Kenotaphion

This lavishly illustrated magical volume acts a potent talisman connecting the two worlds of Tate – the seen public collection and the unseen secrets lurking in the archive. The pages of this book explore the hidden artworks and ephemera left behind by artists for the first time idea and will shed new light on our understanding of the art historical canon. This book explores the symbiotic relationship between art and the occult and how both can act as a form of resistance to challenging environments. This book will change perceptions forever and illuminate the surprising breadth and extraordinary ways in which artists interpret not just the physical world around them but also the supernatural, and in doing so make the unseen, seen. If you think you know Tate artists, it’s time to think again.

2024 marks the 40th anniversary of The Cholmondeleys dance company, founded in 1984 by Lea Anderson, Teresa Montano, and Gaynor Coward. Inspired by the DIY culture of post-punk UK, they wanted to create something that resonated with their friends, blending dance with the energy of fashion, music, and club culture of the 1980s.

They named themselves The Cholmondeleys, like a band. Emerging from this vibrant time, their performances featured collaborations with British artists, including choreographer Lea Anderson, costume designers Sandy Powell, Emma Fryer, Simon Vincenzi, composers Drostan Madden & Steve Blake, and lighting designer Simon Corder. Together with their sister company, The Featherstonehaughs (founded in 1988), they produced over 87 works, both live and on film, performing in the UK and internationally. This rich creative legacy is captured in an archive of images by photographers such as Chris Nash, Pau Ros, and Matilda Temperley, now presented together for the first time in this celebration of The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs.

Jacques Derrida deftly guides us through an extended meditation on remembrance, religion, time, and technology-fruitfully occasioned by a deconstructive analysis of the notion of archiving. Intrigued by the evocative relationship between technologies of inscription and psychic processes, Derrida offers for the first time a major statement on the pervasive impact of electronic media, particularly e-mail, which threaten to transform the entire public and private space of humanity. Plying this rich material with characteristic virtuosity, Derrida constructs a synergistic reading of archives and archiving, both provocative and compelling.

The function of the critic and the function of the artist have been traditionally divided; the artist’s concern was the production of the work and the critic’s was its evaluation and interpretation. During the past several years a group of young artists evolved the idiom of Conceptual Art, which eliminated this division. Conceptual artists take over the role of the critic in terms of framing their own propositions, ideas, and concepts.

An essential aspect of Conceptual Art is its self-reference; often the artists define the intentions of their work as part of their art. Thus, many Conceptual artists advance propositions or investigations. It is in keeping, then, with Conceptual Art that it is best explained through itself, i.e., through the examination of Conceptual Art, rather than through any assumptions outside of itself. In this sense, this book is not a “critical anthology” but a documentation of Conceptual Art and Statements.

In this short book, the leading German cultural critic Diedrich Diederichsen puts forward a fresh and original account of pop music. He argues that pop music is not so much a form of music as a constellation of different media channels, social spaces and behavioural systems, of which music is only a part. Its own logic of attraction is based less on compositions and the expression of subjectivity and more on indexicality, real or psuedo-involunatary effects as recorded by sound technologies, and on studio discipline and staging, and hence on performance.

By elaborating his innovative account of pop music as a constellation, Diederichsen develops a theory that distinguishes itself from sociology, cultural studies, media studies and ethnography, while at the same time drawing on and encompassing them all.

Documentation from a deep dive into La Pocha Nostra’s archive held at LADA’s Study Room on 5th July 2024, led by artist Ansuman Biswas who has been collaborating with La Pocha Nostra and its founder Guillermo Gómez-Peña since 2002.

This is a video file. For a version with closed captions please visit our vimeo channel. 

Video documentation of an artist conversation with Lucy Sheen on 28th June 2024 at The Garrett Centre. This conversation followed screening of Lucy’s film Abandoned, Adopted Here as part of our LADA Screens programme on Voice, Care and Healing. Following the screening Lucy gave a performative reading of the poem I Know This Face, followed by a panel on the complexities of post-pandemic working in cultural and performative spaces for British East and Southeast Asians. With Jennifer Lim (Chair), Rosa Fong, Lucy Sheen, and Moi Tran.

Abandoned Adopted Here explores the nature of belonging in the British society and the unheard, silenced, and often erased voices of British East and Southeast Asians with mixed heritages and complex identities.

This is a video file. For a version with closed captions, visit our vimeo channel

Audio documentation of a participatory conversation in response to La Pocha Nostra’s commitment to use performativity as a methodology of resistance and to erase the borders between art and politics, art practice and theory, and artist and spectator, on 2nd August 2024  at The Garrett Centre.

performingborders has been exploring performance and Live Art practices across notions and lived experiences of intersectional borders since 2016, inspired by La Pocha Nostra’s work. Drawing from Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s publication Dangerous Border Crossers: The Artist Talks Back (2000), they explored LADA Study Room’s resources around borders and performances, including the Performing Borders Study Room Guide. They also drew from their own archive to highlight artists whose practices challenge the diversity of experiences at the intersections of cultural, juridical, racial, gendered, class, physical, economic, and everyday borders.

This is an audio file. For a version with closed captions, please visit out vimeo channel. 

shado Issue 02: Global Womxnhood

Feature/Poetry by Fatimah Asghar with Art and introduction by Sabba Khan.

This fully-illustrated book brings together for the first time an account of Baker’s career as an artist – from her first sculptures at Central St Martins in the early 1970s to her most recent work, ‘How to Live’ and ‘Diary Drawings’ – with critical commentary by reviewers and academic practitioners.

Interviews with people at the intersection of disability, queerness, kink, sex work and survivorship.

Common Salt was a performance around a table – a ‘show and tell’ by artists Sheila Ghelani and Sue Palmer. It explored the colonial, geographical and natural history of England and India taking an expansive and emotional time-travel, from the first Enclosure Act and the start of the East India Company in the 1600s, to 21st century narratives of trade, empire and culture.

In the performance Sue and Sheila activated insights into our shared past, laying out a ‘home museum’ of objects and stories about borders and collections, the Great Hedge of India, a forgotten naturalist – all accompanied by original Shruti box laments.

This book documents and explores the project, placing the performance text, images and reflections from both artists alongside writings by invited guests – from curators and artists to audience members.

Common Salt is designed by John Hunter (aka RULER) and published by LADA.