Launching in 2024, performingborders is thrilled to introduce the Live Art Writers Network (LAWN), 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.  

Responding to a critical need within the sector, this network seeks to provide much-needed space for reflection, critique, and experimental writing on live art, specifically outside of academic contexts. 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. 

To do this we will be working with writers whose practice has been shaped by lived experiences of intersectional borders. This includes – but is not exclusively – folks who have experience of migration and also those who have migratory heritage. We work with a definition of border that is open and acknowledges the diversity of experiences at the intersections of cultural, juridical, racial, gendered, class, physical, economic, and everyday borders.

2024 PROGRAMME

In this first pilot year, the project will begin with commissioning local writers across two festivals: CITEMOR in Portugal (Aug 2024) and Fierce Festival (October 2024). These writers will be invited to engage with the festival’s performances, contributing to discussions and producing reflective, multidisciplinary writings. 

CITEMOR, Portugal

At CITEMOR Portugal based writers, Dori Nigro and Paulo Pinto, have been invited to accompany the festival and meet artists, producers and directors whilst in residency across the various festival locations. They are being accompanied by writer and thinker Claudia Galhós.

Fierce Festival, Birmingham, UK

At Fierce, performingborders will join three Birmingham based writers and facilitate gatherings to support and stimulate creative and critical approaches to writing in response to the festival. They will host a public open gathering during the festival on Saturday 19th October at 11:30-12:30,  where audiences and other writers are welcome to meet us in this process and find out more about the network. We will be inviting two Scotland-based writers to join us for this strand of the programme, in collaboration with Take Me Somewhere festival. More information on the Fierce programme here: wearefierce.org/event/live-art-writers-network-lawn

We are excited to announce that the following writers will join us for LAWN’s 2024 programme at Fierce, they have been commissioned to write in response to the festival context in works to be published in December 2024. 

^{Left: Harmanpreet Randhawa, Right -Top: Rupinder Kaur Waraich, Right- Bottom: example Communion by Leah Hickey}

Rupinder Kaur Waraich (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist based in the West Midlands whose work encompasses poetry, writing, performance, and acting, with a focus on feminine narratives. Her practice delves into themes of the body, history, language, sexuality, and spirituality. Her debut poetry collection, Rooh (2018), was published by Verve Poetry Press, and she is now working on her second collection. Waraich’s poetry and writing have been featured in various magazines and journals.

Rupinder has extensive experience devising theatre for companies across the Midlands. Her one-woman show, Imperfect, Perfect Woman, showcased at the Wolverhampton Literature Festival, while her short film, The Two Artists—which she co-wrote and acted in—debuted at the UK Asian Film Festival in 2023. As a BBC New Creative, she created The Girls That Hide and Seek, a spoken word piece addressing gendered violence. She has also participated in artist residencies at JOYA Arte in Spain, Art House in Holland, and Preet Nagar in Panjab.

Her recent work integrates poetry, dance, and film, particularly in her performance art films Finding Kali and The Search. A 2023 DYCP grant enabled her to further explore movement, dance, and poetry. Driven by curiosity and dedication, Rupinder continues to explore and create at the intersection of writing, film, and theatre.WEBSITE: rupinderkw.com

Harmanpreet Randhawa is an artist working across sculpture, writing, drawing, installation and performance. Oscillating between the domestic and the sensual, their practice employs material-oriented and drawing-based approaches exploring the complexities of longing, belonging and desire through an autoethnographic lens. 

In 2023, Harman was an artist-in-residence at Modern Art Oxford as part of its Boundary Encounters Programme. Their residency culminated in a performance work supported by the Grand Plan Fund presented at the gallery in May 2024. They have previously published in Art Review Oxford’s issues ‘Ecological Grief’ and ‘Precarity’ where they explored human and more-than-human connections and traced non-heteronormative arrangements in ethnic domestic spaces.

Recently, Harman has collaborated with friends and researchers from the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford to deliver a series of artmaking workshops and artist talks focused on rethinking human-nature relationships and geographical research through decolonial perspectives. Harman has also supported researcher Mattia Troiano with the implementation of a participatory drawing-based method to explore community values and inequities of access to and planning of urban green spaces in Oxford. INSTAGRAM: @h_a_r_m_a_n_art

Leah Hickey (b. 1996, Walsall, UK) is an artist led by heartache. Hickey uses English Romantic poetry and auto-fiction as a starting point for rhythmic verse, typographic painting and gravestones. The artist’s work is influenced by classical American cinematography, performative femininity, and Christian and Druidic ritual surrounding death. Hickey currently produces ‘Emotional Outbursts’, a ‘part-fact, part-fiction otherworld of love letters’ that merges free verse poetry and Early Modern English language with contextual research, which has manifested in print form. Hickey also co-directs Prayer Room, an artist-led gallery in Birmingham, UK, and recently founded Tentative Press. WEBSITE: leahhickey.com

Joining us at Fierce are also two writers coming from Glasgow, who we are bringing in collaboration with Take Me Somewhere. 

^{Left: Nelly Kelly, Right: Huss}

Nelly Kelly (they/them) is a trans-butch and disabled playwright, dramaturg, performance maker and consultant. Their work uses humour, spectacle, and vulnerability to promote intersectional community connection and to invite its cis and abled audiences to more authentically connect with the contemporary lives of trans and disabled humans.
They are currently developing their next show, ‘The TransMission’, a playful piece of queer performance that positions the central character as the leader of the trans cult community, opening its doors to cis people for the first time. ‘The TransMission’ is created and performed by Nelly, produced by Sanctuary Queer Arts, commissioned by the Unlimited UK Open Award 2024, made possible thanks to funding from Creative Scotland and support from the National Theatre of Scotland. WEBSITE: nellykellytheatre.co.uk 

HUSS is a queer Arab multidisciplinary artist based in Glasgow. Tackling personal and political themes, his discipline involves experimenting and combining elements such as installation, sculpture, visuals, poetry and audio to culminate in immersive performance and moving image pieces. Huss uses his work to raise issues facing the Arab world that lack acknowledgment in western society, especially topics of displacement, queer laws and how much it has always censored and endangered artists like himself. INSTAGRAM: @huss.ac

METAL, Peterborough and Southend, UK

We will follow this with a short residency for three writers, hosted with METAL. This strand of LAWN will be focused on the potential of writing in relation to performances to camera and what it means to engage digitally or remotely with live art. 

The programme will end with a performingborders pamphlet in December 2024, where we will share commissioned writings and reflections from this pilot.

If you are interested to find out more, as an organisation, as a writer, or as a publishing space, please get in touch at [email protected]. More updates to follow! 

LAWN is commissioned by performingborders, FIERCE Festival, Take Me Somewhere, CITEMOR, and METAL Culture, and it is supported with funds by Arts Council England and Necessity Fund.

Image Credits: Still from re-seeding, Jade Montserrat, 2020