Tantalising Glimpses (2020)

A LADA Study Room Guide on Fat by Charlotte Cooper

Noting that “Fat is a compelling subject for Live Artists but fat Live Art remains quite hard to find“, this Study Room Guide by the writer, activist, artist, psychotherapist and cultural critic Charlotte Cooper attends to a lack of resources and visibility around fat in Live Art. Seeking out ‘tantalising glimpses’ of fat within LADA’s Study Room collection, and drawing on theories of the queer gaze in cinematic histories, Charlotte’s guide offers a new lens for locating fat in Live Art. It is an invaluable for anyone interested in fat, queerness, feminism and bodies.

Read 'Tantalising Glimpses'
Fat, especially the fat queer feminist thinking that I am grounded in, is a fringe discourse. By this I mean that it's obscure, most people don't know about it, it's easy to overlook as trivial. Fat is all about eating and exercise or 'loving your curves,' it's boring, a flimsy subject for deluded people, it's unhealthy and shouldn't be encouraged, there's nothing new to say about it. If you think this, you are wrong and I am about to set you right and explain why you might not have thought about this until now.

Banner image credit:

‘Spitting on the BMI Chart’, Fattylympics, 2012. Image by Matthew See.

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.

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A 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.

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A Swiss Study Room Guide (2021)

A Study Room Guide on Swiss Live Art authored by Andrea Saemann and Madeleine Amsler

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Are 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.

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Bodily 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.

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Brutal 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.

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Deception, 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.

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Disability 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.

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Dreams for an Institution (2013)

This Guide looks at artists’ projects that engage with institutions, and considers how performance practice has engaged and challenged institutions.

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EcoFutures (2020)

A Study Room Guide on Queer, Feminist and Decolonial Ecologies in Live Art, curated by Arts Feminism Queer / CUNTemporary.

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Food & Performance (2016)

The Guide has a specific focus on food, eating, and dining as they have been explored in artist performance and Live Art.

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Glimpses 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.

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Hear 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.

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In 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.

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In 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.

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Know-how (2017)

Lois Weaver’s Study Room Guide, Know-how, explores the possibilities of Live Art practices and methodologies in working with older people.

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LADA Anthologies (2014)

Themed collections of performance documentation and works for camera that LADA has been invited to curate for public programmes.

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Let’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.

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Live 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.

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Live 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.

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Live 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.

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Making 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.

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Making 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.

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Managing the Radical (2020)

Managing the Radical is a project 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.

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On 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.

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On 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.

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One 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’.

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Performance, 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.

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Performing 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.

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Remoteness (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”.

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Sissy (2018)

This Guide was written by the artist Nando Messias, outlining theoretical and practical research into effeminacy, queer visibility and social violence.

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Take 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.

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The 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.  

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The 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.

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The 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.

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Uninstalling Normality (2024)

A Study Room Guide on Madness, Mad Pride & Questioning Normality authored by Dolly Sen

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WALKING 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.

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You 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.

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