The Library of Performing Rights is a unique resource containing over 250 items submitted by artists, activists and academics from around the world that examine the intersection between performance and Human Rights.
The catalogue is available here and is continuously updated.
Please note the Library is currently housed in the Study Room but is a touring Library so please contact LADA before your visit to check it is not out on the road.
From the age of Aristotle to the age of AIDS, writers, thinkers, performers and activists have wresteled with what “performance” is all about. At the same moment, “performativity”–a new concept in language theory–has become a ubiquitous term in literary studies. This volume grapples with the nature of these two key terms whose traces can be found everywhere: in the theatre, in the streets, in philosophy, in questions of race and gender, and in the sentences we speak.
Published on the fifth anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, Artwash is an intervention into the unsavoury role of the Big Oil company’s sponsorship of the arts in Britain.
A book about theatricality and spectatorship in the early twenty-first century. In a wide-ranging analysis that draws upon theatrical, visual and philosophical approaches, it asks how spectators and audiences negotiate the complexities and challenges of contemporary experimental performance arts.
Immersive Life Practices talks to Chicago-based artists and authors about life as an art practice and art as a life practice. The contributors explore a range of concerns, from how to be holistic, ethical, or practical; to how to balance life and work; to formal questions of how to represent a never-ending project.
A collection of essays on the installation and performance work of Cuban artist Tania Bruguera. Contributors: Domenico Scudero, Lucrezia Cippitelli, Irma Arestizabal, Roberto Pinto, Simonetta Lux
A retelling the history of art practice and exposing the ways in which neoliberal norms and values have seeped into every aspect of our lives.
Kalb weaves his impressive historical knowledge of theatre into detailed descriptions of marathon productions he has seen and studied.
The publication presents an array of challenging interpretations of and reflections on Mroué practice contributed by diverse group of artists, curators, art historians, and theorists.
Engages critical dance studies, philosophy, performance studies, cultural and post-colonial studies to propose new and creative dialogues between these disciplines.
Programme and documentation of the work presented on the 10th edition of the festival in Kassel, Germany. Includes exhibition booklet.
A compilation of personal stories that the artist had told in his performances over the previous decade.
This item is referenced in the Making Routes Study Room Guide (P1964).
Images and dialogues exploring contemporary art’s engagements with risk.
A critical framework for understanding and interpreting the new public art that has emerged over the last two decades. Featuring twelve essays from editor Suzanne Lacy: and eleven eminent artists, curators, and critics. Chapters titled as follows: An Unfashionable Audience, Public Constructions, Connective Aesthetics: Art After Individualism, To Search for the Good and Make It Matter, From Art-mageddon to Gringostroika: A Manifesto against Censorship, Looking Around: Where We Are, Where We Could Be, Whose Monument Where? Public Art in a Many-Cultured Society, Common Work, by Jeff Kelley, Success and Failure When Art Changes, Word of Honor, Debated Territory. This item is referenced in the Dreams for an Institution Guide (P2313).
Exploration of technology’s influence on artistic performance practices in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Text concerning the place and function of arts in society.
Detailed critical analysis of the work of Jack Smith from the early 1960s until his AIDS-related death in 1989.
Brings together classic texts that help to define culture as a tool of resistance.
Part manifesto and part reference guide: brings together ten grassroots groups and dozens of artists and activists from around the world.
Showcases 43 performances and live works by Danish-Norwegian artist duo, marking the first time the artists’ practice is considered in depth from a performance perspective.
Tactical Media employ the ‘tactics of the weak’ to operate on the terrain of strategic power by means of ‘any media necessary’, this notebook traces the legacies of tactical media to begin creating these hybrid cartographies
Project documentation.
A short book about the discussion between three women of being artists under patrichal capitalism. Letter from Rose English in the front.
This item is part of the 'Glimpses of before: 1970s UK Performance Art' Study Room Guide by Helena Goldwater (P2497)
Engaging a series of critical models, this article examines the place of the ‘exotic’ in thinking about sexual and racial difference, as a means of thinking difficult or volatile modes of cultural practice. As such, it stages a confrontation between ‘exotic ritual’ and ‘apocalyptic tone’, to challenge conventions about scholarly practice and find new ways of examining uncomfortable spaces and modes of working.
This item is part of the Study Room Guide On Disability and New Artistic Models by Aaron Williamson (P1529)
Find article in misc. folder 2
Programme of TAMA ’08, the Tupada Action and Media Art Fifth International Action Art Event titled TUPADA REVOLT (April 25, 28,29 2008) with international performance events, creating connections with local and foreign artists in the spirit of meaningful cultural and information exchange, and melding concepts, directions and personalities together to create an independent ground for art expressing concerns
On how performance relates to the global contemporary situation.
Performance, Politics, Ethics and Human Rights. Notes of lecture which was delivered alongside screening (D0343). Article in misc. folder 2
See accompanying lecture notes (A0205)Compiled for the Long Table on Performance and Human Rights, April 2005 for PSi 12. Partnership between EEC, Queen Mary Univerity of London and the Live Art Development Agency
This item is part of the Study Room Guide: A Bi(bli)ography of Insurrectionary Imaginati by John Jordan (P0793)
feature on motiroti
Axioms and evidence in search of the new international.
A leaflet from a 2002 exhibition featuring four legal “disclaimers” about the artwork and the gallery itself
Six of Tim Miller’s best known performances, documented, with scripts, “the sexual, spiritual, and political topography of his identity as a gay man…”
8 artists participate in a cross-media project about television
Catalogue and study on cultural rebellion in Syria. Language: English and Arabic
Documentation and writings on Kirkup's collaborative project on the future and past of the medical body, from 2000
The Scottish island of Gruinard was rendered unlivable by the British government's experients in anthrax use during WW2. The two artists respond by creating a smart sculpture that responds to the climate its in. Also inside are essays and reflections on the work. This item is part of the Study Room Guide in Search of a Documentology by Marco Pustianaz (P1115)