honour to work with
you on this project. You judged the tone and
experience perfectly and created a truly special
closing weekend for MIF. Thank you everyone
for a brilliant, beautiful project. Such subtlety
and vision combined. The world feels a better
place thanks to the Animalz.
John McGrath, Artistic Director,
Manchester International Festival
Angela Bartram, Human School. Image Chris Payne
Animals of Manchester
Mission Statement
For ages human beings thought they were entirely different
from all the other animals. Human philosophers were keen to
find fundamental differences between humans and animals.
They said, for example, that only humans have free will, while
animals are just governed by instinct. They said that only
humans have language while animals don’t. And if humans
call each other animals, or treat each other like animals, it’s
usually not meant well.
Children always had their doubts about this, and lately, there
are more and more adults who question this order of things
too. Not only do we know by now that animals have language
and free will, more importantly, it doesn’t seem smart to
think about the many species of this planet in terms of
humans being so much better than everything else. Instead
it becomes clear, that we are in this together for better
or for worse. We are not one species winning at the food
chain game over all the others. Instead, we are a companion
species depending on one another.
However, the relationships between animals and humans
are organised in certain, often difficult and hierarchical,
ways and to change them towards relations based more
on companionship, isn’t that easy. Sometimes we don’t
even know what it means. With Animals of Manchester
(including HUMANZ) we’d like to provide a space and use the
methodologies of Live Art to find out more about it. In the
process we hope to team up with children and animals to
create an experience of companionship for everyone.
Theatre of Research & Ansuman Biswas, Town Hall
(Standing Conference of Animals). Image Chris Payne
3
Live Art
AND ANIMALS
Animals of Manchester Programme
Animals of Manchester (including HUMANZ) imagined a city
in which animals of all kinds, including humanz, live together
in peace. It set out to ask what life might be like if dogs,
cows, squirrels and other creatures lived alongside us not just
as our pets but as our peers – our companions?
Taking place over the Manchester International Festival’s
final weekend (20–21 July), audiences of all ages followed a
trail through Whitworth Park and Gallery and took part in all
kinds of animal encounters. Across a series of installations
and performances, human children, adults and families of all
kinds explored their relationships with other species and were
invited to become a citizen of our alternative city and share
ideas on how to improve relationships between all creatures.
It was a real, if temporary, model of a different
way of thinking, being and interacting in the
world, without disavowing our responsibilities
to the ways things are. It adhered to the
legislation regarding cows, for example, and
it stood in solidarity with them. It involved
children in reciprocal activities in which they
were invited to imagine a different world; it
asked them to perform for their parents and
teachers and also listened when they asked the
audience to perform back. This commitment to
an imperfect world adds strength to the model.
Mary Paterson, Maddy Costa,
A Response to Animals of Manchester
Above: Joshua Sofaer, Mouse Palace. Image Joshua Sofaer
4
The projects we commissioned for
Animals of Manchester were:
Joshua Sofaer’s Mouse Palace, a reconstruction
of a popular Chinese attraction in mouse and
human-sized forms;
a Town Hall (Standing Conference of Animals) for cows,
microbes and pigeons created by Theatre of Research
& Ansuman Biswas, Andy Field & Beckie Darlington, and
Esther Pilkington & Daniel Ladnar (random people);
Angela Bartram’s Human School where dogs
teach humanz;
Pet Workshops (for Human Students)
with Krõõt Juurak and Alex Bailey;
Nuts House, an edible Arndale Centre for squirrels
and birds by Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson
(London Fieldworks);
Memorials for Extinct Species by Marcus Coates
and Adam O’Riordan;
The BeetleFilmTheatre with artist Tim Spooner
and scientist Dmitri Logunov;
The Hedgehog Hospital & Hedgehog Manifesto
with artist Rebecca Chesney and Barbara Roberts
of the Withington Hedgehog Care Trust;
an Interspecies Family Portrait Studio
with photographer Benji Reid;
an Aquarium: The Way of the Shark for small
humanz who want to be bitten by sharks
with artist Martin O’Brien;
a Bestiary Beauty Parlour for humanz to signify
their animalship with Katharina Duve;
a Pantheon of Performing Animals where artists
and other experts celebrated inspiring and unusual
animals as artists;
a Life Art Library exploring the history of animals
in art, books and films, including an Index of Animals
in Performance; and Performing Animals Lectures
where animals were honoured as artists by Karin
Harasser, Antony Hall, Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca,
Jack Ashby, Kira O’Reilly, David Weber-Krebs
& Maximillian Haas, and Kerry Morrison.
Animals of Manchester (including HUMANZ) was created
in collaboration with children from Holy Trinity CE Primary
School, Claremont Primary School and the Greater
Manchester Home Educators network working as facilitators
and ambassadors; and in partnership with Dogs4Rescue,
Withington Hedgehog Care Trust and Wythenshawe
Community Farm.
Benji Reid, Interspecies Family Portrait Studio. Image Benji Reid Katharina Duve, Bestiary Beauty Parlour. Image Chris Payne

Town Hall (Standing Conference of Animals). Image Chris Payne

Andy Field & Beckie Darlington, Town Hall Mayors and Mayor, Town Hall (Standing Conference of Animals).
(Standing Conference of Animals). Image Lee Baxter Image Chris Payne
5
Live Art
AND ANIMALS
A Q&A with LADA and Sibylle Peters
(unpublished interview with The Guardian)
1. Animals of Manchester (including HUMANZ) is described as
‘a cultural experiment’. What are you looking to explore?
We are trying to imagine a city in which all species are equal,
and to ask what life could be like if dogs, cows, squirrels,
pigeons, beetles and other creatures lived alongside us
human animals as companions. With the guidance of our
collaborating kids, we will create an autonomous zone of
companionship and use the creative methodologies of Live Art
to find out more about the relationships between human and
non-human animals.
2. There is a long association with animals and ‘Live Art’.
Were any specific pieces at the forefront of your mind when
creating this show? What inspired you?
Animals of Manchester artists like Angela Bartram (Human
School (be your dog!) and Krõõt Juurak (Pet Workshop (for
human students) are looking at the hierarchies of ‘pet and
owner’ and ideas of co-species co-habitation. Their work builds
on a long history of animals in performance from Joseph Beuys’
I Like America, America Likes Me (1974) where he was locked in
a gallery with a coyote, Albert Vidal’s Urban Man (1984) where
he inhabited a cage in a zoo alongside other species, to Kira
O’Reilly’s Falling Asleep With A Pig (2009) where she shared a
living space with a pig.
Animals of Manchester will also feature a Life Art Library
exploring the history of animals in performance art where
we will show films of iconic artworks involving animals, and
where animals will be honoured as artists in lectures and in A
Pantheon of Performing Animals.
3. As the old saying goes: ‘never work with animals or
children’, you seem to have decided to do both for MIF this
year! Have there been any difficulties in bringing animals to a
Live Art setting?
6
Theatre of Research and Live Art Development Agency (LADA)
have collaborated on two Live Art projects with Tate Families
programmes that disrupt the binary between adults and
children – PLAYING UP, a game for kids and adults to look at
the world differently together, and KAPUTT, an intergenerational
academy of creative destruction. A lot of work in Animal
Studies has sought to cross the binary between humans and
non-humans. With Animals of Manchester we will try to bring
these two binaries of adults/children, human/non-humans
together to undo one through the other.
Live Art has always been interested in encounters between
humans and non-humans, partly because animals, like Live
Art, disturbs the production of meaning in art by ‘keeping
their realness’. So, Animals of Manchester illustrates Live Art’s
defiance of the rules of art by inviting those we should ‘never
work with’ to be our collaborators!
Bringing animals into a Live Art setting is fraught with all kinds
of difficulties. Animals are usually not allowed into art spaces
and with Animals of Manchester, most of our collaborating non-
humans will be based in Whitworth Park and not in Whitworth
Gallery.
We are also sensitive to the ethics of involving non-humans
within art. We will be engaging in respectful ways with
animals which are already resident in Whitworth Park, such as
squirrels, pigeons and insects, as well as dogs and their human
companions who frequently use the park. We will be working
with the Withington Hedgehog Care Trust and Dogs4Rescue
- organisations working for the benefit and welfare of animals –
and Wythenshawe Park Community Farm where the cow who
will be the mayor of our temporary alternative city currently
lives.
Other people who have pets, particularly children, will be
invited to bring them to take part in other aspects of the
programme, including Benjie Reid’s Interspecies Portrait Studio.
4. Can you tell us about how you work with children and what
it brings to your work?
Theatre of Research create art projects that are conceived
and developed by and with kids, and not just for kids. Over
many years their work has shown that encounters with animals
are at the very top of the list of children’s wishes for what an
art programme should be. Kids often seem to be more open
towards building relationships with members of other species
than adults, and often they crave the opportunity to do that. We
hope Animals of Manchester will meet some of those cravings.
Leading up to the weekend, groups of kids (aged from 5 to
14) will work closely with the commissioned artists to explore
relationships between humans and other animals in Manchester
and make suggestions on how to make them better. During the
weekend those suggestions, alongside those gathered from
our visitors, will be presented in our open Town Hall, a standing
conference of animals.
5. With the rising popularity of veganism and sustainable
living, do you think we are seeing a move to a society more
conscious of animal welfare?
Children have always known that humans are not superior to
other animals. Now most adults think this too, and the new
UN report on biodiversity leaves no doubt that all species are
in this together for better or worse. Animals of Manchester
invites everyone to look at what art can do to engage us in
creating experiences and images of why humans need to
change our relationships with non-humans and the natural
environment, and what we can look forward to if kids’
movements like Fridays for Future succeed.
6. What are you hoping visitors will take away from
this experience?
We would like everyone to look forward to a world which has
better interspecies relationships, and to appreciate the role of
art, and particularly Live Art, in helping us achieve this.

