14 Items total
The LADA Team are the final guest editors of Twelve Days of Unbound, offering a Baker's Dozen of picks:
Serious Fun 2: Serious Fun Seriously, Angel Rose and Oozing Gloop
I’ve cherished my copy of the first Serious Fun ‘funzine’ since I got it in a zineswap in 2015. It looked amazing, of course, housed in a made-over VHS case, but a quick flick through made it clear that it was much more than fancy retro aesthetics. The writings inside were fierce political statements about fading nightlife memories and the commercialisation of queer culture, the kind of pages which made me yearn to be so much gayer, or at least to stay up later. As soon as I found out Angel Rose and Oozing Gloop were making a sequel – in the middle of lockdown no less – I had to have it. If nothing else, it’s a necessary reminder of how old I’m getting…
-- Megan Vaughan
on the future and the artist-run spaces, Club Solo
Acts of gathering and communing are at the heart of my practice. Collecting the thoughts, poems and dreams of artists, curators and writers based in the Netherlands and beyond, this lovely and timely book offers a number of interventions on the questions: what is art for, and how should it be made?
-- Joseph Morgan Schofield
A Guide to Being an Artist and Being Ok (don't worry, we're all pretending), Louisa Robbin
This beautifully created, cold leaf embossed zine sits at the cross-section of many of my interests. From post-punk zine culture, DIY ethics, ramblings and rants, depression and anxiety, including some helpful advice to being an artist, this wonderful zine includes our Thinker in Residence Selina Thomson and was created by the awesome Louisa Robbin.
-- Ben Harris
Body art/performing the subject, Amelia Jones
I couldn’t resist choosing Body Art/Performing the Subject, as it holds such a place in my heart as one of the books that brought me into the wonderful world of performance art. Not only is this an extraordinarily significant text in contemporary art history, it is a moving, challenging and passionately written book full of thoughtful and defining criticism. Through this captivating text, Amelia Jones both pulls apart and contextualises artworks and artists which opened up my world – I think I owe a lot to this book.
-- Rosaleigh Harvey-Otway
Critical Interruptions vol. 1, Eds. Diana Damian Martin and Bojana Jankovic
As Critical Interruptions, Diana Damian Martin and Bojana Jankovic have been quietly resisting the usual consumerist approaches to reviewing for years now. Their writings about performance are always reflective of the time and space and conditions in which they experienced a work, and as editors and facilitators, they are perfectly placed to unlock that sensibility in the writers and artists they work with. This collection, all responding to the equally brilliant Steakhouse Live festival, features rememberings and reflections from Palin Ansusinha, Katy Baird, Katharina Joy Book, Jennifer Boyd, Jasmine Shigemura Lee, Emma Selwyn and Malik Nashad Sharpe.
-- Megan Vaughan
Pleading in the Blood, Ed. Dominic Johnson
Feminine Futures, Ed. Adrien Sina
So, if I was to receive a gift, of course I’d like it to be something that I cannot afford, which in Unbound’s case would definitely be this woman-size publication of the namesake exhibition staged for the Performa Biennial at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York in 2009. This is proper art history stuff: 512 pages with over 2500 colour illustrations that re-examine the role of female avant-gardes in the fields of performance and dance. In a desperate search of the female avant-gardes that preceded us, I might even try to suppress my discomfort stemming from the fact that a book on feminine futures is edited by a guy – and depicts a faceless woman on the cover.
-- Natalia Damigou-Papoti
Fair Play: Art, Performance and Neoliberalism, Jen Harvie
This is the book that first brought me into LADA’s Study Room, I will never forget the exact spot of pulling it from its place on the shelf. Jen Harvie’s cutting, astute, and encapsulating book on performance contemporaneity in the UK is an absolute must-read for anyone wanting to understand the political and economic dimensions of performance since the turn of the millennium.
-- Ben Harris
9Questions, Eds. Gustaf Broms and Shannon Cochrane
Gustaf Broms puts the same nine questions to a roster of loads and loads of brilliant artists – including some of my favourites - Alastair MacLennan, Marilyn Arsem, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Rocio Boliver, Tehching Hsieh, and Ulay. Their answers, variously poetic, real-talk, profound and amusing shed brilliant bright light on the practice of performance art.
