performingborders Pamphlet #6 – Live Art Writers Network | 2024 Commissions
18th December 2024In 2024, performingborders launched the Live Art Writers Network (LAWN), which collectively explored and nurtured experimental writing practices that unfold in dialogue with and in response to performance and live art, platforming writers and artists whose work is shaped by lived experiences of intersectional borders. The first set of commissions are now live!
We began by commissioning local writers for two festivals – Citemor Festival in Montemor-o-Velho, Portugal (August) and Fierce Festival in Birmingham, UK (October) where we also invited writers based in Glasgow and Peterborough to engage with LAWN via access to shows, workshops, and digital performances broadening how writing can intersect with live art beyond the festival context (more about the project, the various contexts, artists, mentors and partnerships here).
We hope you enjoy our brand new commissions – all of which ponder what it means to sit in relation to performance through writing, poetry, and the body.
Sobrevoos e mergulhos, amplitudes e recortes: Citemor´24, prática artística, risco e descolonização
[…] Sair do porto em direção a Montemor o Velho, de comboio, proporcionou-nos entrar em contacto com paisagens urbanas e rurais em movimentos poéticos, que antecediam a promessa de encontro com uma parte da história da performance em Portugal, a se redesenhar continuamente longe de espaços hegemônicos há mais de 50 anos. Dori Nigro e Paulo Pinto
Limbs everywhere: on speech, self and the Body
[…] Recognising the boundaries of language my reflections extend into a collage and a tracklist meditating on the body that is always shifting, without a master/self, (dis)integrating into all and none and re-making itself. Harmanpreet Randhawa
Ballerina, butterfly
[…] I arrive with baited breath, and sit alone beneath clear, dark skies. Caressed by the cold of October, I wring my hands and check the time. I wait. Slowly emerging, eyes dart to the open doors before me. A familiar face and soft hand leads the way, as I retreat into a different kind of darkness. Leah Hickey
in the beginning we were all performers
[…] What defines a border? A fragment, a sensation, a drop of water. To live. To be alive. To breathe as art, to exist in the present. Eyes closed, eyes open. To breathe. Whose body? My body, your body, our collective body. A border, a fragment, a sensation, a drop of water. Alive. Art that lives and breathes. Live art. Rupinder Kaur Waraich
Live Art Writers Network 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.