Top: Theatre of Research, Town Hall

(Standing Conference of Animals). Image Lee Baxter
Middle: Marcus Coates and Adam O’Riordan,
Memorials for Extinct Species. Image Chris Payne
Bottom: Tim Spooner and Dmitri Logunov,
The BeetleFilmTheatre. Image Chris Payne 7
Live Art
AND ANIMALS
All Access, All Beings
Manchester 2029
by Sybille Peters
Sibylle Peters was invited to write a performative lecture in November 2019 for People and Cranes,
a conference on social and political issues created by Manchester’s rapid growth, curated by
Quarantine and Florian Malzacher. Thinking about the findings of Animals of Manchester and the
future the project had imagined, Sibylle wrote a lecture from 2029:
The young people who started the Bee Party were kids twelve years
ago, when I was first in Manchester. That was during the big building
boom in the city in the tenner years. I think back then those kids
were the first, who really pointed us to this consequence of the city
becoming more and more dense. The kids were – quite simply –
missing something, someone: the animals, the other animals. They
were wondering: these cows and chickens and piglets from their
books about the little farm – they knew the sounds these animals
make, but they had never actually heard or seen them.
Back then, who was really aware of the fact that booming cities
becoming more and more dense was not just – in terms of
gentrification – pushing out certain groups of people, but generally all
other beings, apart from humanz working in office buildings, shops
and hotels. I mean all other beings - plants, wild animals, insects and
farm animals, all of them. And not only pushed them out, but at the
same time created another density invisible to city people, far out of
the city’s centres, but nonetheless dense and intense: the factories of
farming, which also singled out one species each, if only to produce
and consume them effectively.
It might be obvious from today’s perspective, but back then the
segregation of humanz and other animals, as we call it today, was
something totally invisible and unthought of.
I mean no wonder – that’s the way this kind of segregation, or any
segregation, actually works, right?
Manchester, with its industrial history, might very well be one of the
epicentres of this forgetfulness, that reaches its tipping point right
now in 2029. I thought about that, when I learned that the park, in
which we worked back in 2019 to put this programme together called
Animals of Manchester (including HUMANZ), Whitworth Park, was
partly built on the ruins of the factory belonging to Engels‘ father,
a factory which as a site of experience for young Engels obviously
informed the theory of Capitalism and the working class in a global
way. I mean, in Manchester you have to dig deep.
The fact that this segregation and its devastating consequences was
so utterly overlooked for so long, was also due to 200 years of leftist
culture and theory focusing solely on the humanz. I remember that
from my own education, don’t you? We were taught that the whole
world of theory was only inhabited by humanz, their consciousness,
and by dead gods, data and machines. All other living beings were
missing. It makes me blush today, how we left that fact unquestioned
for so long.
8
But we lived in cities becoming more and more dense back then. And
in the centre of the cities this ‘world of theory’ manifested itself, made
itself real, this world only for humanz, dead gods, data and machines.
So, working in the centre of cities, and flying back and forth between
them, like I did back then, you wouldn’t even realise that the concept
was lacking something. The refrain of history repeating itself: we did
not know what we were doing. We did not see that we were inside the
bubble of a fossil fuel economy, trying to take the place of our dead
gods and killing everybody else, too, in the process.
Does that remind you of something? Being in the bubble of a centre of
colonialism for example? When I was in Manchester during the tenner
years I was often booked into a hotel, that was celebrating cottonopolis
with installations of cotton, looking like abstract flowers. You couldn’t
really open the windows in that hotel – the risk assessment said that
too many people might jump. So, I have spent quite some time in the
streets around the hotel having a smoke with the people who lived on
their cardboard beds. Animals were the last thing we were talking
about in those nights.
Anyway, I only started to get a glimpse of what was coming, when
the UN-report of biodiversity came out in 2019 with these amazing
statistics saying that of all the mammals on planet earth only 4% were
what was called ‘wild animals’ then, (we say ‘free animals’ today) only
4% were left! 36% of the mammals were humanz (I think it was very
smart of the designers of these statistics to include humanz in the
mammals in this very slide!) And 60% were the animals we (humanz)
keep – the animals we eat and feed. And the strangest thing: those
60% we never saw. Though they lived just for us. And right then the
Amazon forest started to flare up. And the horrible populist leader of
Brazil said this one correct thing: ‘If you in Europe are so devastated
about it, why don’t you turn Europe back into the jungle it has been
once, too?’
To me all those blows were deafeningly loud. And suddenly I realised,
that the kids I work with in my children’s theatre, who were missing
the animals and were surrounding themselves constantly with animal
heroes and animal avatars and animal stories and furry animals and
dreaming of animals and longing for pets so badly, that all this was
actually the planet trying to tell us something. Trying to tell us for
quite some time.
It was in those days when Extinction Rebellion shut down the city
centres of London and Berlin and Fridays for Future called the
biggest public manifestation my home city, Hamburg, ever saw. In
Manchester though? Well, I have experienced Manchester as one of you might say. And that’s when the Bee Party appeared on the scene.
the most controlled and most disciplined places on this planet, right The Bee Party leaders are so young, they are coming right out of their
next to Saudi Arabia and Singapore. It all started in – you guessed cowboys and cowgirls costumes. And their approach is really smart:
it – education and risk assessment. I mean, this fetish of evaluation in this grief over the bees they won everybody over to build this huge
and risk assessment here in Manchester – everything is processed monument for extinct species. I love it, that it is now used by all
through that filter isn’t it? the pigeons and other birds as public housing. It’s getting difficult
for the birds with the continuous loss of insects everywhere. And
In that sense I think it was an important moment, when in 2020 this
then in the process of opening the monument for the public, with
one agency first started to evaluate schools’ excellency, partially in
everybody emotional, reading poems for all the extinct species, they
terms of the knowledge children get on questions of sustainability.
came out with their ‘all access to all beings’ proposal. Have you heard
Only then it became apparent, that the general knowledge regarding
about that? I actually heard ‘all access to all beings’ first at Animals
the basic facts of the cycle of food and life, as we call it today (back
of Manchester in the Town Hall meeting in Whitworth Park. The kids
then I think people said ‘nutrition’) was literally zero. We did some
who first suggested it were only 8 years old.
research on that. Ten years ago, roughly 300,000 cows lived and died
for Manchester per year. Something like 900 a day. Imagine if those All Access, All Beings is quite a pragmatic programme of several
cows were to do a procession through the city centre each morning. steps meant to break the segregation of humanz and other animals.
Imagine the amounts of plants and water these animals are made of. And right now, they are discussing step number one in the city
Imagine the amounts of shits and farts they produce in the process, council. Step one combines the ban on private cars in the city with a
which contribute hugely to climate change. And cows are pretty big. programme to reduce meat production. It suggests that around the
Imagine the millions of chickens and the abundance of piglets going city of Manchester the daily meat consumption is measured by certain
with them in that procession. indicators. And when it falls under a certain average line, a certain
number of animals are taken out of the food cycle and set free in
But they don’t.
places around the city centre which are won through the car ban.
The centres of the cities consume those animals, but at the same time
I mean, back in 2019 it slowly became chic to combine your office
they systematically block out the realities of this consumption. My
space with some sort of urban gardening. But this is a completely
experience back then, working with kids from elementary schools
new scale. It might all be a bit hipster, but I still hope they will win:
in Manchester on these questions was that there was a kind of taboo
imagine if all the animals you don’t eat start appearing around you
around these realities. It proved really difficult to just talk with the
and then we learn to live together with them in the centre of the city.
kids about how milk is produced and how much shit comes about
That should be real fun – for everybody.
in the process and so on. It was a mixture of a taboo concerning the
physical facts of life, a taboo surrounding food with all the conflicting
cultural and religious rules connected to it, and finally a taboo that
forbid to let children see the cruelties of intensive farming so as not
to traumatise them. The damage that is done by trying to protect
people, it was hard to overcome. But this new definition of excellency
actually created a new educational approach. Since 2023 many kids in
Manchester are organised in this new kind of cowboys and cowgirls
networks, where the schools have these partnerships with intensive
farms and help to reform and transform them.
But the real turning point was the final dying of the bees in 2025. Bee
extinction year. You know how Mancunians think about bees. They
are passionate about this one. And when the last populations just
dropped dead that year, well, Mancunians took it personal, finally,

Image: Town Hall (Standing Conference of Animals). Image Chris Payne 9

Live Art
AND ANIMALS
Animals of Manchester Legacies

A Visual Report on Animals of Manchester

Artist David Caines was our Scribe for the Town Hall (Standing
Conference of Animals), recording each daily Town Hall session
where alliances of animals, from microbes to pigeons to the
small humanz from our partnering schools, made their case
for equality and companionship.
David created a beautiful Visual Report on Animals of
Manchester as a legacy of the project which includes
suggestions from many of the children who participated
in the project on how relationships between humans and
non-human animals within Manchester could be improved.
Copies of the Report have been presented to the Lord Mayor
Councillor Abid Latif Chohan and City Councillors.
A copy of the Visual Report on Animals of Manchester can be
found in LADA’s Study Room.

A Study Room Guide on Live Art and Animals

LADA has produced a Study Room Guide on Live Art and
Animals based on the artists’ films, books and contextualising
materials that LADA developed for Animals of Manchester, and
on the documentation of the project itself.
The guide can be viewed in LADA’s Study Room or on
our website.

