This year the Steakhouse Live annual festival LONGER WETTER FASTER BETTER will for the first time encompass a group of embedded critical writers, led / mentored by critic, curator and academic Diana Damian Martin and performance writer and artist Bojana Jankovic.
All the Steakhouse Live: Writing responses created during the festival are now available to view on the Critical Interruption website.
This pilot project will focus on developing models of critical writing about Live Art that are formally daring, critically rigorous, contextually relevant and adaptive to the needs of an ever-changing, shape-shifting field.
The programme consists of the following:
- Two workshops, exploring relevant histories and practices of criticism in relation to live art, as well as providing a set of provocations, contextual, social and political, emerging from the works presented in LONGER WETTER FASTER BETTER
- A durational, embedded writing project occurring throughout the festival, where participating writers will be responding to the different works presented, exploring the possibilities of this model within a festival-context. This iteration of the programme will also feature a Writers Hub.
- Reflective articles following the festival by participating writers, published in Exeunt Magazine
- A follow-on publication that collates writing, commissions and reflections on both the works presented and the writing project itself, edited by Diana and Bojana.
Participating writers were selected through an open call, focused specifically on emerging writers and those new to the field of live art. As a result, the group includes established artists and students, bringing experience and perspectives of visual arts, theatre, choreography and literature to discussions of Live Art.
You can follow the live critical responses throughout the festival on the dedicated website (details to come); on Saturday and Sunday, the responses will be coming from the writers’ hub, located in Rich Mix and the Toynbee Studios, and projected live in the venues.
Bios:
Diana Damian Martin is a performance writer, critic and theorist. She is Lecturer in Performance Arts at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and Contributing Editor at Exeunt, where she founded the Performance section.
Bojana Jankovic is a performance artist and writer and co-founder of performance company There There. Her performance and critical practice are both focused on issues of immigrant and national identities.
Steakhouse writers:
Jennifer Boyd is a creative/critical writer based in London. She graduated from an MA in Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths in 2013. Her research interests include emancipatory sensations, subversive politics and the materiality of language. She has produced writings for magazines including SALT. and After Us, and galleries including Five Years Gallery, London; National Media Museum, Bradford; and Center for Contemporary Art, Estonia.
Katharina Joy Book, born in Germany, currently based in London. working primarily and often collaboratively in words + speech, choreography, and performativity. research revolves around processes of translation and transcription, visual poetry, and ‘response-ability’.
Since moving to the UK from Bangkok, Thailand, Palin Ansusinha is now in her third year studying English Literature at King’s College London. Her academic interest lies in the theoretical and practical field where literature, performance, and contemporary art intersect. She aims to develop this multidisciplinary way of thinking in her critical writings and in ways of presenting them in her pursuit of a curatorial career.