Resources

LADA provides free-to-access resources for artists, students and professionals. This includes research facilities, information, online materials and programming packages.

The Live Art Almanac Volume 6

Originally planned for publication in early 2020, we are delighted to offer The Live Art Almanac Volume 6, reimagined as an online resource. Edited by Bojana Janković, the Almanac sketches out a cultural sector in a slow-burning crisis, undergoing a steady increase of inequality, precarity, and nationalism. Moving back and forth, between the pandemic and the time before, Volume 6 makes connections between the brewing crises of before and the state of emergency now.

The Almanac is grouped in seven thematic collections, namely: Institutional Critiques; The Woke Minority; The Magic Money Tree; Two Meters Apart; Enclosed Spaces; The Aftermath; and Dearly Departed.

The Live Art Almanac Volume 6

A series of illustrated figures, protesting and performing

The Live Art Almanac: Volume 6 - Illustration by David Caines.

The Study Room

Our key resource which provides a research space for artists, academics, students and other curious folk. Containing over 8,000 items, including out-of-print books and rare documentation, our Study Room, in Bethnal Green, is the world’s largest collection of research materials on Live Art.

Book a Visit

Search the Catalogue

The catalogue includes books, DVDs, magazines, journals and digital materials. A selection of these resources can be accessed online.

‘LADA’s Study Room is a kind of artform in itself.’

Mary Ann Hushlak, writer and curator

Study Room Guides

As part of the continuous development of the Study Room we regularly commission a range of artists and thinkers to write personal Study Room Guides to help navigate users through this resource.

The idea is to enable Study Room users to experience the materials in a new way and highlight materials that they may not have otherwise come across.

View our Study Room Guides

Cover of the Are We There Yet Study Guide on a blue blackground

Are We There Yet? - a Study Room Guide on Live Art and Feminism

LADA Screens

An ongoing project offering free online screenings of seminal performance documentation, works to camera, short films/video and archival footage.

Our most recent LADA Screens was ‘Walking Home’ by Alisa Oleva, – created in the context of Performistanbul’s residency programme for performance artists on theme of ‘home’.

Two pictures of peoples shoes, on the left they are standing on the pavement, the shoes on the right are on concrete by the edge of water.

Alisa Oleva in London and Ayşın Barut in Istanbul at their arrival points. Alisa Oleva, Walking Home, 2021. Still from video

Lockdown Lists

Responding to the social conditions and lived experiences of the Covid-19 lockdown, LADA is compiling a series of reference lists of writings and films which draw attention to examples of historic and contemporary Live Art practice that produce states and encounters that are in someway akin to, or speak to, some of the experiences of lockdown or issues a lockdown raises. These lists are imagined as resources where artists, researchers and curious folk might start their own investigations into the relationships between art making and periods of isolation, distancing, stasis and contagion.

Martin lies on a bed above a large number of medical vessels. He beats his chest.

Martin O’Brien, Mucus Factory, 2011, London. Image credit Manuel Vason. LADA Research and Projects, Restock Rethink Reflect Two on Live Art and Disability and Access All Areas (London and New York)

Live Online

A series of channels where you can watch short videos and films selected from LADA’s Study Room or generated through our programmes and initiatives.

Artists Nando Messias and Franko B in conversation

Franko B and Nando Messias in conversation, Live Art Now, Queen Mary University of London, July 2019. Still from video, by Claire Nolan.

Listen Online

Listen Online is LADA’s platform for audio content, including recordings of artist talks as well as commissioned artworks by artists such as Marcia Farquhar, Jen Harvie, Taylan Halici and many others.

STACY MAKISHI, IMAGE BY HOLLY REVELL

Project Websites

A series of project specific LADA websites hosting curated content and documentation of the projects.

Edge of an Era: an archival project revisiting a specific series of seminal performance art events from the late 1980s.

PLAYING UP: A Live Art Game for Kids and Adults: an intergenerational artwork by Sibylle Peters

Performance Magazine Online: an online archive of and resources about, Performance Magazine (1979-1992)

Glimpses of Before:1970’s Performance Art in the UK: Study Room Guide by Helena Goldwater

Are We There Yet? A Study Room Guide on Live Art and Feminism

Live Art and Feminism in the UK: Curated by LADA in collaboration with Eleanor Roberts and the Google Cultural Institute, offering a snapshot of some of the key figures and issues of Live Art and Feminism in the UK since 1970

Documenting Intimacy: a research initiative piloted by Brian Lobel and Marisa Zanotti to explore documenting one-to-one performance from the perspective of artists.

NRLA 30: Highlights from the documentation of the 2010 edition of the NRLA Festival when artists from across the Festival’s 30-year history presented new work.

The illustrated artwork on the PLAYING UP Box.

PLAYING UP. Artwork by David Caines.

Collage of various Performance Magazine covers

Performance Magazine, Front Cover Collage

Collections

The Resources Catalogue includes a growing number of Collections of publications, DVDs and other ‘rare’ materials organised by themes, artists or projects, which have been assembled or acquired by the Agency, or generously donated by artists and colleagues.

View our collections

Bernsteins 'Taking Measurements of yourselves as Artists` FairlightGlen, Hastings 1972

Study Room in Exile

The Study Room in Exile is LADA’s satellite study room housed in the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home in Liverpool.

The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home based in a family home in Liverpool, UK, founded in 2007 is an intervention into family life and the normative upbringing of children and is funded by 10% of the family’s net income. At the time of writing, the Institute are Gary Anderson (45), Lena Simic (43), Neal (17), Gabriel (15), Sid (10) and James (4) and now Tesla Spinoza (dog, 3 months).

A wooden bench with the word MANIFESTO written on it.

On The Bench, Manofestival, The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home.

Study Boxes

LADA is delighted to be able to offer UK and international promoters temporary installations of bespoke Study Boxes containing hand picked selections of DVDs, books and other materials from the LADA Study Room around specific themes.

Group of people sitting at the study cafe in Ipswich

SPILL Study Cafe, Ipswich 2012

Key Links and Resources

We have assembled this selection of useful links and and pages for artists and researchers.

Downloads – free resources created by LADA

Email lists and Newsletters

Writing about Live Art

Links and Resources for Artists

Key Archives

Daniel Oliver's back with arms raised from Weird Seance Incredible Interquel Spectactle, in red tint

Daniel Oliver, Weird Séance Incredible Interquel Spectacle, SPILL Festival of Performance 2015, produced by Pacitti Company. Photo by Guido Mencari

Banner image credit: LADA Study Room, Bethnal Green