Animals of Manchester Podcast

Reduced Listening and Manchester International Festival
produced a podcast for Animals of Manchester that was
recorded across the weekend.
The podcast asked how we (humanz) can live better
alongside other animals and learn from them. This was led
by the children and many non-human animals of Manchester,
including: Jonas, Amar, Abdullah, Kitty, Willem, Tabrez,
Awais, Mustafa, Grace, Emmett, Martha & Dexter, Dolly,
George & Diane, Archie & Sami, Carly & Tricia, Petal the cow
& Cheeseburger the budgie.
You can listen to the podcast on LADA’s website.

A Visual Report on Animals of Manchester.

Illustrations David Caines

10
LADA AT 20
LADA marked its 20th birthday in 2019 and we
celebrated with special anniversary initiatives
throughout the year.
LADA has ensured that over
the last two decades Live
Art, which has often been
ignored by the mainstream,
has had the strongest possible
advocacy. It has spread out its
tentacles across the UK and
into Europe and beyond.
Lyn Gardner, Run Riot
AGENCY, A Partial History
of Live Art
Edited by Theron Schmidt
and co-published by LADA and
Intellect Books
AGENCY is a collection of
conversations, provocations and images
looking back at the last 20 years of
Live Art through the lens of LADA, and
considering not only what Live Art has
been against, but also what it has been
for. Through the work of this particular
‘Agency’, the book explores the idea of
agency more generally, and how Live
Art has enabled the possibility for new
kinds of thoughts, actions and alliances
for diverse individuals and groups.
Contributing artists and scholars: Barby
Asante, Ron Athey, David A. Bailey,
Anne Bean, Bryan Biggs, Cassils, Simon
Casson, George Chakravarthi, Curious,
Richard DeDomenici, The Disabled
Avant-Garde, Tim Etchells, Andy
Field, French & Mottershead, RoseLee
Goldberg, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Jen
Harvie, The Institute For The Art And
Practice Of Dissent At Home, Dominic
Johnson, Amelia Jones, John Jordan,
Lois Keidan, Alastair MacLennan,
John E. McGrath, Jordan McKenzie,
Hayley Newman, Martin O’Brien, Kira
O’Reilly, Mary Paterson, Project O, Alan
Read, Heike Roms, Rajni Shah, Joshua
Sofaer, Selina Thompson, Jane Trowell,
Johanna Tuukkanen, the vacuum
cleaner, Manuel Vason, Lois Weaver
and Catherine Wood.
AGENCY offers one of the
clearest explanations in
plain English of exactly what
constitutes Live Art, what
sets it apart from theatre or
other practices in the creative
industries and why that matters.
As a reference book it offers
an intelligent and rigorous
interrogation of Live Art’s guts
and gore, its shock tactics and
disruptions, its raw energy, risk
taking and ingenuity.
Julie McNamara, Disability
Arts Online
Tiny Live Art (Harold Offeh, Covers)
Tiny Live Art
(Development Agency)
20 works for 20 years
LADA commissioned Robert
Daniels to create 20 limited edition
miniature sculptures of iconic
performance works.
Part re-enactment, part archive, part
hobby, Tiny Live Art embraces and
embodies theories and practices
of performance documentation,
re-enactment and the making and
sharing of memory.
Robert created two sets of Tiny Live
Art (Development Agency) editions,
one set was made up of twenty pieces
in bespoke displays that were sold
exclusively as one-off editions on our
online shop, Unbound. The second set
are encased within bell jars and are on
permanent public display at LADA.
l Marina Abramović, 7 Easy Pieces,
reperforming Gina Pane’s, The
Conditioning, first action of Self-
portrait(s) (1973)
l Franko B, I Miss You!
l Kira O’Reilly, Stair Falling
l Ron Athey, Self Obliteration
l La Ribot, Another Bloody Mary
l Martin O’Brien, It’s Good To
Breath In (This Venice Air)
l Lone Twin, Totem
l Bobby Baker, Drawing On
A Mother’s Experience
l Oreet Ashery, Hairoism
l Selina Thompson, Pat It and
Prick It and Mark It with ‘B’
l Tania El Khoury, Gardens Speak
l Harold Offeh, Covers
l Aaron Williamson, Artist Leaps
On To The Gallery Wall
l Station House Opera,
The Bastille Dances
l Guillermo Gómez-Peña & Coco Fusco,
The Couple In The Cage
l Pytor Pavlensky, Fixation
l Chris Burden, Shoot
l Joseph Beuys, I Like America
and America Likes Me
l Yoko Ono, Cut Piece
l William Pope.L, The Great White Way
A 21st Tiny Live Art was commissioned
to mark the death of artist, LADA
Board member, and beloved friend
Katherine Araniello – The Dinner Party
(2011 / …Revisited, 2014)
11
LADA AT 20
LADA at 20 Postcards
A special box-set collection of
20 postcards with images from key
LADA projects and initiatives from
1999 to 2019.
Featured artists: La Pocha Nostra,
Curious, The Disabled Avant-Garde,
Dickie Beau, Franko B, George
Chakravarthi, Harold Offeh, Katharine
Meynell, La Ribot, The Famous Lauren
Barri Holstein, Lois Weaver, Martin
O’Brien, Nando Messias, Neil Bartlett,
Nicola Hunter, Oleg Kulik, Oreet Ashery,
Ron Athey, Sibylle Peters and Yang
Zhichao.
20 x 20: Artists reflect
on 20 years of Live Art –
A Radio Series
We presented monthly programmes
for Resonance 104.4 FM on Live
Art histories and futures, broadcast
between April and December 2019.
Each programme included a dialogue
between two artists of different
generations speaking on moments,
movements, artists and events in key
Live Art themes:
Claire MacDonald and Hava Carvajal
on Community (April)
Nando Messias and Hester
Chillingworth on Gender (May)
Nigel Rolfe and Martin O’Brien
on Body (June)
Jane Trowell and Rosamund Zipporah
on Activism (July)
David A Bailey and Jade Montserrat
on Race (September)
Joshua Sofaer and Tania El Khoury
on Participation (October)
Neil Bartlett and Travis Alabanza
on Queerness (November)
Daniel Oliver and Noemi Lakmaier on
Disability (December).
12
It is so important to pass on
our stories of whence our
inspiration comes – the modern
world is crowded with crap
mythologies of ‘discovery’ and
‘originality’, and in the face of
all that hogwash it is good to
remember that no, what actually
happens is that one body lights
a flame in another body – often
in the unlikeliest of moments –
and that is how the bloodlines
of our cultures will continue to
feed the generations...
Neil Bartlett, contributing
artist and LADA Patron
Top: Burong Z. Still from video
Bottom: Nigel Rolfe and Martin O’Brien.
Image Alex Eisenberg
Live Art on the page,
the stage and the
screen – Events at
The Garrett Centre
As Seen on TV (April) was an evening
of clips from TV programmes which
inadvertently or otherwise feature
artists better known from the worlds
of performance art and Live Art – from
artists appearing on chat shows, talent
shows and reality TV shows to John
Cage on 1960’s US show I’ve Got A
Secret, Tim Miller featuring on The Larry
Sanders Show and Pussy Riot’s 2018
pitch invasion at the World Cup final.
Co-hosted with Brian Lobel (artist and
winner of Come Dine With Me).
Readings from the Pulpit (June) was an
evening in which over 30 artists read
extracts from books held within our
Study Room that have influenced and
inspired them. Lucy Hutson, Nicholas
Tee, Martha Pailing, Emma Berentsen,
James Johnston, Elena Marchevska,
Jack Bateman, Andreia Afonso, Eunjung
Kim, Rumi Woolf, River Champion, Tara
Fatehi Irani & Jemima Yong, Tom Bland,
Shakti Orion, Chiara Mu, Rebekah Dean,
Ruth Hallgarten, Serena Braida, Matt
Smith & Claire MacDonald, Burong Z,
and Sylvia Solakidi read works by or
about artists including Lee Wen, Anna
Mendieta, Marina Abramović, David
Wojnarowicz, Kathy Acker, Sophie
Calle, Situationist International, Adrian
Howells and many others.
Icons on Icons (October) was an
evening in which some of LADA’s icons
talked about their own icons from
popular culture - Marcia Farquhar on
Joyce Grenfell, Neil Bartlett on Lily
Savage, Harold Offeh on Grace Jones,
Stacy Makishi on Steve Buscemi, Gary
Stevens on Laurel and Hardy, Selina
Thompson on Missy Elliott, Tim Etchells
on Mark E. Smith, and Anthony Roberts
on Arthur Lowe.
Watch this
event on
Live Online
Oozing Gloop, LADA’s 20th Anniversary Live Art Gala. Image Manuel Vason
A Live Art Gala 2019
LADA’s 20th anniversary star-studded
fundraising Gala took place on 26th
October at St. Paul’s Church Hall in
Hackney, London with Travis Alabanza
as MC and Gary Carter and Shorty
(Hester Chillingworth) as auctioneers.
The evening featured a glittering
line up of live performances by Ron
Athey, Katy Baird, Rocio Boliver,
Tim Bromage, Brian Catling,
Oozing Gloop, Nando Messias,
Jade Montserrat, Daniel Oliver,
Tammy Reynolds, Victoria Sin and
Aaron Williamson, alongside a
Silent Auction of artworks, objects
and experiences from Katherine
Araniello, Oreet Ashery, Franko
B, Anne Bean, Season Butler,
Shaun Caton, Augusto Corrieri,
Robert Daniels, Karen Finley, Hugo
Glendinning, Tehching Hsieh, Oleg
Kulik, Zoe Laughlin and Selina
Thompson, and a Lucky Dip of
LADA publications.
Thanks to the generosity of our
audiences who dug deep for Live
Art, the gala raised £11,700 with
all proceeds directly supporting
LADA’s artistic programmes for
the next 20 years.
Watch this
event on
Live Online
Victoria Sin, LADA’s 20th Anniversary Live Art Gala. Image Manuel Vason
An almighty, giddy treat Future Proofing –
of a night. An Artist’s Bursary
Run Riot
To mark the end of our 20th anniversary
Just wanted to say thanks year, we launched a bursary of £2,000
from the bottom of my farts to support an artist aged under 25 to
imagine the future they’d like to see and
to @thisisliveart for one of
how their work could shape it.
the best nights of my life –
here’s to many more. The bursary was offered to Aislinn
Evans, an interdisciplinary artist using
Tammy Reynolds,
print, performance, and participation
contributing artist to explore the intersections of working-
class queerness and the ways ‘low’
culture can make complex ideas
20 Years of LADA – A Film culturally accessible – and fun!
We commissioned Samuel Douek to For Aislinn’s bursary they are asking:
make a short film looking back at 20 ‘When did socially-engaged art lose
years of our work featuring archive touch with socialism, and how do we
material from many of our projects, make participatory art radical again?’
initiatives and interviews with Katy Baird,
Lauren Barri Holstein, Season Butler, the
vacuum cleaner, Tim Etchells, Marcia
Farquhar, Brian Lobel, Stacy Makishi,
Nando Messias, and Martin O’Brien.
Watch this
event on
Live Online
Aislinn Evans at Barbican’s Change Makers (2018).
Image the artist
13
LADA PROJECTS
Curatorial partnerships,
artist’s commissions,
research projects,
screening programmes
and public events.

