Artist Focus

Facilitated by lo bil
Photo credit Craphone Liu

On Saturday April 5, 2025 lo bil was in conversation with Paul Couillard about his trip to Japan in Summer 2024 where he participated in a festival organized by Daisuke Takeya and traveled to other performance art spaces to create work. This included a 24 durational work in Tokyo at an event organized by Sakiko Yamaoka.

About Paul Couillard
Paul Couillard has been working as a queer artist, curator, and performance art scholar since 1985, based in Toronto/Tkaronto, Canada. He has created more than 300 solo and collaborative performance works in 26 countries, often working with his partner Ed Johnson. He was the Performance Art Curator for FADO Performance Art Centre in Toronto, Canada from 1993 until 2007, and he is a founding co-curator of Toronto's 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art. Paul has been a lecturer at McMaster University and the University of Toronto Scarborough, and holds a doctorate in Communication and Culture from York University. He is the editor of several monographs on Canadian performance artists and the recipient of the 2022 Joan Yvonne Lowndes Award for curatorial writing.

Photos: Seiko Kitayama, Craphone Liu, Uchida Sota, Daisuke Takeya, Sakiko Yamaoka

Key Links:
Collaborative performance at Subterranean in Tokyo "MarginalMan23" https://www.subterranean.jp/boats (includes a review in Japanese, but you can run it through a translator to see an English version)

Responding6 Performance Art Initiative   / www.responding.jp   Archive of early iterations of Responding https://daisuketakeya.com/curatorial/...

Maron Shibukawa's reflections on Responding6 https://maronbooks.wordpress.com/2024...
IPAMIA - Independent Performance Artists' Moving Images Archive https://ipamia.net/
Durational Performance Projects Tokyo (DPPT)   / dppt2024  

Paul Couillard's artist talk about Durational Performance for DPPT (English version    • 20240818 A Lecture by Paul Couillard,...  

Facilitated by Isabel Leon
Photo credit Anita de-Austria

On Saturday April 26 Isabel Leon was in conversation with long-term artistic collaborator Ana Matey. Please note this Artist Focus is in Spanish exploring the nuances of Butoh dance practice in conjunction with public performance art practices. An English translation of the conversation is being adapted for subtitles.

About Ana Matey
Ana Matey is a nomadic multidisciplinary artist currently working in the project “Landscape-Lenguage” thanks to a grant at El Palacio Art Residency (Gijón/ Spain). Ana understands art as the ideal place to establish new relationships and questioning about our way of living and relating, proposing works where the meditative and trance are the protagonist. She studied Audiovisual Communication, Image, Photography and Butoh Dance. Her career began in 2001 and since 2006 she dedicates herself full time to her activity as an artist, trainer and facilitator. Co-founder of the collective El Carromato (2006-2010) a multidisciplinary space in Madrid where ARTóN (2009-2014), a monthly meeting dedicated to the practice, promotion, research and documentation of action art is gestated. In 2012, together with artist Isabel León, she cocreated EXCHANGE Live Art, a collective research and creation project, and MATSUcreación, a house-workshop and meeting place between art and nature through laboratories and different activities. She has participated in action art festivals around the world and her work has been exhibited in museums, galleries, theaters and alternative spaces, both nationally and internationally, being recognized with various awards and grants. She is a member of MAV (Woman in the Visual Arts). www.anamatey.com @anamateyart

Facilitated by Jolanda Jansen
Photo credit Jasques Martens

This is a very special conversation about Meri Hietala’s work intimately facilitated by Jolanda Jansen who has curated Meri’s work and performed at festivals. Funny stories are shared in connection with the process of creating performance art and when one is on a creative flow.

About Meri Hietala
Meri Hietala is an internationally working multidisciplinary artist, focusing atm on performance, sound art and art education. She graduated 2014 from Aalto University Helsinki, with a Masters in Environmental Arts. She has performed i.e. in Starptelpa Latvian performance art festival in Riga 2024, R.A.W. (Relational Art Week) Myymälä2 Helsinki 2022, V.I.P.A.W. performance art festival in Venice 2017 and On the Cusp performance art festival in Bangarra Dance Theater Sydney 2015. At the moment she lives and works in Hämeenlinna Helsinki.

“I use my body as a tool and material, findings and observations of the environments and spheres. Site specific art is in the core of my practice. I explore multisensory observations, drawing from dreams and collective subconscious phenomenons into ritualistic communal performances. I am learning the seremonial ways of our ancestors and creating bridges with my art to connect and belong, to share and support the ecosystems and interconnectedness on this planet. Sound is the universal language of mother earth that I trust.”

www.merihietala.net

Facilitated by Beau Coleman
Photo credit Hope Idorevin

We are thrilled that Odun Orimolade has generously curated a selection of artists from Nigeria and Ghana to be part of the Artist Focus conversations this year.

About Tolulope Ami-Williams
Tolulope Ami-Williams is a performance artist, art educator, and creative writer. A graduate of Yaba College ofTechnology (2018), she is completing an MA in Contemporary Performance at Manchester Metropolitan University. Utilizing her body, sound, poetic writing, and symbolic materials like masks and charcoal, she creates performances and installations that explore the relationship between internal and external factors in identity formation.

