Description
While You Are With Us Here Tonight is a publication by artist Tim Etchells, whose work shifts between performance, visual art and fiction.
Arising from his Legacy: Thinker in Residence Award from the Live Art Development Agency and Tate Research, the book reflects on questions of legacy, archive and memory, in relation to the artist’s own practise and the times in which it has developed.
While You Are With Us Here Tonight is organised around a text from the 2001 performance First Night, a landmark project for the Sheffield-based group Forced Entertainment, which Etchells has led since its inception in 1984. Using this single text from the archive as a point of departure, the book reflects on Etchells’ work, both alone and with the group, as well as exploring wider ideas and questions concerning contemporary performance and documentation.
The book presents a more-or-less delirious set of overlapping footnotes in text and image – uneven and dispersed interjections running alongside the First Night performance text – revealing, contesting and expanding its concerns through the multiple perspectives of Etchells and invited contributors Adrian Heathfield, Hugo Glendinning, Janez Jansa, Kate McIntosh, Terry O’Connor and Vlatka Horvat.
“For those familiar with Tim Etchells’ genre spanning and, to some extent, genre defying work, the unconventional format of his most recent publication will come as no surprise. This does not, however, diminish any delight on encountering the strange flesh of While You Are With Us Here Tonight, as its pages attempt to stitch together an energetic corpus that is otherwise known as Etchells’ artistic practice.” – A-N, 2013
Live Art Development Agency, 2013. 96 pages, full colour, paperback, 30cm x 23cm.
ISBN 978-0-9573938-2-0
Trade orders: Central Books. Find the details on Unbound Trade Orders and Distribution Information page.