Restock, Rethink, Reflect

Five: Managing The
Radical (2019-21)
Restock, Rethink, Reflect (RRR) is an
ongoing research project mapping
and marking underrepresented artists,
practices and histories and supporting
future generations through artist’s
development opportunities, resources,
and commissioned projects. The first
four Restock, Rethink, Reflect projects
were on race (2006-08), disability
(2009-12), feminism (2013-15) and
privilege (2016-18).
Restock, Rethink, Reflect Five: Managing
The Radical (2019-21) is considering the
question of what it means to ‘manage’
radical ideas and practices, and wants
to reimagine how art that operates and
thinks ‘differently’ is created, produced,
peopled, framed, funded, represented
and contextualised. RRR5 is reflecting
on what forms of management and
methodologies of production might
be more appropriate and effective
for radical new forms of artistic
practice with the aim of rethinking and
restocking what LADA itself does, how
it does it, and who it does it with, now
and for the next 20 years.
The first research phase of RRR5
Managing The Radical was a
collaboration with the MtR Action
Research Group (Amit Rai of the
Business and Management School and
Nick Ridout of the Drama Department
of Queen Mary University of London;
producers Orlagh Woods, Gini Simpson
and Cecilia Wee) and was partially
supported through the Collaborations
Fund of the Faculty of Humanities
and Social Sciences at Queen Mary
University of London.
The Garrett Centre Commission
2019, Hari Byles and Linden
McMahon, Earthlings
LADA’s annual Garrett Centre
commission was set up to contribute
to life in our Bethnal Green
neighbourhood by testing ideas for
new ways of working within and around
The Garrett Centre, and new ways
of engaging with local individuals,
communities and partners.
For the Garrett Centre Commission
2019, performance poet Linden
McMahon and community gardener
Hari Byles produced Earthlings, a
participatory project which responded
to green spaces across Bethnal
Green. Hari and Linden worked with
Saif Osmani from the Bengali East
End Heritage Society, Margaret Cox
from the Hollybush and Teesdale
Residents Association, and Phytology
at the Bethnal Green Nature Reserve,
in order to organise an August Bank
Holiday Open Gardens Treasure Trail.
This trail took place through some
of the growing spaces surrounding
The Garrett Centre, and included
writings, poems, stories, artworks and
workshops held by local groups, as
well as a treasure map created by the
artist Soofiya.
Hari and Linden documented the
writings, artwork, reflections and
connections that emerged from
Earthlings in a zine, available to view in
LADA’s Study Room or download via
our website.
Earthlings was also funded by the
Mayor of London’s Culture Seeds.

Top: Poetry Treasure Trail map. Illustration Soofiya

Bottom: Tim Jeeves and Lena Šimić,
The party calls you (DIY 2019)

14
Research Gatherings
We hosted four MtR research
gatherings in 2019. The first looked
at Collective Practices of Care in
experimental performance and was
held at The Place, as part of The Sick
of the Fringe’s Care and Destruction
Festival in April. The second gathering
held in May at LADA discussed
Experiments in Organisation. The third
gathering, Take the Money and Run:
Power, Money and Counter-Power took
place at LADA in June and featured
ideas on how we might build for future
struggles to free art and artists from
their dependency on the proceeds of
toxic capitalism including speakers
Jess Worth of Culture Unstained, Jane
Trowell of Platform, Elona Hoover of
The Common House, Natasha Nkonde
of Edge Fund and writer Morgan
Quaintance. The final gathering in
October reflected on what we had
learned and where we might go with
our research in 2020 and beyond.
* Watch a film of Take the Money
and Run: Power, Money and Counter-
Power by Claire Nolan and read a
written response by Lewis Church
on our website.
DIY 2019
Two of LADA’s 2019 flagship
DIY professional development
programmes were part of the
Managing the Radical research
process – Phoebe Patey-Ferguson,
FK Alexander & Andre Neely’s THE
CULT (‘returning the sacred into arts
administration and practice’) and Tim
Jeeves & Lena Simic’s The Party Calls
You (‘what place is there for artists
within the UK’s political institutions?’)
The Library of Performing Rights
The Library of Performing Rights
(LPR) was originally developed for
Performance Studies international: 12
Performing Rights (2006) as a resource
of materials examining the intersection
between performance and Human
Rights, which has been housed at
LADA since 2007. In collaboration with
the artists/researchers Lois Weaver
and Elena Marchevska, the LPR has
been reactivated and reimagined as a
place of action, a place of knowledge
exchange, a repository of experience,
and a resource and a context that
others can use to support and advance
their own work.
Nando Messias in collaboration with Biño Sauitzvy, The Pink Supper. Image Holly Revell
Few artistic performances stay
with me for long. Nando Messias’
The Pink Supper is an exception
to the rule. It left me reeling. I
feel deeply touched to have been
witness to Nando’s profound and
visceral journey that moves us
so deftly, so graciously and at
times so brutally, between life
and death, between righteous
rage and survivor’s guilt. This
event was powerful, painful
commemoration, redemptive
defiance in the face of unbridled
hatred and exquisitely beautiful
in its conception. This fabulous
creation is so brilliantly charged
with Nando’s loving care, with
astute social observation, with
careful dramaturgy, and with the
guilt that deadens our hearts for
the audacity of remaining alive,
for simply breathing.
Julie McNamara,
Disability Arts Online
The Library of Performing Rights offers
a range of activities and resources, and
an annual performance commission
produced with additional support from
South Bank University, and the Study
Room in Exile in Liverpool.
The Library of Performing Rights
Commission 2019,
Nando Messias, The Pink Supper
The Pink Supper was a performance
and installation that took place at Raven
Row, London in November. Based on a
recent trip to Nando’s native Brazil, the
world’s number one country for trans
murders, the work was a response to
the rise in reactionary populism and to
the question of how artists can react
ethically to social injustice?
Nando originally envisaged inviting
ambassadors from twelve countries
where homosexuality is illegal to
sit around the table for a meal – a
pink supper. That process proved to
be an ethical, artistic and logistical
‘nightmare’, and Nando instead invited
twelve members of the public who
identify as being ‘in exile’ to join him in
a shocking pink and lavish exploration
of ethics in performance.
The performance was accompanied
by an installation of 13 ceramic plates
created by Nando Messias and Aga
Robak, each decorated with an
image of one of Nando’s personal
queer heroes. The plates are now on
permanent public display at LADA.
15
LADA PROJECTS
The Library of Performing
Rights Open 2019, Ben Walters,
Dr Duckie’s Homemade Mutant
Hope Machines
For 2019’s LPR Open talks, we hosted
a presentation of Ben Walter’s
Homemade Mutant Hope Machines,
a lecture on the neoliberal wobble,
the technology of queer fun, doing
family differently, and the power of
homemade mutant hope machines –
ways of thinking, feeling and acting that
build better worlds.
Based on his doctoral research at
Queen Mary University of London, the
lecture looks at Duckie’s community-
centric projects like The Posh Club,
The Slaughterhouse Club, Duckie
Homosexualist Summer School, Duckie
Family and ‘vintage clubbing’ events
as well as Ben’s theories around
reproductive queer futurity.
Artist, activist and LADA Patron Lois
Live Art Now 2019 Accelerator Programme
Weaver led the response to Ben’s Live Art Now is an annual event We joined the Accelerator Programme
presentation. as part of LADA and Queen Mary in 2019, a partnership between Julie’s
University, London’s ground- Bicycle and Arts Council England to
Homemade Mutant Hope Machines was
breaking MA Live Art programme inspire environmental action across
produced by Duckie and supported by
(see Opportunities). It features the arts and cultural sector. We will be
Arts Council England. a Live Art Keynote Lecture and working in partnership with Gasworks
presentations by artists that offer to address the challenges of climate
Watch this a flavour of the kinds of practices, justice within the context of both
event on ideas, approaches and issues that organisations’ creative field, and
Live Online
the MA Live Art course engages networks of organisations that we host
with. both nationally and internationally.
2019’s Live Art Now was held at The project will respond to individuals
Queen Mary in June and featured and organisations that are hardest
conversations between practitioners: hit by climate catastrophe and social
artists Lois Weaver and Martin O’Brien injustice, research how organisations
on sustaining a practice; artists Franko across international networks can
B and Nando Messias on documenting, better communicate, readdress past
critical writing, and archiving; harms and strive to move from an
producers Phoebe Patey-Ferguson extractive framework to a regenerative
and Jen Smethurst on networking and one. Over the next few years, LADA
connecting; and artists, curators, arts- and Gasworks will look at the cultural
workers Joseph Morgan Schofield and sector through an intersectional
Jordan McKenzie on the artist as… lens, understanding how class, race,
(artist as curator, artist as researcher, sexuality, age and gender inform artists
artist as activist, artist as day-jobber). and organisations’ opportunities,
The conversations were followed resources and structures within the
by Brian Catling’s keynote lecture arts sector and society as a whole.
FICTIONAL EVIDENCE, The art of
We hope this work will empower
performing imagined crimes.
LADA’s partners in Live Art UK and
Gasworks’ partners in the Triangle
Watch this Network to influence others around
Image: Franko B and Nando Messias, event on
Live Art Now 2019. Still from video Live Online
them, and will see the transference of
knowledge and power from the least
16 affected to the most.
Swiss Live Art
We continued our partnership with Pro
Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council on an
initiative (2018-20) to raise the profile of
Swiss Live Art in the UK and contribute
to the development of exchanges and
collaborations between artists and
promoters in the UK and Switzerland.
In April 2019 we took a delegation from
the Live Art UK network on a research
trip to Switzerland and collaborated
with L’Abri, Geneva and Gessnerallee,
Zurich to host gatherings of artists and
presenters from across Switzerland.
We hosted two Study Room research
residencies for Swiss artists. The first
was undertaken by the Zurich based
artist Ivy Monteiro in July 2019 who
used their residency to deepen their
research into ancestrality, prostitution,
race, and metaphysical connections
leading to a performance-lecture on
queer spirituality and Afrofuturism.
The second residency was by the
Basel based performance artist,
curator, networker and member of
PANCH (Performance Art Network
CH), Andrea Saemann in October 2019
and February 2020, whose research
into documentation, archives and the LADA Screens
relation of contemporary performance
artists with their remnants or artworks LADA Screens are free online
outside of the live moment itself led to a presentations of performance
performance lecture in February 2020. documentation, works to camera, and
archival footage, with each screening
Those angels in the form of launched with a live event at LADA.
people at LADA left me free LADA Screens in 2019-20 featured:
and had total understanding
Organ Player by Narcissister
for my wishes of tranquility. But
Ex Nilalang (From Creature ~
they have also shared with me
From Creation) by artists Justin
material and opportunities that Shoulder and Bhenji Ra, Club Ate
they could offer with me Soldier of Female by Kembra Pfahler
if I would be open to it…
Greatest Hits of Katherine Araniello
I knew that I should take all
Anne, Richard and Paul
the opportunities and do the by Morgan Quaintance
best out of it because it is so (re)collecting (f)ears by the
rare for artists like me to find a artist selina bonelli
supportive place and people who
fully back you up.
Ivy Monteiro

