The Art of Participation – 1950 to Now

Documentation from a deep dive into La Pocha Nostra’s archive held at LADA’s Study Room on 5th July 2024, led by artist Ansuman Biswas who has been collaborating with La Pocha Nostra and its founder Guillermo Gómez-Peña since 2002.

This is a video file. For a version with closed captions please visit our vimeo channel. 

Audio documentation of a participatory conversation in response to La Pocha Nostra’s commitment to use performativity as a methodology of resistance and to erase the borders between art and politics, art practice and theory, and artist and spectator, on 2nd August 2024  at The Garrett Centre.

performingborders has been exploring performance and Live Art practices across notions and lived experiences of intersectional borders since 2016, inspired by La Pocha Nostra’s work. Drawing from Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s publication Dangerous Border Crossers: The Artist Talks Back (2000), they explored LADA Study Room’s resources around borders and performances, including the Performing Borders Study Room Guide. They also drew from their own archive to highlight artists whose practices challenge the diversity of experiences at the intersections of cultural, juridical, racial, gendered, class, physical, economic, and everyday borders.

This is an audio file. For a version with closed captions, please visit out vimeo channel. 

An essential introduction to the life and work of Sonia Boyce, a leading contemporary artist whose interdisciplinary practice explores artistic authorship and the creative potential in unexpected play.

Over three days in August 2007 Cardiff-based performance artist André Stitt undertook a major ‘akshun’ work at Artspace. Utilizing Joseph Beuys’ famous “I Like America and America Likes Me (or ‘Coyote’)” performance of 1974 as a template through which a performative engagement with acts of arrival and the attendant trauma of colonialism could be developed, Stitt shared a caged-in area of the gallery with a dingo, exploring forms of possible connection between the human figure and dog. This book provides extensive documentation and critical reflection upon one of the most significant and sustained performance works undertaken in Sydney in recent years.

Contemporary Theatre Review, Volume 33, Issue 3 (2023)

Essential Work : Eastern European Immigrants and Models of Participation, Bojana Janković

This article investigates the relationship between a marginalised community of essential workers and dominant models of participation.

This fully-illustrated book brings together for the first time an account of Baker’s career as an artist – from her first sculptures at Central St Martins in the early 1970s to her most recent work, ‘How to Live’ and ‘Diary Drawings’ – with critical commentary by reviewers and academic practitioners.

Interviews with people at the intersection of disability, queerness, kink, sex work and survivorship.

Common Salt was a performance around a table – a ‘show and tell’ by artists Sheila Ghelani and Sue Palmer. It explored the colonial, geographical and natural history of England and India taking an expansive and emotional time-travel, from the first Enclosure Act and the start of the East India Company in the 1600s, to 21st century narratives of trade, empire and culture.

In the performance Sue and Sheila activated insights into our shared past, laying out a ‘home museum’ of objects and stories about borders and collections, the Great Hedge of India, a forgotten naturalist – all accompanied by original Shruti box laments.

This book documents and explores the project, placing the performance text, images and reflections from both artists alongside writings by invited guests – from curators and artists to audience members.

Common Salt is designed by John Hunter (aka RULER) and published by LADA.

This book is Derek Jarman’s own record of how this garden evolved, from its earliest beginnings in 1986 to the last year of his life. More than 150 photographs taken since 1991 by his friend and photographer Howard Sooley capture the garden at all its different stages and at every season of the year. Photographs from all angles reveal the garden’s complex geometrical plan, its magical stone circles and its beautiful and bizarre sculptures. We also catch glimpses of Jarman’s life in Dungeness: walking, weeding, watering, or just enjoying life.

Book in English with translations to Serbian and French language
With essays by Dr Marina Grzinic, Dr Suzana Milevska and Tanja Ostojić

Field Notes II documents the second Summer School on Cultural Diversity and Collaborative Practice, held in July 2019.