Performance Matters Archive

Video documentation of a one-off event hosted at LADA. Artist Tim Etchells invited performer Rosana Cade and musician Angharad Davies to join him in an encounter working with text loop fragments and violin improvisation. Drawing on Etchells’ practice in which language distorts and transforms through repetition and in dialogue with sound elements, More details are slowly falling in was a collaborative experiment in which three unique artists bring their considerable individual experience and perspectives to play, inventing and exploring sonic material together.

The starting point for the performance was a set of text fragments taken from Etchells’ notebook – overheard comments, puzzling images and questions – which take their place in layers of voice and violin in compositions where texture, energy and musicality are as important as semantics.

The event was hosted at The Garrett Centre on Saturday 21 February, 2026

Audio recording of the UK launch of performance art duo Kainulainen & Latva’s book Globus Hystericus, published in 2025 by Finnish publishing house Taide.

Finnish performance art duo Kainulainen & Latva have been making extraordinary performances in both their native Finland and internationally since 2014. Informed by narratives of personal trauma, twinned with accounts of Finnish folklore, they have produced a prolific and unique body of work from their profoundly intimate and collaborative dynamic.

Performance artists Katri Kainulainen and Maximilian Latva gave a presentation with video clips and slides of their practice, followed by a Q&A session with special guests Dominic Johnson and Martin O’Brien. Key themes explored in the neurodivergent duo’s work include trauma, power relations and gender issues.

The event was hosted at LADA on Wednesday 22 July, 2026.

Performance Crits was part of Performing the Art School, a series of research activities with Central Saint Martins C-School staff, postgraduate researchers and alumni in collaboration with Live Art Development Agency 2025-26. It included the sharing of practice and research, engaging with LADA’s archive and research collection, and explored the contexts and infrastructures for supporting the work we do to meet new publics and audiences.

Performance Crits takes its departure from the art school critique where artists present their work in the studio, and receive feedback.

Video documentation of Owen Parry performing at LADA on Friday 5 June 2026, as part of PERFORMANCE CRITS:An Evening of Art School Performance.

Adriana Disman performance for PS X: A Decade of Performance Art in the UK, 2021

Chinasa Vivian Ezugha – Tongues for Gathering in a Time of Plague, 2021

Jade Blackstock performance for Gathering in a Time of Plague, 2021

Jasper Llewellyn performance for Gathering in a Time of Plague, 2021

Kelvin Atmadibrata performance for PS X: A Decade of Performance Art in the UK, 2021

Kimvi performance for Gathering in a Time of Plague, 2021

Niya B – Hollow Spaces for Gathering in a Time of Plague, 2021

Shaun Caton – Surge Factor(y) for Gathering in a Time of Plague, 2021

An online event to celebrate the launch of artist and writer Tara Fatehi Irani’s new book Mishandled Archive, published by LADA. Hosted by Rachel Mars, the event features an excerpt from Tara’s performance of Mishandled Archive with Pouya Ehsaei, a performative presentation by Diana Damian Martin, Mary Paterson, Jemima Yong, Maddy Costa and Holly Revell and special appearances by Giulia Palladini and Joe Kelleher.

Writer and academic Dominic Johnson hosts a rare UK appearance by the US (French based) artist Skip Arnold. They screened a selection of Skip’s videos and other documents, and discussed the body, duration, intervention, commitment, and documentation.

"TransMission: Sissy TV" is an exploration of the idea of trans archives. And auto-archive of the artist's body, work, costumes, props, hopes, dreams and memories accumulated over nearly three decades of creating queer work.

A compilation of images by Anne Bean from Dubinski notebooks. 

Making performance works for four decades, British experimental theatre collective Forced Entertainment has become globally renowned for its singular aesthetic and audacious events, melding narrative fragments with strange acts, broken poetry, audience provocations, and comcial failure. With its low-fi theatre, intimate text-based works, and epic durational spectacles, the group has profoundly influenced the international performance scene, evoking and testing the politics of contemporary life.

What is performance? 31 performative programs to confuse the question.

Both in English and Spanish.

Documents the work of fourteen performance artists who marked the personal and political resonances of the new Millennium in a series of site-specific actions. Contrasting with the epic, populist and homogenising nature of the official celebrations, these works focused on forgotten and ephemeral experiences, enacting small but significant interventions in the public sphere.

Let’s Pretend None of This Ever Happened documents neon, LED and other text works by the British artist Tim Etchells. The book creates a compelling and comprehensive investigation of Etchells’ projects in public space and galleries, leading with images of key works installed in sites all over the world.

Alongside its wide-ranging image survey, this work features an extended conversation between the artist and Jule Hillgärtner, director of Kunstverein Braunschweig, as well as a text by curator Ben Borthwick.

Surveying the full range and approaches of Etchells’ sculptural work with text, Let’s Pretend None of This Ever Happened creates dialogue across the artist’s works spanning sixteen years, as well as exploring the complex relation between individual works and the different contexts in which they have been installed over the last several decades.