Watch this
event on
Live Online

Top: Kembra Pfahler.

Image the artist and Emalin, London
Middle: Ivy Monteiro, A performance-lecture on
queer spirituality and Afrofuturism. Image LADA
Bottom: selina bonelli with ]performance s p a c e[,
Hythe Sound Mirror. Image Ana Escobar

17
LADA PROJECTS
Image: Shy Radicals at LADA’s Festive Fair 2019. Image Alex Eisenberg
Festive Fair 2019
We held our second Festive Fair on 8
December 2019 with 25 stalls run by
local artists, activists and social action
groups selling a huge variety of things
and promoting a range of campaigns
around social and environmental justice.
Homosexual Death Drive – Artist
collective selling zines, artworks
and merch
Magical Women ADHD artists – Zines,
comics and artworks
LEZ GO SWIMMING – The Lez Bag
and Let’s Go Swimming press, selling
books, artworks and gender-neutral
handbags
Grrrl zine fair – DIY feminist
publications, merchandise and artworks
Earthlings – Artists Hari Byles
and Linden McMahon
Phytology – Artists’ street posters
and GOOD, a plant-based body
and face balm
Shy Radicals – Artist activist project
selling zines, badges, stickers and
prints commanded by artist
Hamja Ahsan
Goslowcomics – Light hearted, comical
zines to promote social action
18
The Right Lube – Artist platform from
Hava Carvajal and Maz Murray
Simple Gifts – Social action and
campaigning community group
Power Play Theatre – Artist collective
selling social action “Calling Cards”
Barbara Gamper – Textiles and
wearable artworks
Fox Irving – Artist
Prick Your Finger – Textiles art
and activism
Local Foreigner – Artist
Franko B – Artist
Ruth Hellgarten – Dried edible festive
insects
Laura Rinati – Homemade candles,
soaps and tasty treats
Tim Bromage and Julian Gravy –
Calendars, zines, ceramics
and artworks
Richard Dedomenici – Artist
Unnamed Collective – Diasporic artist
collective
GraceGraceGrace – Artist collective
TDWM Studio – Artist initiative selling
anti-Brexit limited edition playing cards
Gallery café – Bethnal Green based
vegan café and community project
World AIDS Day 2019:
David Wojnarowicz
Our 2019 World AIDS Day event,
marking a significant artist who has
influenced Live Art and performance,
was the first UK screening of Self-
Portrait in 23 Rounds (2018); a film
essay about the work and life of David
Wojnarowicz by Marion Scemama,
co-directed with François Pain.
Political artist, painter, writer,
performer, and photographer David
Wojnarowicz was one of the leading
figures of the New York Downtown
artistic scene of the 1980s who
died of AIDS in 1992 in New York.
Told through the voice of the artist,
this unique document reveals how
Wojnarowicz viewed his work and
own death in a society that refused to
confront the AIDS epidemic. The film
includes previously unseen images
from the director’s personal archives
as well from Wojnarowicz’s archive.
Thirty years in the making,
Self-Portrait is an astonishing
document of influence,
friendship, love and the effort
it takes to figure things out.
Composed in the present from
archival materials, it’s also
the most historically truthful
depiction of Wojnarowicz and
the cultural moment he lived in
that I’ve seen.
Chris Kraus, Sleek Magazine
 Histories and Futures:
A Live Art Sector
Research Project
Commissioned by LADA, in partnership
with Live Art UK, funded by and
undertaken in close dialogue with Arts
Council England, Histories and Futures
is an unprecedented research project
mapping the impact and influence of
Live Art in the UK, and demonstrating
the sector’s complexity, diversity
and achievements.
The research project is being
undertaken by Dr Elyssa Livergant
and Dr Cecilia Wee (London) in
collaboration with Dr Johanna Linsley
(Dundee), Dr Tim Jeeves (Liverpool) and
Dr Tarek Virani (Bristol) through regional
focus groups, audience engagement
activities, an online survey, interviews
and case studies, and commissioned
artist and writer responses.

We seek to examine Live Art’s

influence on the creative case
for diversity, the nurturing of
challenging and risky artistic
practices and mainstream
cultures, identifying the
challenges that lie ahead
for Live Art and proposing
actions that will enable the
development of Live Art
practitioners, practices and
the sector into the future
through an exploration of the
people, places, resources and
relationships that underpin
the sector.
Elyssa Livergant, Cecilia Wee,
Johanna Linsley, Tim Jeeves,
Tarek Virani

Top: Homosexual Death Drive at LADA’s Festive Fair 2019.

Image Alex Eisenberg
Bottom: Marion Scemama and David Wojnarowicz,
When I Put My Hands on Your Body (1989). Still from film.

19
LADA PROJECTS
performingborders | LIVE:
Curating Borderless
Spaces
LADA was a partner on
performingborders | LIVE, a programme
of events and commissions focusing
on the exploration of artistic practices
happening around the notions of
cultural, juridical, racial, gendered,
class, physical and everyday borders.
In June we hosted a day of
performances, commissioned
premieres, talks, food and provocations.
Curated by Alessandra Cianetti and
Xavier de Sousa, the event highlighted
urgent voices and discourses within
Live Art on how we can work together
in creating collaborative borderless,
anti-racist, non-binary, feminist,
non-ableist, post-colonial spaces.
performingborders | LIVE 2019
featured a keynote presentation by
interdisciplinary artist, educator,
and activist Raju Rage; specially
commissioned performances-to-
camera by Istanbul Queer Arts
Collective and Tara Fatehi Irani;
new digital conversations on
Live Art and borders by Burong
and Critical Interruptions (Bojana
Janković and Diana Damian Martin);
an open conversation dotted by
the interventions and provocations
of guest artists Bojana Janković,
Marikiscrycrycry, Dana Olărescu, Kai
Syng Tan and Helena Walsh; and a
performance response by Writer in
Residence Season Butler.

