Intellect Live

About Intellect Live

Intellect Live is a collaboration between Intellect Books and the Live Art Development Agency on influential artists working at the edge of performance. The series is characterised by lavishly illustrated and beautifully designed books that are created through close collaborations between artists and writers, and that are the first substantial publication dedicated to the artists’ work.

Joshua Sofaer: Performance | Objects | Participation

Edited by Roberta Mock and Mary Paterson

Joshua Sofaer works across boundaries, borders and disciplines to create artworks that engage with all levels of society. In cultural institutions or on the street, for art galleries or personal homes, staged as operas or cast as golden sculptures, Sofaer’s work weaves with and through social fabric to consider the ideas that hold us together.

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An outstretched hand holds a series of coloured noses attached to strings.

Joshua Sofaer: Performance | Objects | Participation, edited by Roberta Mock and Mary Paterson

Anne Bean: Self Etc.

Edited by Rob La Frenais

Anne Bean is a noted international figure who has been working actively since the 1960s. The art of Anne Bean makes strange our sense of time, memory, language, the body, and identity, particularly through solo and collaborative performances along a vital continuum between art and life.

“Anne Bean is a visionary artist who has troubled the boundaries of contemporary art for five decades. This book shows her to be a key and vibrant figure in live art.”

William Raban, artist, Professor of Film, University of the Arts, London

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Anne Bean's face edited into several squares with the text Self Etc. in the centre

Anne Bean: Self Etc.

Kira O’Reilly: Untitled (Bodies)

Edited by Harriet Curtis, Martin Hargreaves

O’Reilly’s works have been exhibited and presented internationally, across many different formats, frames and contexts since 1998, and the publication encompasses that breadth and diversity. Bringing together newly commissioned and other writings by major thinkers in and beyond visual and performance studies, and extensive documentation of the artist’s work from two decades of practice, it navigates through and between performance, biotechnical practices, image-making, and writing.

“[a] sumptuous and wide-ranging examination of the work of an internationally significant interdisciplinary artist. Even before it is opened, the book makes a claim for the startling collisions of image, body and encounter at the heart of the work … vocabulary gushes up from Untitled (Bodies). While a significant proportion of the book consists of beautifully reproduced photographs, the attention to language is also a key commitment.” – Johanna Linsley, Contemporary Theatre Review

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The cover of the Untitled (Bodies) book of Kira O'Reilly nude falling from a red carpeted staircase

Kira O’Reilly: Untitled (Bodies)

It’s All Allowed: The Performances of Adrian Howells

Edited by Deirdre Heddon, Dominic Johnson

Adrian Howells (1962–2014) was one of the world’s leading figures in the field of one-to-one performance practice – the act of staging an event for one audience participant at a time. Developed over more than a decade, Howells’ award-winning work initiated new challenges and innovations in performance art, “intimate theatre,” and socially engaged art.

“an intimate response to Howells’s work, but one that is also a profound meditation on the potential effects of performance itself. Carefully curated with a significant eye to detail … This labour of love is a critical volume that will be useful to readers; it is also a beautiful object in its own right.” – Deirdre Heddon and Dominic Johnson win the TaPRA Prize for Editing 2017

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It's All Allowed

The Only Way Home is Through the Show: The Performance Work of Lois Weaver

Edited by Jen Harvie, Lois Weaver

Lois Weaver is one of the true pioneers in feminist and lesbian performance. The Only Way Home Is Through the Show explores her collaborative work with Split Britches and Spiderwoman as well as her solo projects, performance interventions, and work as a facilitator, teacher, and as Tammy WhyNot.

“The Only Way Home is definitively the richest representation of a feminist performance artist that I know of. The book honors Weaver’s work with its artistic design … while teaching the world about femme accomplishments that may have otherwise gone unacknowledged.” – Megan Shea, TDR: The Drama Review

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The Only Way Home Is Through the Show: Performance Work of Lois Weaver

Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey

Edited By Dominic Johnson

Ron Athey is an iconic figure in contemporary art and performance. In his frequently bloody portrayals of life, death, crisis, and fortitude in the time of AIDS, Athey calls into question the limits of artistic practice. These limits enable Athey to explore key themes including gender, sexuality, radical sex, queer activism, postpunk and industrial culture, tattooing and body modification, ritual, and religion.

“A beautifully illustrated catalogue raisonné in which Athey’s extensive ouevre is analyzed, placing him alongside Jean Genet, Antonin Artaud and Yukio Mishima, as well as contemporary art-world figures Chris Burden and Bob Flanagan.” – John Killacky, American Theatre

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Throwing the Body in the Fight: A Portrait of Raimund Hoghe

Edited by Mary Kate Connolly

Throwing the Body into the Fight is the first English language publication dedicated to the choreographer and performance maker Raimund Hoghe (Germany). Curated and edited by Mary Kate Connolly, the publication operates as a collage, drawing together a variety of international voices to create a fragmented portrait of the artist.

“I love this man unconditionally and I know I don’t need to justify this as a quote or little blurb in a book about this man. This man is inspiring and uncompromising. Beautiful, generous and fierce.” – Franko B, artist

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15th Anniversary print: Raimund Hoghe - Throwing the Body Into the Fight

Banner image credit:

An Independent Declaration, Anne Bean and Paul Burwell, 1982. Self Etc, edited by Rob La Frenais. Photo by David Dawson.

Also

re.act.feminism #2 – a performing archive

Book

‘re.act.feminism #2’ exhibition publication exploring feminist, gender-critical & queer performance art

unSeen

DVD

A collection of George Chakravarthi’s early (unseen) photographic self-portraits.

It’s Time: how Live Art is taking on the world from the front line to the bottom line

Book

It’s Time responds to the recent successes of Live Art and highlights those artists, projects and initiatives which are re-politicising and re-energising our arts spaces.

Yara El-Sherbini’s Decision Maker

Edition

A floating action pen.

My Present is N O W

Edition

Limited edition framed triptych of the letters NOW, written in strawberries by Anne Bean.

In Other Words

Book

Through prose, poetry, drawing and photography In Other Words is a collection of urgent reflections, created by artists exploring their hopes and fears at a time of global crisis. It is a clarion call for change from a group rich in wisdom, shared experience, and what it means to be marginalised in the UK in 2020.

Performance Artist Paper Doll

Edition

Cut out and play with your very own Performance Artist Paper Doll, created by Joshua Sofaer.

For-Skin For-You For-Ever

Edition

A limited edition of Harminder Singh Judge’s penis in white neon and presented on a bed of peacock feathers.