In this section, you’ll find content about work that falls into the category of performance art, which often includes interdisciplinary work, especially work that combines visual art and performance, and is based around the actions of the artist. A great place to start is the series Conversations Across Generations, featuring dialogues between UK-based performance artists discussing their work, lives, and inspiration.
Through one-on-one transformational encounters, Oakley Boycott’s SENSES build community in the mountains of Wyoming. Anne Mason tracks the development of the series—including SILENCE, ECHO, and NOISE—and the ways SENSES makes space for participants to rage or write or sit in contemplation and collectivity.
Plant Man is a performative forest: a full-body suit filled with living plants, created and inhabited by Marco Guagnelli. He writes about the ways this performance-based artistic research project explores embodied relationships with nature through plant-filled garments and performative actions.
Using Sarah Cameron Sunde’s 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea, Dr. Una Chaudhuri articulates protocols for endurance—through performance, connection, and action—as we face the rising tide of climate emergency.
Interdisciplinary artists and producers Jennie Hahn and Sharon Mansur are connecting performance and community through their work in Indigenous-settler relations and Arab American artist communities, respectively. In this MicroCosmos encounter, they consider the practices and experiments at the heart of their work.
There are so many cool Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) and Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) performance artists out there! Since this performance art season only had ten episodes to talk to artists directly, this last episode wraps up the season and goes through a whole bunch of other contemporary artists that hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson are excited about.
Palestinian filmmaker Basma al-Sharif dives into her award-winning pieces to discuss film as performance art. This discussion leads into the role of activism in the arts and the ways film responds to and comments on current events.
This episode analyzes narrative podcasts as a form of performance. Hosts Nabra Nelson and Marina Johnson and guest multi-hyphenate artist Laila Abdo utilize Laila’s latest project The Great Pyramid Scheme to discuss how comedy can be used as a powerful form of representation.
Hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson are joined by poets Fargo Tbakhi and George Abraham to explore the intersection of poetry and performance art. They discuss live expression, their collaborative process, and how performance can challenge norms and spark conversations about identity, diaspora, and revolution.
This episode dives into the performance art of Lebanese artist Rima Najdi. From Hollywood's portrayal of Arab women to navigating complex personal and political landscapes, this thought-provoking discussion highlights the power of performance art in creating social change.
Lebanese multidisciplinary artist Khansa shares his artistic journey, blending traditional Middle Eastern music with modern avant-pop, and offers a behind-the-scenes look at his creative process. This episode delves deep into the power of art as a medium for cultural fusion and storytelling.
Live artist Tania El Khoury discusses her creative process, the ways audience participation cultivates solidarity and awareness of social justice issues, her role as the director of the Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College, and the intersection of art and activism in her work.
Ifrah Mansour creates performance art that explores joy and healing while connecting communities. In this essay, she illuminates the connections between her work and her experiences as a Somali American, a refugee, and a Muslim woman.
An Ongoing Conversation Between Artists, Thinkers, and Activists
Wednesday 10 July 2024
London, UK
performingborders is excited to invite you to join artists Rosa-Johan Uddoh and Party Office for an open online conversation exploring their upcoming performingborders commissions: our annual performance to camera for 2024 and our guest-curated digital pamphlet, both to be published before 10 July.
A Podcast-Video Art Experiment Inviting Artists With a History of Migration Who Work with Food-Making and Food-Sharing as Creative Tools
Friday 14 June and Saturday 15 June 2024
London, UK
Two special ‘An Evening with…’ style live events, with home-made food sharing and conversations with artists Selina Thompson and Toni-Dee (Friday 14th) and Sonia Sandhu (Saturday 15th). Together, they spent the day buying food from local markets and independent shops, cook together and then traveled to Theatre in the Mill to share it all with you.