Top: Tara Fatehi Irani at performingborders | LIVE:

Curating Borderless Spaces. Image Studio MaBa 
Middle left: Alessandra Cianetti and Xavier de Sousa
at performingborders | LIVE: Curating Borderless
Spaces. Image Studio MaBa
Middle right: Raju Rage at performingborders | LIVE:
Curating Borderless Spaces. Image Studio MaBa
Bottom: Season Butler at performingborders | LIVE:
Curating Borderless Spaces. Image Studio MaBa

20
Hauntings and
Herstories: Feminist
Live Art in 1980s and
1990s Ireland
LADA works with artists and scholars
on post-doctoral research projects.
In 2019 we became cultural sector
partners on a project led by Clare
Daly in collaboration with Adrian
Heathfield and Eleanor Roberts of the
Department of Drama at the University
of Roehampton, which is funded by the
TECHNE doctoral awards scheme.
Live Art practices have held an uneasy
relationship to traditional modes of
archiving and historical narration, and
numerous histories of Live Art remain
relatively unmapped: particularly those
of already marginalised subjects. Our
collaboration with Roehampton takes
place in this context and seeks to
uncover, document, write, re-make or
create new histories, as well as mount a
self-reflexive interrogation of processes
of historicisation.
Clare Daly’s research project, Hauntings
and Herstories: Feminist Live Art in
1980s and 1990s Ireland, focuses on
the under-represented practices of Irish
feminist artists, from their emergence
in the 1980s up to the end of the
century. She approaches these artists’
performances as affective experiences
that give access to transgenerational
memory and to an archive of Irish
feminist experience.
International Womxn’s Day 2020: Wikipedia Edit-athon. Image Joseph Morgan Schofield
Events at
The Garrett Centre
In collaboration with local, national and
international artists, researchers and
partner organisations, we presented
a programme of talks, screenings and
events at our Garrett Centre home
throughout 2019-20.
Highlights included:
l Jude Browning, Flop to the Floor,
a performance lecture
l Performing Solidarity, talks with artists
and activists Lena Simic, Annie Jael
Kwan, Helena Suarez, Jamal Harewood,
Joon Lynn Goh, Sheila Ghelani, Rosalie
Schweiker, and Jane Trowell (Platform)
l Mara Polgovksy, the launch of
Touched Bodies: The Performative
Turn in Latin American Art
l Todd Shalom, a participatory walk to
mark the UK launch of Elastic Cities
l Joseph Morgan Schofield,
Future Ritual, a film night
l Assembly 2, imagining new
contexts for performance art teaching
and learning
l CUNTemporary, Eco Feminist Futures
Festival, film screenings
and discussions
l Annabel Other, Bristol Art Library’s
20th anniversary
l Monica Mayer and GraceGraceGrace
on women, art and ageing
l A Block Universe event on
performance festivals in London with
Louise O’Kelly, Rob La Frenais, Jamila
Johnson-Small, Helena Goldwater
and Phoebe Patey-Ferguson
l Es Morgan and Charlie Ashwell,
Hereafter, publication launch
l Breaking the Frame, a film
about Carolee Schneemann and
discussion with Bonnie Marranca
and Claire MacDonald
l US performance artist Skip Arnold in
conversation with Dominic Johnson
l Something Other LIVE, experimental
writing and performance
l ‘Extreme’ Performance Art Gathering
l Charlotte Cooper, launch of
Fat Activist Vernacular e-book
l Wikipedia Edit-athon for International
Womxn’s Day 2020
I’ve only been to LADA twice,
but it feels like home, being
surrounded by the work of some
incredible artists.
Audience member at Fat Activist
Vernacular launch
21
lada resources
Physical and online
films, publications,
guides and resources
to help artists, curators,
producers, writers,
producers, students,
educators, researchers
and activists dig
deep into Live Art and
performance practices
ancient and modern.
Study Room
Housing over 8,000 catalogued items,
including books, journals, DVDs,
digital files, rare materials, and unique
‘collections’, LADA’s Study Room is
the world’s largest publicly accessible
library of Live Art publications and
documentation, and a space for events,
screenings, workshops gatherings and
residencies.
Study Room Guides
We commission artists and thinkers
to research and write guides around
specific themes to help navigate
users through the materials we hold,
encourage Study Room users to
experience the materials in a new way
and highlight materials they may not
otherwise come across, and to help us
research titles we should also hold.
2019-20 Guides
Live Art and Animals
This Study Room Guide on Live Art
and animals is based on the artists’
films, books and contextualising
materials LADA developed for Animals
of Manchester (including HUMANZ)
and the documentation and legacies
of that project.
22
Timely Readings
This study on Live Art in Australia by
Madeleine Hodge and Sarah Rodigari
considers what kind of history might
be revealed through a poetic analysis
of the seminal Australian Live Art
document RealTime Magazine. Their
process not only shows Live Art
practices as they currently exist across
Australia, but also attempts to map the
emergence of the form.
On Neurodiversity
Responding to a widespread lack
of resources on neurodiversity and
performance, this Study Room
Guide by Daniel Oliver contains a
collection of recorded conversations
with neurodivergent artists working
in Live Art and performance; a list of
resources relating to this field, and a
contextualising essay by Daniel Oliver.
Live Online
A series of channels where you can
watch short videos and films selected
from LADA’s Study Room or generated
through our programmes and
initiatives.
In 2019-20 we added over 50 new
Live Online channels.
Listen Online
In 2019-20 we launched a new platform
for LADA’s extensive audio content,
including recordings of artist talks as well
as commissioned artworks by artists.
EDGE OF AN ERA
Online Archive
In 2019-20 we added online archives
of Art in Danger (1985-86), New Work
Newcastle (1988) and The Last Weekend
(1991) to the EDGE OF AN ERA web
archive.
EDGE OF AN ERA is an archival project
revisiting seminal performance art
events that took place in the UK
in the 1980s, including EDGE 88,
one of London’s first site-specific
performance/installation festivals.
Thirty years later, artist Helena
Goldwater and Rob La Frenais (former
editor of Performance Magazine
and original Director of EDGE 88),
in collaboration with Alex Eisenberg
and LADA, revisited those events and
connected artists from the 1980s
with current generations through
a programme of commissions and
public events, and the creation of an
online archive. The project continued
LADA’s commitment to shed light on
under-represented histories that have
had a significant influence on current
art practices.
The EDGE OF AN ERA web archive is
made up of incredible rare materials
generously provided by artists, studios
and archivists, and specially digitised
for this project.
Left: Live Art and animals Study Room Guide.
Design Saulius Leonavičius
Opposite page:
Top: Alastair MacLennan, Ink Ash for National Review
of Live Art (30th anniversary). Image NRLA
Middle: At the Edge brochure
Bottom: Bobby Baker, Icing On The Cake for
National Review of Live Art (1990). Image NRLA
NRLA30
LADA is a partner on NRLA30, a new
web-based project celebrating the 30th
anniversary of THE NATIONAL REVIEW
OF LIVE ART (NRLA), which took place
in March 2010 in Glasgow. Between
1979 and 2010 the NRLA was the
UK’s leading performance art festival,
beginning in Nottingham at what was
the Midland Group and ending in
Glasgow via London’s Riverside Studios
and the ICA.
The NRLA30 website launched in
March 2020 and features 75 videos of
performances from the 2010, and final,
edition of the Festival when artists from
across its 30-year history presented
new work, alongside essays, articles,
podcasts and reflections.

This is such a great resource!

Perfect timing for navigating
inside an archive!
Manuel Vason, artist
and photographer

Unbound
Unbound is the world’s only online
shop dedicated to Live Art related
materials, featuring the unusual
and independent alongside major
critical works. Our carefully-curated
selection includes books from
major publishers, hard-to-find
artists’ editions, zines, and all LADA
publications and artworks.
We invite artists and thinkers to
guest-edit Unbound’s newsletters
and curate special ‘shelves’ on the
site – highlighting the books and
editions that have made a significant
contribution to their own work.
2019-20’s Guest Editors were Annie
Jael Kwan, Joshua Sofaer, Ron Athey,
Dominic Johnson and the collective
GraceGraceGrace.

That knowledge creation can be

explored beyond the publication
of a conventional book is very
much part of Unbound’s offer.
Joshua Sofaer, Guest Editor

Unbound can also be visited in

person at our Garrett Centre home.

