Play A Journal of Plays, Issue 1

Shot in a breath between lockdowns in 2021, these teeming forms is a sensate and mythic film, imagining a process of wilding – of entering the land and being opened by it. Memory and desire, history and loss, future and fantasy become porous, contributing to a textural and sensate meditation on living.

Commissioned by ]performance s p a c e[. Presented by ]ps[, ICA (London), VSSL studio, Chisenhale Studioes (2021) and Venice International Performance Art Week (2023). Funded by Arts Council England.

Single-channel video work; duration: 28.33

Nuidey is a short film made on an iPhone. It depicts three middle-aged queers, two of them fat, dancing in the Western Isles in slow motion in June 2024. They are naked.

There is a soundtrack of twangy music and reflections by the performers, which are subtitled. The reflections concern the place, light, rationale; fat subjectivity; what it is to be seen in real life and online; illness and decision-making. The conversation is intimate, the performers know each other well.

The film was conceived of and made by Charlotte Cooper as an expansion of her book Fat Body Work (2025 33editions).

The film was screened as part of Live Art Bookshop: Fat Body Work Launch at LADA on Wednesday 29 October 2025.

cock~salt (2025) is a performance to camera by Claye Bowler, screened at LADA as part of Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Fest exhibition The Body Is a Thing in Time, curated by kane stonestreet.

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.

This collection brings together six seminal works of British alternative feminist and women’s theatre from the archive, with a contextual introductory text by Dr. Susan Croft, co-founder of Unfinished Histories.

From the artist: This is a neurodivergently true story about neurotransgressive performance (which I call proper performance). It contains some magic green liquid and a bit of an accidental erection.

"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 short text and image piece by artist Kira O'Reilly, accompanied by a photo of O'Reilly's "Menopause Gym."

In a cyclical feat of endurance and precision, Blood Show is a raw, euphoric choreography between 3 figures and 75 litres of fake blood. A call to action to put what’s inside on the outside and defend against a violent gaze, Blood Show questions rebirth and how we all carry our ghosts with us.

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

Both in English and Spanish.

Por que falamos em arte nordestina ou arte nortista, mas raramente ouvimos a expressão arte sudestina para nos referirmos às produções do Rio de Janeiro ou de São Paulo, por exemplo? Essa pergunta, aparentemente simples, revela muito sobre o modo como o Sudeste foi historicamente alçado, e se impôs à condição de centro normativo da cultura brasileira. A produção artística dessa região costuma ser tomada como “a arte brasileira”, dispensando adjetivos regionais, enquanto as produções do Norte e do Nordeste foram historicamente enquadradas nas margens, exceções ou exotismos dentro desse panorama…