Restock Rethink Reflect
Restock, Rethink, Reflect is a Live Art Development Agency programme of artistic and professional development initiatives for artists whose practices explore and question notions of cultural identity, and who are working, or interested in working, in Live Art and related performance based practices.
Live Art offers new languages to play with the cultural and social influences that inform us, to articulate new forms of representation and to create new cultural landscapes. Restock, Rethink, Reflect reflects this fluidity by using a number of different forms to explore and expose debate and practice in these areas.
Restock, Rethink, Reflect projects include:
Lore and Other Convergences offered fifteen UK practitioners the opportunity to work alongside internationally renowned artist Janine Antoni, exploring the intersection between process and product through the creation of a 25m rope made of significant personal materials. The workshop was accompanied by a series of talks and a public sharing of outcomes at inIVA. Documentation of these events can be viewed in the Agency's Study Room.
Open Nights are an innovative and exciting series of informal events designed to stimulate debate and a sense of community among artists who are questioning cultural identity through live and interdisciplinary practices. Open Nights so far have included presentations and events by George Chakravarthi, Yara El-Sherbini, Sonia Boyce, Oreet Ashery, David A Bailey, Manick Govinda, Ali Zaidi and Janine Antoni. Events take place at a variety of different London venues and each has a unique structure that encourages new ways of talking, engaging and asking questions. Open Nights are curated by Barby Asante and produced by Rajni Shah. To find out more please drop us a line at on@thisisLiveArt.co.uk or visit www.myspace.com/opennights.
Documenting Live is a unique publication and dvd resource reflecting the work of key UK based artists working in the 1990s and 2000s, and placing Live Art practices that are informed by questions of cultural identity within critical and historical frameworks.
Documenting Live has been developed in collaboration with curator David A Bailey in response to the challenges of documenting Live Art, and particularly the influential work of artists from culturally diverse backgrounds in the UK. Documenting Live sets out to address these challenges through the creation of an archival and critical document that maps a history; marks a territory; and looks to the future. Barby Asante, Ansuman Biswas, Malika Booker, Sonia Boyce, George Chakravarthi, Robin Deacon, Yara El-Sherbini, Harminder Singh Judge, Keith Khan, David Medalla, Harold Offeh, Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa, and Ali Zaidi collaborated on this mapping project through the creation of biographical postcards and video commentaries, the selection of illustrative documentation of their work, and participation in round table discussions prompted by David A Bailey’s essay Documenting Live: Performance-Based Art and the Racialised Body.
Documenting Live contains David A Bailey’s mapping essay Performance-Based Art and the Racialised Body; the artists’ postcards; and a dvd featuring the artists’ commentaries, excerpts from key works, and documentation of the round table discussions.
Documenting Live was launched at Iniva on Friday 1 August and is available to buy through Unbound.
Documentation of all the Restock, Rethink, Reflect events is available in various forms in the Study Room.
Restock, Rethink, Reflect is funded by Arts Council England and is produced by Rajni Shah for the Live Art Development Agency.