23
lada publications
LADA is one of the Joshua Sofaer is a deeply
world’s leading Live Art attentive artist. His multifaceted
works are careful, smart, witty
publishers, specialising and generous. At their heart
in artist-led publications sits the encounter: with ideas,
and in titles on people, places and objects.
provocative ideas and I can’t presume to ‘know’
influential practitioners. Sofaer, but this gorgeous,
layered and richly detailed
book – an exquisite collection
Joshua Sofaer: Performance | of documents, discussions
Objects | Participation
and reflections – allows me to
Joshua Sofaer works across boundaries, encounter him and to relish the
borders and disciplines to create unfolding perspectives.
artworks that engage with all levels of
society. In cultural institutions or on
Dee Heddon, Professor of
the street, for art galleries or personal Contemporary Performance,
homes, staged as operas or cast as University of Glasgow
golden sculptures, Sofaer’s work
weaves with and through social fabric to
consider the ideas that hold us together.
With a mixture of intellect, humour,
and striking design, Joshua Sofaer:
Performance | Objects | Participation
analyses the artist’s oeuvre in the
contexts of liveness, visual art and
participatory practices.
Edited by Roberta Mock and Mary
Paterson, the book features discussions
with producers and participants,
documentary images and specially
commissioned photographs by Hugo
Glendinning, interviews with the artist
himself, and thirteen commissioned
essays by Nadia Abdelaziz, Yuan-Liang
An, Stuart Andrews, Maddy Costa,
Robin Deacon, Konstantina Georgelou,
Simon Gould, Sarah Harvey, Yu-Chin
Hsiao, Lois Keidan, Yu-Ying Kung, Carl
Lavery, Stacy Makishi, Roberta Mock,
Mary Paterson, Sibylle Peters, Joanna
Sofaer, and Daniel Somerville.
Joshua Sofaer: Performance | Objects
| Participation is the seventh title in
LADA’s Intellect Live series. Intellect
Live is a collaboration between LADA
and Intellect Books 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, which are the first substantial
publication dedicated to the artists’
work.
24

Awkwoods: Daniel Oliver’s
Dyspraxic Adventures in
Participatory Performance
Daniel Oliver is dyspraxic and he creates
awkward participatory performance
worlds. He has done so since 2003.
This book documents some of those
worlds, as well as bringing together
critical and creative responses by
Aby Watson, Jo Hauge, Luke Ferris,
O. Husch, Chloe Spicer, Hamja Ahsan
and Nwando Ebizie. These writings
focus on discussing, embracing, and
celebrating dyspraxic approaches to
performance making and socialising,
and is for anyone who is invested in
dyspraxia, neurodiversity, Live Art,
audience participation, world-building,
and sentences like this one.
What really captivated me
about ‘Awkwoods’ was that it
isn’t only ND friendly regarding
accessibility, but also in tone…
Daniel Oliver’s writings are zany,
at points clumsy, blatantly weird
and a whole lot of awkward! A
must for anyone interested in
how and what Neurodivergent
brains create. This book is a start
to Dyspraxic actors and artists
recognising and claiming their
place as ND performance artists,
instead of seeing dyspraxia (and
awkward) as something that
needs to be overcome.
Emma Robdale,
Disability Arts Online
Shortlist Live #1 Praxis Volume 2:
The Town as Art Centre
LADA is the co-publisher of ANTI
Festival’s new publication series LADA is the co-publisher with Heart of
that forms part of the ANTI Festival Glass, St Helens of the second volume
International Prize for Live Art (Finland) in the ongoing series Praxis. Featuring
new Shortlist LIVE! events. contributions from Patrick Fox, Chrissie
Tiller, Jack Welsh, Heather Peak Morison,
The first issue, Shortlist LIVE #1, edited
Jeanne van Heeswijk, Michelle Browne,
by Heidi Backström and designed by
Karen Smith, and Alastair Roy. Praxis
Tomi Leppänen, focuses on the four
Volume Two is an invitation to encounter
artists shortlisted for 2019’s ANTI prize:
work and thinking that is in motion.
Cuqui Jerez, Dana Michel, Keijaun
Thomas and Mammalian Diving Reflex. The publication connects with a number
Each artist was asked to suggest of research questions Heart of Glass
authors to write about their work. have been developing – the concept of
the Town as Art Centre as a mechanism
Experimental poet and curator Quim
to be part of a solution by placing art,
Pujol writes an accurate portrayal of
and the making of art into issues of
Cuqui Jerez, who he sees as a reality
place, care, identity and prosperity;
hacker, space-time mistress and
Fierce & Urgent Conversations to disturb
perceptual sorceress. Researcher
and disrupt the ways in which we gather
and essayist James Oscar plays with
and convene around forms of artistic
the potential of an essay format and
practice; and The Archive of Social
offers the reader a text that feels like
Practice to create a way to meaningfully
a sprawling conversation with various
encounter collaborative or social
references, his own experiences and
artwork beyond the act of creating it.
encounters. By doing this, Oscar
provides a powerful insight into
Vanishing Points
the unique nature of Dana Michel’s
art. Broderick Chow‘s text on the A new anthology of cultural criticism,
Mammalian Diving Reflex and its focusing on the making, watching and
artistic director Darren O’Donnell is conditions of Live Art and performance
also a personal text; the seemingly in the UK today.
light structure of the essay makes it
accessible also to a reader without the The choreography of racism is
knowledge of art theories, even though not one of constant motion.
Chow is an academic. Another example
Season Butler
on arts and activism is Keijuan Thomas,
who the writer and art theorist Joshua
Vanishing Points features contributions
Chambers-Letson captures powerfully
from Ava Wong Davies, Zarina
in his essay.
Muhammad, Ben Kulvichit, Season
These four essays on four different Butler, Jack Tan, Salome Wagaine,
artists remind us that art is not always Marjorie H Morgan, Rajni Shah, Selina
nice, beautiful or easy to comprehend. Thompson and Dr Cecilia Wee. The
book is edited by Salome Wagaine, with
deputy editors Ava Wong Davies and
Ben Kulvichit. It was designed by Chani
Wisdom.
Co-published by LADA and Diverse
Actions, a Live Art UK initiative.
Above: Awkwoods cover. Image: Daniel Oliver
(Weird Séance, SPILL Festival of Performance 2014,
produced by Pacitti Company. Photo Guido Mencari)
Opposite page:
Top: Cover of Joshua Sofaer: Performance | Objects |
Participation. Image Hugo Glendinning (2018)
Bottom: Joshua Sofaer, Double Bill (2017).
Image Hugo Glendinning
25
lada opportunities

