12th Day of Unbound: the LADA team

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