Theron Schmidt

What would it mean for writing to be porous? For it to be transformed by the forms, ideas, and demands of the work in SPILL?

These are the questions we’ve set ourselves at the beginning of SPILL OVERSPILL. Of course, it’s hard to know where to begin, without yet having seen the work, without yet having met the artists, without yet having been among the audiences. But this initial declaration of the writing project is also the declaration of a space: of collaboration, of possibility, of encounter.

This idea, of the role of writing in the production of certain kinds of space, is one which recurrently draws my interest in writing about performance. In observing a long residency by Doran George exploring experimental performance practice in relation to bereavement, I began to understand my job as a writer largely to be to listen, to create an opportunity for the artist to be heard, to be the excuse for the creation of spaces where articulation and exchange happens. In the next-day publications several of us produced at last year’s National Review of Live Art, we saw our role as being to generate opportunities for reflection and looking-backward in the midst of a festival which is constantly pushing forward to the next thing. And with Open Dialogues at Performance Saga, we found ourselves more visibly foregrounded in the shop window at the front of the festival venue, perhaps giving equal attention to all partners in the ménage a trois between artists, audiences, and critics.

I don’t know what this month will produce. I fantasise about a collage of found texts with Tim Etchells, combining whatever words and observations filter in from the outside world during the festival – perhaps like the photo montage that is the backdrop of Void Story or the matter-of-fact truisms that the children speak in That Night Follows Day. Looking out our windows and listening to the radio, we might write something like: “A man holds his dog back. Dry skin is history. It’s raining again.” Or I dream of a series of manifestos: perhaps a fiercely political one from Robert Pacitti, or a deliberately inflammatory one from Jan Fabre, but also an elusively anti-militant one from Rajni Shah. Or how writing, which usually imagines itself as a one-to-one performance, might echo and complement the limited capacity events of the festival. I imagine working with Sheila Ghelani to produce a museum-like genealogy of a single performance moment. Or thinking about authenticity and artificiality in relation to the bodies on display in Visions of Excess or in Julia Bardsley’s work, but also in relation to the embodied disembodiment of reading and writing.

Some of these might happen; some might not. Whatever writing emerges, I’m looking forward to an incredibly wide variety of encounters in an assortment of real places – the streets of Greenwich, Soho Square, inside theatres like the Soho and the Barbican, under London Bridge in the Shunt vaults. And, of all places, the National Theatre, where I will also be performing in Nicola Conibere’s Count One on Sunday afternoon.

x theron

www.newworknetwork.org.uk/theron

The official bio: Theron is a critical writer and performer based in London. He was writer-in-residence at Experimentica 07 in Cardiff and Live Art Falmouth. His writing on art and theatre has been published in AN Magazine, Dance Theatre Journal, The Live Art Almanac, Platform, RealTime, Total Theatre, and Writing from Live Art.

Rachel Lois Clapham

I am a curator and writer with a specialism in live art and performance. I have worked across exhibitions and gallery education in contemporary live and participatory art projects, most recently curating Nahnou-Together Now an exhibition of socially engaged art at Tate Britain.

I am Co-Director – with Mary - of Open Dialogues, working to develop the practice of critical writing on Live Art and performance. I am particularly interested in performance as a moment of cultural production in relation to the act of ‘being critical’, specifically, how these two events or acts might fundamentally affect each other to produce a different body of knowledge: performance as criticism, and vice versa.

Some recent Open Dialogues projects include Performance Saga and Critical Communities. Projects I have been involved with of late are the exhibition Without You It’s Nothing at Deptford X and Free Press in Bristol. I have also just starting a serialized writing project or ‘column’ for Dance Theatre Journal entitled ‘Inside Performance’ that takes a personal look at the practice of writing on Live Art and performance.

I have recently moved from London to Bradford, West Yorkshire, so have been mixing writing about Yorkshire based visual art and performance with the wearing of hiking boots, rambling on the moors and eating cake in tea houses.


