Prancing Poodles and Preposterous Pugs – Live Art and other animals

Pets, particularly dogs, are very welcome,
Snacks and drinks for all creatures will be served.

An evening about, with, and for Live Art and animals with the artists Shaun Caton, Jack Tan, Angela Bartram and Sibylle Peters.

Shaun Caton’s Prancing Poodles and Preposterous Pugs is a visual tour through some of his extraordinary collection of vintage and historic photographs, and an illustrated talk exploring the animal as performer for the camera, live audience, and the collective creative imagination. Looking at bizarre photographs of animals both dead and alive, Shaun will evince their forgotten stories and pinpoint the human relationships within a performance context.

Jack Tan’s Four Legs Good is a live revival of the medieval animal trials, where animals who had committed some offence were charged in court, prosecuted and defended by barristers, and sentenced in full hearings before a judge. In advance of the first sitting of the Animal Court at Compass Festival 2018 in Leeds, Jack will give a presentation about the Animal Court and offer advice to all dogs present who may have fallen foul of the law on how to bring or defend a case.

Angela Bartram’s Be Your Dog explores relationships beyond the hierarchies of pet and owner in response to Donna Haraway’s concept that two companions are necessary for a functional co-species co-habitation. The project saw participants and their dogs attend workshops to learn how to establish empathy, equality and connection, and strategies for dog and human to be equals with each other and to test if it is possible to establish a non-hierarchical pack. She will talk about Be Your Dog and her other work with animals including  the significance of dog/human cohabitation at the end of life, using dog walking as a way to engage community, and giving access to animal theory to animals themselves.

Artist and researcher Sibylle Peters will facilitate conversations.

LADA is wheelchair accessible, and provides gender inclusive bathrooms.

Biographies

In a career which spans more than 30 years, the performance artist, painter and cultural lobotomist Shaun Caton has created over 340 different performances worldwide. His performances are often characterized by a sensational use of colour, grotesque ritual masks, totemic shadow play, with intricate taxidermy installations. In 2019 he will perform at the Venice Biennale at the Palazzo Papafava. He has been described as ‘one of the UK’s most captivating performers’ by curator Manick Govinda and ‘an iconic performance artist’ by Aaron Wright of Fierce Festival. www.shauncaton.co.uk

Jack Tan uses law, social norms and customs as a way of making art. He creates performances, performatives, sculpture, video and participatory projects that highlight the rules that guide human behaviour. Jack trained as a lawyer and worked in civil rights NGOs before becoming an artist. Recent projects include Karaoke Court (2014-ongoing) a singing dispute resolution process, his Singapore Biennale presentation Voices From The Courts examining the vocality of the State Courts of Singapore (2016), Law’s Imagination (2016) a curatorial residency at arebyte exploring legal aesthetics, his solo exhibition How to do things with rules (2015) at the ICA Singapore, and Closure (2012), a year-long residency and exhibition at the UK Department for Health looking at the liquidation of their social work quango. Jack is the 2017/18 inaugural Art & Politics Fellow at the Dept of Politics and International Relations, Goldsmiths College. www.jacktan.net

Angela Bartram works in expanded sculpture including objects, video, live events and published text. Her practice concerns threshold and ‘in-between’ spaces of the human body, gallery or museum, definitions of the human and animal within companion species relationships and alternative strategies for documenting the ephemeral. Amongst others, the work has been exhibited as part of The Animal Gaze (London 2008, Plymouth 2009, Sheffield 2011), and in Animalism in Bradford (2009). Published texts include her co-edited volume Recto-Verso: Redefining the Sketchbook (Eds: Bartram, El Bizri, Gittens (Ashgate: 2014)). Bartram is Associate Professor and Head of Arts Research at the University of Derby and principle investigator for the Alternative Document, a large-scale curatorial project that analyses alternative strategies for documenting ephemeral artworks. www.angelabartram.com