Unbound
Unbound is an online shop for Live Art books, dvds and limited editions. Unbound specialises in materials related to contemporary art practices: from experimental theatre to body art, from the history of performance art to performance theory, from digital performance to art activism.
Unbound was set up to further awareness of, and access to, materials about and around Live Art and to encourage more artists to generate materials for distribution. Unbound also provides a mechanism to draw a critical relationship between the texts published by major publishing houses and those materials that are self published by artists and arts organisations.
Unbound is a carefully curated site selling books by major publishers relating to the Live Art and performance fields; Agency publications, co-publications and dvds; hard-to-find artists’ publications and dvds, including on-demand titles. The Agency is constantly expanding the titles we sell on Unbound and in 2009 the site expanded to include artworks on its limited editions shelf commissioned by the Agency to celebrate its tenth anniversary.
Unbound also curates specially selected stock of titles for limited periods in collaboration with festivals and events across the UK, such as our recent spill specials shelf during the SPILL festival. This range of materials for sale on Unbound featured books, dvds and limited editions by or about artists featured in the festival.
As writer in residence at the Live Art Development Agency between 2009 and 2010 Mary Paterson used Unbound as a tool and a provocation to explore the relationships between live art and its audiences, documentation and representations. The residency resulted in the text A Navigation Through Unbound which draws on the resources available on Unbound, and comments collected from site visitors through an online user survey in June 2009.
Unbound is dedicated to disseminating a broad range of materials around Live Art practices and is run on a not-for-profit basis. Proceeds from Unbound sales are put back into the Live Art Development Agency's publication and research projects.
Patrons’ Unbound Recommendations - the Agency’s Patrons recommend book and DVD titles available from Unbound
‘What is Unbound?’ - responses from the Unbound user survey, June 2009:
‘The best resource for all things live art.’
‘Unbound is art untied, unlimited, un-not-allowed-to-say-that-or-do-that-because-it's-politically-incorrect-ed. No restrictions. The supplier of knowledge to me, an overshielded over protected hybrid catholic child, who treads unfamiliar ground and embraces every step.’
‘a window out of suburbia’
‘An online shop with a curated collection focused on Live Art with great stuff you wouldn't find anywhere else very easily.’
‘Access to the most exciting and provocative ideas and images in contemporary culture‘
