Meeting Points – Artists in Residence 2025

Mary:
I’m wondering how both discipline and community also relate with something we’ve talked about a lot Claudia, visibility? What is the work we want to do without anyone watching, and what is the work we want people to be present for? 

Claudia:
Often the places where we gather are public spaces, at a bar or performance event, and it’s difficult to actually have considered exchange, and peer mentoring. I wanted to take this group away from the immediate public-public space, but still have it held in something that was slightly visible, so it’s like, we’re all doing this thing, you’re not invited, but we’re doing it. People have asked me about it, and have asked the other group members. It’s given us a way to be able to have those conversations on a wider scale, because people know that we’re having them. Even though they’re not coming to watch anything. I’m interested in archiving invisible work. I’ve done a lot of work that has never been seen, and there’s no evidence that I’ve done or am doing anything other than in my own head.

Symoné:
I like that phrase, slightly visible. That’s also what I’m interested in. Places, whether online or in person, that people can attend and meet people who are working at this experimental intersection of games, art, and performance. That low-key atmosphere is really important. Getting together, trying things out helps promote some exciting conversations and relationships. It’s not too private, it still invites people. At the same time, I do get excited when I have conversations with friends or people I’ve met, and they’ve not heard about alternative or indie games, and they’re interested. There are people who are doing that work to make it more visible so it is not siloed.

Mary:
The flipside of the closed door is that we meet brilliant artists, and are then left with this frustration of wanting everyone to see their work! It goes back to scarcity again. If the ecosystem is thriving, then you can have more work happening in the invisible or slightly visible spaces, because there are enough publicly visible opportunities to balance it out.

Claudia:
That thing of being able to sit in difficulty, in the unknown is quite necessary for artists rather than to just hit the relief button, or go for the quickest thing. I also think, in terms of visibility, what I have noticed is that the grassroots scene and underground scene is having a massive revival, that feels more like the scene I started out in.

There’s this whole other counter cultural thing going on that offers a different form of visibility and learning from each other. One where risk and vulnerability feel more equally held and there’s less defined lines between artist and programmer.

Samra:
The invisible work that I feel really committed and excited about is also bringing more artists together. To go back to Claudia’s point about discipline in relation to training and untraining, I like to think of that time as a form of training, or a sort of attunement. To ask, what is it that you’re interested in that you didn’t know, that isn’t in your feed, or algorithm, isn’t being fed to you, but is what your eyes were drawn to, like the colour of a spine, or the name of a title, or an artist you’ve never heard of. I feel very excited about that sort of invisible work with artists that I’m connected to intimately, and seeing what it looks like to bring more people into that. And I don’t know how to bring these people into the fold, but it might just be a case of, you know, bringing your housemate, who’s a doctor or a therapist, or works in a coffee shop.

I spend a lot of time in archives, specifically film, arts, moving image and performance archives. During the residency period, I was starting to feel more and more interested in this community of people that are interested in documenting how people express themselves through their bodies. Performance archives and the importance of them, not just for artists, but for humanity. A lot of the artists at my gathering said this was their first experience of an archive or collection and that they got a lot from it, and now we’re going to start going to different archives together. The next one will be the V&A Storehouse.

Mary:
This reminds me of a talk we were recently at with Alice Parsons, founder of Castles in the Sky and leading on Bradford’s LGBTQ+ community archive, where she said, ‘the archive is working to keep the community present’. It is important to us that the Live Art Research Collection remains a living resource that serves an ever-evolving community – but we need the community to be present for that to work.

Which leads me to our final question: If you could choose one item, book or document of a performance for LADA to hold in the Live Art Research Collection, what would it be?

Samra:
I would choose Pedro Lambell’s My Tender Matador. I’m really loving performance artists that also write at the moment. There’s a very particular sensibility, it makes literature more alive.

Claudia:
I’ve been reading Where is Ana Mendieta? by Jane M. Blocker. It’s about identity, performance and exile.

Symoné:
The Queer Games Avant-Garde by Bo Ruberg. This is a book of interviews from brilliant artists from all over the world, some describe themselves as game designers or developers, some have their own definitions. I’ve played some of their games online. They’re very experimental and very personal pieces, and I love getting inside people’s heads and obsessions.