Managing the Radical (2020)
(Self)Organisation, DIY Logistics, and Radical Management in Live Art
A Study Room Guide by Amitabh Rai, Spring 2020
This LADA Study Room Guide on ‘Managing the Radical’ has emerged through collective study, collaborative conversations, participatory workshops, and ‘DIY’ artist-led development programmes between 2018 and 2019 and forms part of LADA’s ongoing Restock, Rethink, Reflect Five project.
RRR5: Managing the Radical is considering the idea of what it means to manage the radical (or radicalise the management) and aims to rethink, reposition, and reimagine how art that operates and thinks ‘differently’ is created, produced, peopled, framed, funded, represented and contextualised. The project is asking what forms of management and methodologies of production might be more appropriate and effective for radical new forms of artistic practice?
This guide was finalised in the Spring of 2020, at a time when most regular artistic activity had been suspended due to the impact of the Covid-19 global pandemic. This crisis magnified nearly every single difficulty faced by artists, arts professionals and arts organisations, highlighting the extent of their precarity and vulnerability, and the importance of collective action to address them. It was also clear that, whenever the immediate crisis of Covid-19 passes, the real crisis will continue, in intensified form, and that a collective radical re-imagination of how we support, organise and care for one another and our work will be necessary.
This guide designed by Ben Harris.
Banner image credit:
Managing the Radical: A Study Room Guide, 2020. Design by Ben Harris.
Part of Study Room Guides
(W)reading Performance Writing (2010)
The Guide contains positions of twenty practitioners from diverse fields of poetry, theatre, visual art and performance on the topic of Performance Writing.
Read moreA Small MAP PIECE of Performance Art in China (2008)
This Study Room Guide profiles contemporary and historical performance art practices from China in a series of texts and works.
Read moreA Swiss Study Room Guide (2021)
A Study Room Guide on Swiss Live Art authored by Andrea Saemann and Madeleine Amsler
Read moreAre we there yet? (2015)
This Guide features a conversation between Lois Weaver and Lois Keidan about this project and their own personal histories of feminism and performance.
Read moreBodily Functions In Performance (2013)
The Guide consists of notes from Lois Keidan’s presentation for Blackmarket, with added images and recommendations for further research and study.
Read moreBrutal Silences (2011)
Brutal Silences is a Study Room Guide featuring selected performances from eleven artists who interrogate and interrupt the silences that exist in Ireland.
Read moreDeception, Performance Magic, Hoaxes, Pranks and Tricks (2019)
This Study Room Guide, by the performance artist and liar Tom Cassani, draws together resources that inform the sometimes disparate and eclectic field of deception and performance.
Read moreDisability and New Artistic Models (2010)
The Guide reflects the ways in which the practices of live artists have engaged with, represented, and problematised issues of disability.
Read moreDreams for an Institution (2013)
This Guide looks at artists’ projects that engage with institutions, and considers how performance practice has engaged and challenged institutions.
Read moreEcoFutures (2020)
A Study Room Guide on Queer, Feminist and Decolonial Ecologies in Live Art, curated by Arts Feminism Queer / CUNTemporary.
Read moreFood & Performance (2016)
The Guide has a specific focus on food, eating, and dining as they have been explored in artist performance and Live Art.
Read moreGlimpses of Before (2016)
This Guide includes information about artists who were making performance in the 1970s. It features texts by Helena Goldwater and Dominic Johnson.
Read moreHear me Roar! (2016)
In March 2016 the Hear Me Roar! Festival invited LADA to curate a small selection of items for a Pop-up Study Room during the Festival.
Read moreIn search of documentology. Walking (half) the study room (2008)
Extensive and comprehensive guide on documentation, live performance and its traces and ghosts,inspired by the documents of the Study Room itself.
Read moreIn the Footnotes of Library Angels: A Bi(bli)ography of Insurrectionary Imagination (2006)
This Guide addresses performance and activism, and the strategies that artists have engaged with to address radical cultural, social and political agendas.
