Writing Residency at the Live Art Development Agency

The Live Art Development Agency has invited Mary Paterson to be Writer in Residence. Using the online shop www.thisisUnbound.co.uk as a tool and a provocation, Mary is exploring the relationship between Live Art and online space.

Please contribute to Mary’s research by filling in the short online survey about Unbound on http://tinyurl.com/npnju4.

It only takes five minutes to complete, and everyone who takes part will receive a free, limited edition Yara El-Sherbini Decision Maker pen. The survey will be online until Tuesday 30th June 2009.

Is the internet an opportunity for free expression, a platform for developing and showcasing Live Art, and a chance to speak and share? Or is it a slush pile of unaccountable points of view and soundbites, and a resource constrained by the demands of its own upkeep?

Mary will use the publications and artefacts available on Unbound to navigate the territory surrounding Live Art - its paraphernalia, documentation and archive: how does the Live Art sector speak itself, and its history? She will also look at the ways in which artists respond to online platforms, and make use of online technology in the creation of Live Art: how does the Live Art sector make use of changing technologies?

The residency will culminate in a piece of writing to be published in 2010, and available on Unbound and in the Live Art Development Agency Study Room.

QUESTION TIME?

As Open Dialogues, Rachel Lois Clapham and Alex Eisenberg will be working with the 2009 East End Collaborations (EEC) community this weekend to develop Question Time; a critical response to the work seen at EEC.

For Question Time we will be asking you to ask questions of or about the work you see. What does that mean? Does it hurt? Does your mother know you’re here?

Whatever your questions are, we will use them as stimulus in relation to the work; asking questions of your questions, speculating on possible answers or just maybe leaving them hanging...

The final text will be available from the 21st June in a downloadable PDF file on the Open Dialogues Blog

All questions will remain unattributed unless you tell us otherwise. We look forward to speaking to you at EEC.

Open Dialogues is a UK based collaboration, founded by Rachel Lois Clapham and Mary Paterson, that produces critical writing and debate on contemporary art.

East End Collaborations (EEC) is a partnership between Queen Mary, University of London and the Live Art Development Agency to support graduates and young artists working with Live Art in London.

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Alex Eisenberg; Bimbi; London; Artist and Writer; London; Advanced Theatre Practice, Central School of Speech and Drama; Chemistry, B; Street Walker for a chartered surveyors; ‘Physics of the Impossible’ by Michio Kaku; ‘Fragments’by Jean Beaudrillard; Waiter for a catering company; network visualisation diagrams, maps, conversation, proximity, transcription; none; no current income, working on a new project with Present Attempt; £200; ‘Sounding the Event’, Yves Lomax; cortège; picture frame making.

Rachel Lois Clapham; Poo; Bradford; Curator and Writer; Manchester; Contemporary Art Theory Goldsmiths College; Physical Education: E; Curator of Nahnou-Together Now at Tate Britain; an exhibition of socially engaged art; Will Self ‘How the Dead Live’; Deleuze & Guattari ‘A Thousand Plateaus’; Sanitary Waste Collector (Dog Units) Fullwood Prison; live writing, performance criticism, improvisation, contingency and the porosity of text; Leeds United; Co-Director of Open Dialogues; £250 plus expenses; Jeff Nuttall ‘Bomb Culture’; marginalia; Second Life.

Questions: Name; the name your family or partner calls you (nick-name); the city you live in; what you do; your home town; MA course you did recently; the subject and result of your lowest GCSE grade; a job you had in 2008; a book you are reading for pleasure; a book you have not read because you tried and found it off-putting; your worst job ever; current writerly fascinations; Football team your family or partner supports (if any); what job you are doing now; the most you have been paid for a commission; a book you are really looking forward to reading; favorite word; a mild fascination that could develop into an obsession if you had more time

Labour Practices: Ethics of Service and Ideas of Labour in Performance

An event organised by the Live Art Development Agency in conjunction with At Your Service 

Pinter Studio, Arts Building, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, E1 4NS

19 June 2009

18.30 – 20.00 

Free

Reservations on rsvp@thisisliveart.co.uk

This event will look at the ways in which artists use ideas of service and labour as creative strategies, and consider the ethics of recruiting the labour of others in works of art. 

Playing with the idea of labour and service the Live Art Development Agency have outsourced the researching and writing of a paper on these issues to the writer Mary Paterson, who will in turn outsource the presentation of the paper to the Agency’s Projects Manager and practicing artist Andrew Mitchelson. Artists and writers working in these areas including Nicholas Ridout, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, and Emma Leach and Natasha Vicars of Position Unpaid will respond to the paper in relation to their own practices and approaches and provoke further discussion.

At Your Service is a group exhibition curated by Cylena Simonds running from 17 April to 27 June 2009 at the David Roberts Art Foundation in London.  At Your Service engages the concept and dynamics of the service and hospitality industries in today’s political and social climate and brings together a wide range of artworks from emerging international artists.  The work in At Your Service ranges from sculptural objects to photography and video as well as featuring specially commissioned performances taking place both within the gallery and in public locations, film screenings and talks. For full details of all At Your Service activities visit www.davidrobertsartfoundation.com

Labour Practices is supported by Queen Mary, University of London.

Contributors:

Mary Paterson is a writer and producer based in London. She was a writer with Live Art UK's 'Writing from Live Art' initiative (2006 - 2008) and Writing Live Fellow for Performa International Biennial of Performance (2007), supported by Arts Council England. She is co-director of Open Dialogues. www.open-dialogues.blogspot.com

Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre is a conceptual and live artist whose work centers around participation, informal networks and the uses of public space as a platform for self-expression, diversity, and the co-existence of conflicting views. Using the ephemeral, the overlooked and the underrated as the starting point, her work creates visible and unexpected connections between things, people and places. The rhetoric of conversation, participation and celebration are often deployed as a strategy for engagement, in which the public is invited to become an active contributor and collaborator to the work. www.lopezdelatorre.org/

Position Unpaid is a collaboration between Emma Leach & Natasha Vicars. The project asks awkward questions about arts internships, and moves towards some constructive answers. Emma Leach is a part time writer, curator and artist assistant, and a full time artist. Natasha Vicars makes live and participatory work in which there is an exchange of individual experience. Both have worked as interns in more than one art institution.

Nicholas Ridout teaches in the Department of Drama at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of Stage Fright, Animals and Other Theatrical Problems (2006), a book which considers theatrical labour and its related affects. Recent publications include an essay on Performance and the Service Economy, and a short book called Theatre & Ethics.