Writing Machine: Live Art UK Gathering

by Mary Paterson

Live Art is not interested in the articulation of real talent; live art is interested in the articulation of real desire.  If you can tolerate this, then see what’s coming next.  Art is the name for all the things we do that try to change the world.   A lot of direct action is bad performance.   Online space is corporately owned, private space. Good things happen on the periphery.  Is it important that I like the work that I produce?   How things are valued is very much to do with where they are – that’s not right, but it is a fact.  We are interested in artists; but what we’re really interested in is ideas. I promise you, I never deliberately programmed any live art.    None of this is new, but what it is, these days, is really fashionable.  There is no work that is not participative – so what are we talking about when we say “participation” and “engagement”?
 

A collection of statements from the Live Art UK Gathering, BAC June 2012.  

Stacy Mackishi. Matt Ball.  Andy Field.  Kevin Smith.  Boo Chapelle.  Louise Jeffreys.  Joshua Sofaer.  Lyn Gardner.  Helen Marriage.  Louise Jeffreys.   Helen Marriage.   Joshua Sofaer.  

NOTA at SHOWTIME

By Rachel Lois and Mary

Open Dialogues has been commissioned by Present Attempt to produce documents from SHOW TiME, a programme of performances taking place from 15-17 June at Rich Mix.

For SHOW TiME Open Dialogues will take up position at a writing station in the audience.  We will use a manual stamp to NOTA  moments of the event in a series of time stamped documents.  The documents will explore the time, place and quality of notes in relation to performance.

The  SHOW TiME  project is part of Open Dialogues’ framework for research for 2012 - NOTA: NOT, NOTES, NOTER (NOTA), NOT/A, towards a sometimes set of performance writing tools.  It explores documentation as a medium within the context of collaboration, liveness and public space.   After SHOW TiME  a selection of NOTA documents will be published online, along with an accompanying conversation between Mary and Rachel Lois about our work. 

About

SHOW TiME is an artist-led event which creates a vibrant, hospitable and unusual weekend of performance that makes more space for experimental work in professional venues. Curated and produced by artists Present Attempt, the weekend blends work-in-development and rarely seen pieces in a series of dynamic and provoking sessions.

This year's programme includes Rachel Mars and Rosie Kelly, Present Attempt, Bill Aitchison Company, Augusto Corrieri, Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects, Yoko Ishiguro, Chloé Déchery, Joseph Mercier, Seke Chimutengwende & Friends, Mischa Twitchin with Penny Francis, Head of a Woman & Lisa Jeschke and Lucy Beynon and takes place at Rich Mix, in East London.  

Book tickets here.

Present Attempt is a collective of artists making and producing collaborative, interdisciplinary performance works including studio-based pieces, interventions, writing and research. Present Attempt are James Bush, Alex Eisenberg and John Pinder.

Open Dialogues is a UK collaboration, founded by Rachel Lois Clapham and Mary Paterson, that produces writing on and as performance. As Open Dialogues Rachel Lois and Mary have worked internationally with Pacitti Company (UK), Performa (US), Performance Saga (CH) and Wooloo Productions (DE) amongst others. In 2012, their work focuses on NOTA; towards a sometimes set of performance writing tools.   

SOB BASIC

By Rachel Lois Clapham

A WRITING STATION is used to produce short texts live and in public. The WRITING STATION includes two typewriters, little pebbles, white A4 80gsm and black carbon copy paper (it generally keeps things close to the ground). The invitation is to type, punch-in and publish. There and then. The texts act variously as gift, context, conversation slip or document/ation at the discretion of the typist.

ABOUT   

SOB BASIC (initially entitled DocU) was first performed by David Berridge (VerySmallKitchen) and Rachel Lois  Clapham (Open Dialogues) at (in)Xclusion at East Street Arts, Leeds March 2012. It is part of NOTA: NOTES, produced by Open Dialogues towards a sometime set of pedagogic performance writing tools.

A gathering of resources on typewriter as art-writing practice, compiled by VerySmallKitchen, can be seen here.  TYPE TYING TYPINGS TYPIST TYBE, a dialogue on the typewriter with artist Marianne Holm Hansen, is here.  David's published reprise on SOB BASIC is here. 
  
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Rachel Lois Clapham is Co-Director of Open Dialogues; a UK collaboration, founded by Rachel Lois Clapham and Mary Paterson, that produces writing on and as performance. opendialogues.com @rachellois1

David Berridge is a writer based in London. He curates VerySmallKitchen and is writer in residence at X Marks the Bökship