Read moreKnow-how (2017)
Lois Weaver’s Study Room Guide, Know-how, explores the possibilities of Live Art practices and methodologies in working with older people.
Read moreLADA Anthologies (2014)
Themed collections of performance documentation and works for camera that LADA has been invited to curate for public programmes.
Read moreLet’s Get Classy (2018)
This Guide was written by the artist Kelly Green as part of a LADA research residency exploring Live Art practices and methodologies when working with those who are excluded through economic and social barriers, and particularly reasons of class.
Read moreLive Art and Animals (2020)
This Study Room Guide on Live Art and animals is based on the artists’ films, books and contextualising materials LADA developed for Animals of Manchester (including HUMANZ) and documentation of that project.
Read moreLive Art and Kids (2017)
A Study Room Guide by the artist and researcher Sibylle Peters looking at key issues and works in relation to Live Art by, for, and with, children.
Read moreLive Art and Motherhood (2016)
This Guide features fourteen individual artists and two artist collectives working in the mediums of Live Art around the topic of the maternal.
Read moreMaking it Your Own? – Social Engagement and Participation (2009)
This Guide directs you to key artworks and texts in the Study Room (and beyond) in which the artist’s intention is to engage the audience in the work.
Read moreMaking Routes (2012)
This Guide is interested in roots as well as routes; acknowledging the geographical, cultural and political context from which ideas and practices develop.
Read moreOn Falling (2013)
The On Falling Study Room Guide is a compilation of material from the Study Room Gathering Live Art and Falling hosted by Amy Sharrocks in November 2012.
Read moreOn Neurodiversity (2019)
Responding to a widespread lack of resources on neurodiversity and performance, this Study Room Guide containing a collection of recorded conversations with neurodivergent artists working in Live Art and performance; a list of resources relating to this field and a contextualising essay by the artist Daniel Oliver.
Read moreOne to One Performance (2009)
One to One Performance offers a series of reflections on a number of performances created by artists for an ‘audience of one’.
Read morePerformance, Politics, Ethics & Human Rights (2006)
A Study Room Guide considering issues of Performance, Politics, Ethics and Human Rights, in relation to historical and contemporary practices and ideas of representation, documentation and archiving.
Read morePerforming Borders (2016)
This Guide explores the notion of border in relation to Live Art and the works of experimental artists addressing issues around physical borders.
Read moreRemoteness (2015)
In this Guide Tracey considers wider issues of remoteness and art through a range of artists’ practice with “the odd deviation into literature and theory”.
Read moreSissy (2018)
This Guide was written by the artist Nando Messias, outlining theoretical and practical research into effeminacy, queer visibility and social violence.
Read moreTake the money and run? (2012)
In this Guide, arts, social justice and environmental group Platform has selected key texts that can be useful in helping to position oneself ethically.
Read moreThe Body in Performance (2005)
Franko B was invited to produce a guide looking at body based practices, including works employing the body as an artistic tool and site of representation. This guide was published in 2005.
Read moreThe Displaced and Privilege (2017)
This Guide was researched and written by the artist and researcher Elena Marchevska as part of a LADA research residency for exploring Live Art practices and methodologies in working with the displaced.
Read moreThe More You Ignore Me The Closer You Get: Notes on socially engaged practice (2008)
Robert Pacitti’s Study Room Guide addresses socially and politically engaged performances that seek to question and transform the institutions of power.
Read moreUninstalling Normality (2024)
A Study Room Guide on Madness, Mad Pride & Questioning Normality authored by Dolly Sen
Read moreWALKING WOMEN (2017)
This Guide is a record of WALKING WOMEN, a series of events held in London and Edinburgh in July and August 2016 celebrating the work of women using walking in their practice.
Read moreYou may perform a spell against the madness (2006)
Works that attempt to what possibly lies ahead, be that a city, a forest, a face, a cultural condition, a time, a language, a room or a sky.
Read more