Thresholds of Care | HUSS | Take Me Somewhere
The Live Art Writers Network (LAWN) aims to cultivate and support experimental writing practices in response to live art and performance. This iteration of LAWN was curated and developed in collaboration with Take Me Somewhere Festival and in dialogue with writer and artist Diana Damian Martin’s work around nonconforming criticism, which questions the imperial logics of criticism, and thinks from and with political and creative approaches to creative and critical writing and practice that hold multiple relations and conversations with performance and art.
Under this frame, we’ve invited Glasgow-based artist HUSS to be a writer in residency at Take Me Somewhere 2025, attend shows and events, and create a critical/ creative response to the festival, its programme and the city. For this invitation, and thinking about the historical context of the festival, and the long history of live art in the city, we wanted to focus on liveness in relation to performance, and how liveness can enter and shape HUSS’ writing practice. How might tending to presence in performance, to forms of attention in the midst of performance taking place, open up writing as a space through which to tend to time and place?
One of the curatorial frameworks for the festival is journeys through the city, moving across Glasgow to reach different venues, spaces and energies, and thinking through what one might encounter in between. Migrancy, border-crossing and other forms of wandering, vagrancy and collective movement come into play and impact on how liveness and presence shape bodies in movement and vice-versa.
Below, is HUSS’s commission, the result of a personal exploration of what he experienced, as someone who exists at the intersections of various borders in the city.
Audio version, read by HUSS
Alternatively, you can also read the text-only version here: Thresholds of Care (text-only)
Or the original PDF here: Thresholds of Care (PDF)
For more information on shows/performances and the festival mentioned in this commission, please follow the links below:
Festival: Take Me Somewhere Festival link
Show 1: Handle With Care by Ontroerend Goed link
Show 2: The Mongrel – Shawn Nayar link
Show 3: Cultural Exchange Rate – Tania El Khoury link
Show 4: Public Trust – Paul Ramírez Jonas link
HUSS is an Arab multidisciplinary artist, performer, filmmaker, and programmer based in Glasgow. His work tackles queerness, memory, and exile, weaving together personal and political narratives that confront themes of displacement, censorship, and survival. Moving fluidly between film, performance, moving image, installation, sculpture, and sound, his practice creates spaces where fragmented histories and silenced voices can be heard, challenging dominant narratives that often overlook Arab and diasporic experiences. His work has been shown nationally and internationally, from Cairo, Malta, Prague, and Kosovo to the V&A Dundee, Southbank Centre, and Edinburgh Fringe. He has held programming and curating positions at LUX Scotland and Refugee Festival Scotland, and he is currently a curator at the Scottish Queer International Film Festival.
The Live Art Writers Network x Take Me Somewhere 2025 project was conceived and curated by performingborders, Diana Damian Martin and LJ Findlay-Walsh and Karl Taylor at Take Me Somewhere Festival. Commissioned by Take Me Somewhere Festival with additional funding by Royal Central School of Speech & Drama – University of London, through UKRI Impact Accelerator funding.
Live Art Writers Network (LAWN), is a network aimed at cultivating experimental writing practices happening in dialogue with performance and live art. This project aspires to create a nurturing environment for writers to meet and engage with performance contexts, providing connection, mentorship, and a publishing platform for developing practices. Our mission is to foster creative and critical responses to performance that resonate and respond to conversations happening on a local level whilst linking to transnational critical dialogue on performance, publishing, artwork, labour, and political action. You can read more about it here in Live Art Writers Network page.
Take Me Somewhere is an international, biennial festival and year-round sector support organisation that exists to position Scotland as the place to create and experience radical performance. At the heart of the festival is a desire to connect people, ideas, and possibilities, and create a space for personal and political transformation.
Diana Damian Martin is a writer, artist and researcher working on questions of borders, performance, experimental practices as well as alternative critical cultures and collaborative work. She co-hosts collectives Something Other, Department of Feminist Conversations, Critical Interruptions, Generative Constraints and is a programme leader for the BA (Hons) Performance and Contemporary Arts at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