Rachel Lois Clapham rachellois@opendialogues.com

For a selection of my recent publications see the Open Dialogues website

For writing and news about critical writing and performance, as well as details about Open Dialogues projects, see the Open Dialogues blog

Alex Eisenberg

Hello I am Alex and this is a version of me (Mac OSX 10.4.11) as of today. Please click on the image to view larger size.

I am an artist making performance and work as part of a group called Present Attempt. I am also helping organise SPILL: Overspill during the festival.

Alex

Mary Paterson

I am a writer and producer with a particular interest in Live Art and performance, and am one half of Open Dialogues. I’m interested in the relationship between writing and experience, and in the context of (performance) art that often means writing that has a radically different legacy and distribution to the experience that is its subject. As part of this, my current fascinations are: writerly collaborations, wresting authority from the written word, and metamorphosis.

Recent Open Dialogues projects include Performance Saga and Critical Communities.

I’m currently carrying out some research into strategies of the internet in relation to live art, as Writer in Residence at the Live Art Development Agency. The research looks at the internet as a platform and a provocation for making or showcasing Live Art. I’m also researching the relationships between artists, cultural capital and the ethics of labour practices for a paper to be delivered by the Live Art Development Agency as part of At Your Service, a group exhibition curated by Cylena Simonds at David Roberts Art Foundation in London, June 2009.

Mary Paterson mary@opendialogues.com

Mary Kate Connolly

I am a freelance writer on live art, performance and dance. Based in London, I’ve written for publications in the UK and abroad, such as Dance Theatre Journal, AN Interface, and Forum Modernes Theater. In June 2008 I was a writer on the Open Dialogues project at the New Life festival in Berlin, producing writing on the festival from a critically embedded perspective.

I am interested in the negotiation and reciprocities between performance and writing, and hope my work at Spill will engender alternate modes of written response from within, on, and about, performance.

I also currently work as a dance researcher at Laban, and am company manager for iceandfire theatre.

Mary Kate

mary11378@yahoo.com

David Berridge

I am a writer based in East London, working through written texts, publications, events, research and discussion. I edit More Milk Yvette : A Journal of the Broken Screen, a blogzine focussed on artists’ film and video and art writing.

Recently published articles include a study of connections between Fluxus Scores and Ecology for the RSA Art & Ecology Magazine, which also sort to explore a contemporary score-based writing practice.

Related to this, for the SPILL:OVERSPILL introductory weekend I did a presentation on how criticism can become a form of performance notation. I’m interested to see how this unfolds as one part of my response to SPILL. You Have No Idea What’s Down There: A Fantasia for the Cavern Cinema, a recent project along these lines, is online here as part of the soanyway.org project.

My current research include a series of interviews with, amongst others, Ben Rivers , Johanna Billing , Anouk de Clercq , CS Leigh , Juneau Projects , Hans Ulrich Obrist (on interviewing), and Clare Gasson . I have curated web-projects by, amongst others, Sarah Jacobs, Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber , and Rosa Barba , often interested in the boundaries between film projection, the live event, and the particularities of showing work online. Check out the More Milk Yvette site for these and other projects.

As well as SPILL: OVERSPILL I am involved with several collaborative (art-) writing projects including FREE PRESS (Plan 9, Bristol), and am also working with Open Dialogues on the CRITICAL COMMUNITIES project. I'm curating a symposium of current curatorial and creative responses to Warhol's 16mm film work, to be held in London in September.

David

moremilkyvette@gmail.com

Eleanor Hadley Kershaw

I'm a freelance writer focusing on performance and live art. Since participating in a critical writing workshop with RealTime magazine at Push International Performing Arts Festival (Vancouver) in early 2008, I've continued to contribute to RealTime regularly. In June 2008, I worked with Open Dialogues at New Life Berlin Festival, following which I contributed to the initial assessment panel for the Total Theatre Awards at Edinburgh Fringe. In February this year I took part in the New Moves Winter School critical writing workshop at the National Review of Live Art.

I have been based in Brussels for the last two years, working with IETM - international network for contemporary performing arts as Communications Assistant, and the European Federation of Professional Circus Schools as Project Coordinator.

ehadleykershaw@googlemail.com