-- Joseph Morgan Schofield
An Apartment on Uranus, Paul B. Preciado
Only recently have I had the joy of reading this extraordinary collection of essays by Paul B Preciado, but it has quickly become one of my most cherished books. As Paul writes, Uranus is the coldest planet in our solar system and one of the furthest from us, yet this book is full of incredible light and warmth. It is at once moving and funny, fierce and gentle, brilliantly merging vehement socio-political writing with beautiful and intimate accounts of lived experience.
-- Rosaleigh Harvey-Otway
GraceGraceGrace explore gen-age, Eds. GraceGraceGrace and Full Surrogacy Now, Sophie Lewis
This is a book I would give as a gift because it really has no equivalent I can think of: the artists’ collective GraceGraceGrace explores the neglected intersection of gender and age and brings together stories (and stunning images) of “people who describe themselves as artists and as women and as aging” - using Rocio Boliver’s definition of the latter as an indeterminate place. A must for everyone interested in gender in Live Art, and ideally in Live Art generally. I would accompany this book with Full Surrogacy Now by Sophie Lewis to move from the politics of visibility to the politics of reproduction (often tightly and painfully related to age as well), for a truly radical approach on the immemorial question of who children (should) belong to.
-- Natalia Damigou-Papoti
This was one of 20 Tiny Live Art pieces that LADA commissioned Robert Daniels to make to mark our 20th anniversary in 2019. Marina Abramovic thought long and hard about giving us permission to include this work and how it should be titled. It's an iconic reenactment of an iconic work and a coming together of two of the most significant and influential performance artists of the 20th century. I actually can’t believe its still available. I’d love someone to receive it as a festive gift.
-- Lois Keidan
£0.00
Before the apocalypse, the Live Art Development Agency put out an open call: a £2k bursary for a young artist to develop their practice, and think about how the future...
£22.50
“Johnson’s committed, affectionate, and generous volume does an extraordinary job of paying homage to Athey, of grappling with the complexities of live art, and of doing justice to the wildness...
£15.00
GraceGraceGrace explore gen-age reframes Live Art practice, adopting the handy neologism gen-age, to describe the intersection of gender and age. Ever thought middle-aged ‘women’ are invisible? This book asks you...
£5.00
A collection of poetry, ramblings, rants and images by artists who suffer with some form of depression and or anxiety. There are a few How Tos thrown in there too....
£17.50
In on the future and the artist-run spaces, artists, curators from the Netherlands and abroad, and poets reflect on the role of artist-run spaces in society. The book offers models for...
£13.50
Critical Interruptions Vol I follows Steakhouse: Live Writing, a pilot project undertaken as part of the 2016 Steakhouse Live Festival of Live Art and Performance.The publication brings together artists, curators...
Sold Out - £22.99
A rigorous analysis of 1970s and 1990s body art, self-conscious of the subjectivity of interpretation, and grounded in a feminist and phenomenological re-evaluation of modernist and postmodern criticism. Dominic Johnson...
£18.00
In 2014, artist Gustaf Broms composed a list of nine questions that he started to circulate to fellow performance artists—many he had a personal connection with and many more he...
£12.99
Uranus is the coldest planet in the solar system, a frozen giant named after a Greek deity. It is also the inspiration for Uranism, a concept coined by the writer...
£18.00
Angel Rose and Oozing Gloop present ‘SERIOUS FUN 2: SERIOUS FUN, SERIOUSLY’ the sequel to the cult-classic-so-underground-you’ve-never-heard-of-it zine, SERIOUS FUN. Serious Fun 2 is 2020’s back-door entrance to the palace of...
£54.95
Feminine Futures, an exhibition curated by Adrien Sina, was staged for the Performa Biennial at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York in 2009. It focused on the role of...
£14.99
In order to become ethically acceptable, surrogacy must change beyond recognition—but we need more surrogacy, not less! The surrogacy industry is worth over 1 billion dollars a year, and many...
£19.99
What is the quality of participation in contemporary art and performance? Is it damaged by cultural policies introduced since the 1997 election of New Labour - and especially since the...
£200.00
For LADA’s 20th anniversary, Robert Daniels has created the special edition Tiny Live Art (Development Agency) - 20 works for 20 years: 20 miniature sculptures of iconic performance works, which...