Panels and Performances from the Global Community of Live Digital Art
Thursday 13 June to Saturday 15 June 2024
Toronto, Canada
Join us for the launch of PLAY: Dramaturgies of Participation by Dr. Jenn Stephenson and Mariah (Mo) Horner; a panel on AI in Creative Performance by bluemouth inc, Cole Lewis, and David Rokeby; and a performance of Windrush by Marcel Stewart and Oonya Kempadoo.
Austin’s pop princess, p1nkstar, shares the story of her evolution from performance artist creating a pop star persona for Instagram to real life pop star to community leader creating spaces for fellow trans artists to showcase their work in Texas. This episode also features guest co-host Melissa Lin Sturges, coordinator of the annual Doric Wilson Panel for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) LGBTQ+ Focus Group.
A Constellation of Artist Talks, Ceremonies, a Digital Performance Showcase, and Varied Conjures/Facilitations on Black Virtuosic Hope-Building
Thursday 27 July - Sunday 30 July 2023
Philadelphia, PA
Highlighting sacred local cultural institutions including the Colored Girls Museum, the Discovery Center, and a ritual tour across the city of Philadelphia, this gathering is a space for a stirring up of a new hope, inspired entirely by the study of our ancestral and living leaders who have built for themselves and their communities a daily practice of Black virtuosic hope.
An Improvisation Inspired by George Tabori’s Legendary Brecht on Brecht Collage
Thursday 23 March 2023
New York City
Poems, songs, and play excerpts from Brecht about war, refugees, and singing about dark times are mixed with writings from Heiner Müller about theatre, America, capitalism and the end of revolutions.
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club presents Posaka with Kinding Sindaw livestreaming on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Saturday 22 October 2022 at 1 p.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 3 p.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC -5) / 4 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4).
In this episode, co-hosts Bíborka and Zsófi are joined by visual and performance artist and environmental activist, Éva Bubla; dancer, choreographer, researcher, and founder of the performance research group SVUNG, Kinga Szemessy; and culture manager, event organizer, curator, founder of the PLACCC Festival, and the Hungarian liaison for the IN SITU Network, Fanni Nánay. Drawing from their individual experiences, they discuss the current climate crisis and how different artists engage with this complex issue.
In this episode, hosts Zsófi and Bíborka take apart autobiographical theatre with stage director Panni Néder, actress Judit Tarr, actor and director László Göndör, and director and dramaturg Kristóf Kelemen. Together they delve into their approach to autobiographical material, playing themselves versus acting, their lives after creating a highly personal show, and the nuances of someone else playing them onstage.
In the third episode of PUHA podcast, co-hosts Zsófi and Bíborka talk to the interdisciplinary collective Hollow, the experimental scenographer Eszter Kálmán, and dancer-choreographer Beatrix Simkó. Together, they discuss how their work features across different media and mixes visual and digital art with performativity. Get ready for a journey across household noise choreographies, moving bodies in Vienna’s Leopold Museum, underground queer communities in Tbilisi, and stories of friendship and pregnancy in performance art!
In this week’s episode of PUHA podcast, co-hosts Bíborka and Zsófi navigate their way through a discussion of what queerness means with performer, actress, and director Veronika Szabó; contemporary dancer Kemelo Sehlapelo; and dancer, choreographer, and clubber Gergő Dávid Farkas. Together, they contemplate identities, responsibility, and the way queer people exist in society.
In the first episode of PUHA (Performative Unity in the Hungarian Arts) podcast, co-hosts Zsófi and Bíborka, along with their guests, search for the meaning of the notion of “public space.” Through the experiences and experiments of interdisciplinary sound artist Dávid Somló; choreographer Flóra Eszter Sarlós; dancer and choreographer Gyula Cserepes; and theatremaker and performer Sarah Günther, this episode will take you on a tour of spaces, from Budapest to Denmark to London and more!
In part two of his essay, Russian theatremaker Viktor Vilisov delves deeper into the performative nature of war itself and how art can create spaces for collective remembrance and grief.
