The Many Headed Monster

The Many Headed Monster is published by the Live Art Development Agency in an edition of 500.

The Many Headed Monster is sold out. A copy is available to view in LADA’s Study Room.

The Many Headed Monster is an original and inventive resource for anyone interested in contemporary performance practices and their relationships with audiences.

Across a range of artistic disciplines, artists are dealing with audiences in innovative and creative ways, placing the audience at the heart of their work. The Many Headed Monster is a critical and practical resource investigating what is at stake for audiences today when they attend a live event.

The Many Headed Monster is a boxed set containing a lecture complete with presentation instructions, extended notes and author’s commentaries, a dvd of 22 performance works/extracts by leading UK and international artists, and 50 full colour image cards.

The Many Headed Monster has been specifically designed with further and higher education in mind and has been conceived and created as a tool kit that can be used as:

  • a one hour illustrated lecture suitable for A Level, BA, MA and PhD students and/or practicing artist
  • a resource to undertake personal researce
  • a template to generate short workshop and seminar programmes
  • a foundation for an entire teaching module

Here are some serving suggestions as to how you might use the Monster. (PDF download.)

Featured artists include Ian Breakwell and Ron Geesin, Duckie, Blast Theory, Kira O’Reilly, Marina Abramović and Ulay, Vito Acconci, Bock & Vincenzi, Gob Squad, JJ Xi and Cai Yuan, William Pope.L, Lone Twin, LIGNA, Hermann Nitsch, Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Annie Sprinkle, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, Carsten Höller, Yoko Ono, Laura Lima, Luke Jerram, Oreet Ashery and Joshua Sofaer.

… the breakthrough for ‘the boxed set’. It is boldly and beautifully conceived, conceptually daring, and light on its feet.
Professor Alan Read, Kings College London, 2010

Launch events for The Many Headed Monster took place at Tate Modern and Whitechapel Gallery in April and May 2010.

The lecture text of The Many Headed Monster is available in Spanish.

The Many Headed Monster features in an exhibition on performance at the Artea Archive in Matadero Madrid.

Please let the Agency know if you would like to receive a Spanish language version when you purchase the Monster from Unbound by sending an email to [email protected]

www.joshuasofaer.com.