Professional development programmes, artists’ awards, It is essential that we as

research residencies, and educational opportunities
responding to the evolving needs and expectations
of artists, arts workers, students and academics at all
stages of their careers.
DIY 2019
DIY is LADA’s annual flagship
programme offering artists
opportunities to conceive and run
research, training and professional
development projects for themselves
and other artists that explore innovative
and provocative ideas and test new
methodologies.   DIY 2019’s national partner
Between July and November 2019, 24
DIY projects took place across the UK
covering a huge variety of subjects
and approaches, including ghosting,
performance training for introverts,
coding, sweating, Afrofuturism, the
trans identity of Pinocchio, ritual
remembering for womxn of colour,
androgyny, performance writing,
and awe-making.
DIY 2019 projects were led by Daniel
Oliver, Claire MacDonald, Charlie
Ashwell & Es Morgan, Giovanna Maria
Casetta, Quiplash Amelia Cavallo and
Al Lander, Beverley Thomas, Stacy
Makishi, Lauren Barri Holstein, Ania Bas,
26
creatives, as people of colour, as
people with important, rare and
specific narratives have space
and time to come into existence.
To become and keep becoming.
Participant from Beverly
Liat Rosenthal, Adriana Disman, Bean Thomas’ DIY 2019 The Silence
& Nicola Woodham, Ivor MacAskill &
Rosana Cade, Tim Jeeves & Lena Simic, The DIY provided a valuable
Phoebe Patey-Ferguson, Fox Irving, Jack
opportunity to step back, reflect
Tan & Annie Kwan, Adam Patterson,
Rebekah Ubuntu, Jenny Gaskell,
on the place of our art practice
Lateisha Davine Lovelace-Hanson, within this new world we’re
Edythe Woolley, and Oozing Gloop. moving through and examine
what we’re doing from a new
perspective with our peers.
organisations were Artsadmin (London),
Artshouse (Jersey), BUZZCUT (Glasgow), Tim Jeeves, lead artist DIY 2019
Cambridge Junction (Cambridge), The Party Calls You
Colchester Arts Centre (Colchester),
DaDa Fest (Liverpool), Dance4
(Nottingham), Heart of Glass (St Helens),
Home Live Art (Hastings), HOME
(Manchester) LADA (London), Live Art
Bistro (Leeds), Live Art UK (national),
Folkestone Fringe (Folkestone),
Lancaster Arts (Lancaster), Marlborough
Pub & Theatre (Brighton), National
Theatre (London), ]performance s p a c
e[ (Folkestone), Queen Mary University
Above left: Rebekah Ubuntu, Afrofuturism and Chill 
of London (QMUL), Scottish Sculpture (DIY 2019, supported by Whitstable Biennale).
Workshop (Aberdeenshire), Southbank Image the artist
Centre (London), Tate Liverpool Above right: Stacy Makishi, Proud Mary!
(DIY 2019, supported by Folkestone Fringe).
(Liverpool), Whitstable Biennale (inviting Image Olivia Franklin
proposals for Swale and Medway).
Arthole Artist’s Award
The Arthole Artist’s Award supports
a UK-based artist to undertake a
self-determined research and
artistic development programme.
The £10,000 Award is intended to
plug a ‘hole’ in art funding for open-
ended professional development
through individual patronage.
The Arthole Artist’s Award was
conceived by the artist Joshua Sofaer
and developed by LADA in collaboration
with Gary Carter in 2016. The
first Arthole Artist’s Award Patron was
Lucio A C Shala. LADA’s second Arthole
Patron is Alex Mahon, Chief Executive of
Channel Four.
After an open call for proposals, the
second Arthole Award was offered to
Stacy Makishi. We hosted an evening in
July in which the first Arthole recipient,
Marcia Farquhar (2016-18), handed the
baton over to Stacy.
Stacy Makishi describes herself as
‘a transplant from Hawaii who found
paradise in Dalston, East London.’ She
has been making art for over 30 years.
A cross-fertilisation of theatre, comedy,
film and visual art, her work is as
complex as it is accessible; humorous
as it is challenging; visual as it is literate.
It ranges across solo performances for
stage, large-scale outdoor participatory
projects and intimate one-to-ones.
Stacy is also a teacher, director and
mentor in international demand.
I used to wonder why it was
called Live Art. After doing
it for over 25 years, I realise
it’s because Live Art is about
aliveness… about making
myself fully available to life, all
of life: the sorrow, joy, anguish,
excitement, jealousy, shame,
gratitude, disappointment,
sadness and love. Live art feels
a lot like dying. Like living inside
a hole. An ass hole. An art hole.
Yes. Art is in that hole. With this
Arthole, I will have time and
resources to: make it, avoid it,
study it, wrestle it, do it, explore
it, hate it and love it. I hope to
learn a lot while I’m down in my
hole … and look forward to share
whatever I learn with you.
Stacy Makishi
Katherine Araniello
Bursary Awards
In February 2020 we launched the
Katherine Araniello Bursary Awards,
offering two awards of £5,000 each for
unapologetically radical and politicised
‘early career’ artists who work in Live Art
and identify as disabled people.
The brilliant artist and LADA Board
member Katherine Araniello died in
February 2019. Katherine made essential
and challenging work engaging with
disability, agency and the aesthetics of
the body. Her film, performance and
digital art was politically fearless and
infused with subversive humour.
Following Katherine’s death, LADA
convened an advisory group composed
of her friends, family and collaborators
to honour her influence and ensure
her lasting legacy. As well as working
on Katherine’s archive and legacies,
the group have set up the Katherine
Araniello Bursary Awards that have
been made possible by the generous
donations of many individuals and
organisations who loved Katherine as
much as we did.
Bursary recipients will be announced
in 2020-21.
Top left: Stacy and Amy Makishi. Image the artist
Top right: Katherine Araniello at Royal Court Theatre
2018. Image Ali Wright
Left: Lateisha Davine Lovelace-Hanson, To The Ritual
Knowledge Of Remembering // HIT THE GROUND
(DIY 2019). Image Sara Lima
27
lada opportunities
MA Live Art
MA Live Art is a partnership between
LADA and Queen Mary University
of London which was launched in
2018 – this postgraduate course is
dedicated to the research, practice, and
programming of Live Art and is partly
based within LADA’s Study Room.
MA Live Art is the first programme
of its kind. Students gain theoretical
and practical grounding in histories
and practices of Live Art and
the genealogies of visual art and
experimental theatre in the twentieth
century, through studio-based and
discussion-led methods, workshops,
lectures, master classes, seminars,
fieldwork and professional placements.
Students are enabled to understand,
challenge and make Live Art as a
technology for intervening in the most
pressing issues of our time.
From the start I have felt that
my learning and practice are
embedded in a vibrant Live Art
culture both inside and beyond
the university. We are a really
small and supportive cohort, and
I’m so pleased to have made this
leap with them.
Es Morgan
28
Residencies
We offer self-directed research
residencies in our Study Room to
artists, researchers, critics, academics
and other such curious folks. Some
research residencies are part of wider
LADA programmes and initiatives and
others are in responses to requests to
undertake in-depth enquiries into key
themes, histories or artists.
In 2019-20 we welcomed: Alinah
Azadeh, Toby Adejo, Craig Barrowman,
Jude Browning, Burong (Wenjie Li),
Maddison Collymore, Leticia Izquierdo
Diaz, Nicole Garneau, Michael Guhry,
Katy Hawkins, James Johnson, Sally
Ann Labern, Amy Lawrence, Clio Lloyd-
Jacob, Susan Merrick, Ivy Monteiro,
Aaron Orzech, Bitten Peach, Andrea
Seamann, Lasana Shabaz, Self-harm
performance, Petra Trendafilova, Edythe
Wooley, and Jian Yi.
To find myself within LADA and
all its collaborators and the
LADA study room made me
quite excited and nervous. I had
never seen such a specificity
of knowledge, experience,
publications and material
around Live Art issues.
Andrea Saemann
Adrian Howells
Award for Intimate
Performance 2019
LADA is a partner on the annual Adrian
Howells Award for Intimate Performance,
an opportunity for a UK based artist to
develop and present an early staging
of a new performance-based project
with Take Me Somewhere, Glasgow and
Battersea Arts Centre, London.  
The Adrian Howells Award celebrates
the intimate work that Adrian pioneered
and excelled in, and is led by the
National Theatre of Scotland, Battersea
Arts Centre and Take Me Somewhere
Festival with the University of Glasgow
and LADA.
The 2019 recipient of the award
was Rhiannon Armstrong, an
interdisciplinary artist with over a
decade of experience making works
with empathy, interaction, and dialogue
at their core, often with unfiltered
audiences in mind.
Receiving the Adrian Howells
Award is providing me with the
inspiration and opportunity to
build a creative process where
I will for the first time engage
explicitly with my autobiography
as a creative force. I hope to
bring this process (which I think
of as a ‘live reckoning’) together
with other ongoing explorations
such as witnessing intimacy in
public space, touch as a form
of listening, and the research
and performance of lullabies
that express a wish to harm. I
intend to explore the creation
of an immersive performance
environment where vulnerability
and pain can co-exist with the
embodied experiences of safety,
rhythm and intimacy that are
needed in trauma recovery.
Rhiannon Armstrong
live art uk
LADA co-ordinates
Live Art UK, the
national network of 30
venues, festivals and
facilitators working
collectively to support
Live Art across the UK.

Diverse Actions
Live Art UK members continued to
support exciting projects with a wide
range of artists for the third year of
Diverse Actions, an unprecedented
initiative to champion culturally diverse
ambition, excellence and talent
in Live Art. Led by Afreena Islam,
Salome Wagaine, Amy Lawrence and
Cambridge Junction, Diverse Actions
was supported by an Arts Council
England Ambition for Excellence grant.
LADA supported three Diverse Actions
DIY projects: Lateisha Davine Lovelace-
Hanson’s To The Ritual Knowledge Of
Remembering in partnership with ]
performance s p a c e[, Folkestone;
Adam Patterson’s Green Screen
Charivari in partnership with Live Art
Bistro, Leeds; and Jack Tan & Annie Jael
Kwan’s Potluck Stories in partnership
with BUZZCUT, Glasgow.
LADA ran the third and final round of
Diverse Actions Leadership Bursaries,
supporting a new generation of ‘skilled-
up’ leaders from culturally diverse
backgrounds, and new models of
leadership which will have an impact
on the Live Art sector and across the
arts. The 2019-20 Leadership Bursaries
of £10,000 each were awarded to the for other artists from my
artist Travis Alabanza and curator Annie communities. This bursary feels
Jael Kwan. like an exciting step to making
that happen.
As an artist that is often not Travis Alabanza
reflected within the industry, I
want to find skills and methods
to not only sustain my practice,
but help create infrastructures
of support and opportunities
Top: Vanishing Points cover. Design Chani Wisdom
Bottom: Travis Alabanza. Image Holly Revell
Opposite page:
Andrea Saemann, Shift the Manifesto (2019).
Image Emmanuelle Bayart

29
live art uk
SKIN in the GAME
SKIN in the GAME was a day-long
symposium held at Z-Arts in Hulme,
Manchester in November 2019; the
start of Live Art UK’s sharing of Diverse
Actions’ findings and recommendations.
SKIN in the GAME brought together
a cohort of artists, journalists and
researchers of colour from across the
UK, offering a platform to think and
discuss ideas around ghettoisation,
radical constitutions, anti-racist work,
representation and leadership within
the Live Art sector and wider culture.
It was imagined as an open space for
discursive honesty.
The day was made up of presentations,
discussions, workshops and
performances by Afreena Islam, Harold
Offeh, Hetain Patel, Annie Jael Kwan,
Hardeep Pandhal, Jade Montserrat,
Chanje Kunda, Cecilia Wee, Paula
Akpan, Season Butler, Jack Tan,
Alexandrina Hemesley, and Nima Séne.
You can listen to Stance Podcast’s
commentary on SKIN in the GAME
via https://stancepodcast.com/
skin-in-the-game

Vanishing Points
The Vanishing Points publication is a
Diverse Actions legacy project (see
LADA publications).

I have struggled – no, still,

present-tense struggle – with
performance art. With art in
general, to be honest. With the
looking, with the seeing, with the
looking that slips into seeing. I
am always too eager for an ‘aha!’
moment, too impatient for a
Alexandrina Hemsley’s Response to Diverse Action’s SKIN in the GAME (2019)
moment of utter clarity that will
cut clean through the fog.
Ava Wong Davies, Vanishing
Points Deputy Editor

30
lada
Support LADA Stay connected with LADA Board of Directors
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LADA welcomes donations of all sizes The Garrett Centre Cecilia Wee, Chair
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make a lot go even further. £20 will buy Bethnal Green We give our deepest gratitude to those
a book for the Study Room, £200 will London that left our Board in 2019-20, Stephen
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You can’t take it with you, so CJ Mitchell Lois Weaver
why not give some or all of it Amy Poole
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people don’t do this. It’s a bit of
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to do that makes you feel right
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Charlotte Cooper, Simon
Murphy, Kay Hyatt
www.thisisliveart.co.uk/support
In 2019-20 CJ Mitchell left LADA The Live Art Development Agency is a
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The Live Art Development Agency is a
Registered Charity No. 1079943.
Ben William Harris joined LADA to
run our Operations & Events, Natalia
Damigou-Papoti to direct Press &
Communications, Rosaleigh Harvey-
Otway to be responsible for Digital
Projects & Resources, and Megan
Vaughan (re)joined to lead on Finance
& Management.

Back Cover: Joshua Sofaer, Mouse Palace.

Image Joshua Sofaer

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“The Live Art Development
Agency is one of the creative
industries’ most authentic
beacons of creativity. If you
wanted to seek out the most
innovative and experimental
laboratory for the arts -
you’ve found it, right here.”
Run Riot