Since 2016, Tolulope has participated in Lagos community festivals, including the Iwaya Community Art Biennale, Artist Cross Road Festival, Boju Boju Night, and Eran Jije, combining performance art with social development workshops.

Her work responds to the world by combining her body, media, method and materials to stage performances that interrogate the notion of identity (who we are), ancestrality(what is the combination that forms who you are genetically, spiritually, historically, culturally) and empowerment (how does thisreflect in what we consider to be knowledge, our philosophy). Incorporating text murals, sculpture installations, photography, and sound installations,

Ami-Williams creates juxtapositions of elements, principles, materials, and symbolism. As an autobiographical artist, vulnerability plays an integral role in her creative process. She is a 2023/2024 Chevening Scholar and recipient of the 2023 Prince Claus Fund Seed Award.

Facilitated by lo bil
Photo Credit Jamie Gannon

About Rachel Lindsay - Snow
While grappling with laborious actions of ritual and repetition much of Lindsay-Snow's recent work engages notions of mortality, cycle, and the temporal through the poetic gesture.  Through installation, performance and sculpture; and the use of multiples, process, the surreal, and uncanny: Lindsay-Snow collaborates in moments of pause, re-centering, and questioning. They see the process of making art as a practice of asking questions, research, and wonder.

​Originally from a small town in Upstate New York, Lindsay-Snow has lived the last thirteen years in Chicago where they obtained a Bachelor's of Arts in Conflict Transformation and in Art.  

Lindsay-Snow then received an MFA at the University of Illinois in visual arts with a graduate minor in dance.

Facilitated by Carron Little
Photo Credit Aor Nopawan

About Jolanda Jansen
Jolanda Jansen (NL) graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (2005) followed by post graduate studies at the Dutch Art Institute in Enschede (2007) She is founder and organizer of Performance Site P.S.- performance art events in The Hague.

In her carefully constructed but direct performances and video installations, Jolanda submits her body to various transformations, or rather deformations, to engage with the possibility of self reinvention and release from cultural determinations. Her work often stages the passage from a sexualized female body to an animal-like corporeality as a way of challenging constraining definitions of self and of femininity. She strives to dis-organize and transform her own controlled body and engage with issues of voyeurism and gender power relations.

Her video and performance work has been featured internationally among others at Guggenheim, Bilbao (Spain), Defibrillator Gallery space Chicago (USA),Gasometer Oberhausen (Germany), Nan- Hai Gallery (Taipei), CREATurE Live Art Festival Kaunas (Lithuania), Residency Unlimited New York (USA), Witzenhausengallery New York (USA), Scope Basel (Switzerland), Cel 32, Berlin (Germany) Arnolfini, Bristol (UK), CREATurE Live Art Festival, Kaunas (Lithuania), NordArt Carlshütte Büdelsdorf (Germany), Warsaw International Performance Art Weekend (Poland), Solyanka Gallery Moscow (Russia), PAO Performance Art Oslo (Norway), Performance Crossings (Czech Republic), Venice Performance art week (Italy), Manggha museum Krakow (Poland), Art Center Antares Taidekeskus Sippola (Finland), Morni Hills Performance Art Biennale-II, Government Museum, Chandigarh (India), Performancear O MORIR (Mexico), Jang An Gallery Suncheon (Korea), BACC Bangkok (Thailand) and Kuryokhin Center for Contemporary Art Saint Petersbur (Russia).

Facilitated by lo bil
Photo Credit Rachel Topham

About Kate Barry

Facilitated by Beau Coleman
Photo Credit Mucama Ama

About Isabel León
Spanish visual artist, performer, independent cultural activist and teacher.

Graduate in Fine Arts and scholarship in Athens (Greece) and Havana (Cuba). Official Master's Degree in Artistic Production and Research at the UGR.

Her work moves between video performance and live action art, media to which she has been intensely dedicated since 2007. She conceives artistic practice as an act closely linked to life, which is why her work is connected to her most intimate feelings, thoughts and emotions. She is interested in the seemingly insignificant, the playful and the absurd with a work that arises from the here and now and in which she leaves a special space for intuition.

She has participated in numerous festivals, action art meetings and national and international residencies, both in art centres and museums in Spain and in Finland, Germany, Canada, Morocco, Ukraine, Lithuania, Austria and Norway, among others.

She co-coordinates the research and creation project EXCHANGE Live Art and gives workshops in art centres, universities and independent spaces.

Facilitated by Martine Viale
Photo credit Jamie Gannon

On Saturday November 25 @11:15am ct | 18:15 ect we are thrilled to begin the Fall Artist Focus with a live conversation with Carron Little from University of Lincoln, U.K. and Martine Viale from Pepignon, France.

About Carron Little
Carron Little is the organizer of outofsite_chi and the convener of Flow • embody in site a public performance art symposium. Carron is Scottish American and is currently a Visiting Artist Lecturer at the University of Lincoln, U.K. Carron graduated with a Master in Fine Arts (MFA) from School of the Art Institute in Chicago specializing in Fiber & Material Studies and Digital Video Animation and taught in the Performance Department from 2014 – 2018. Carron studied a BA Honors at Goldsmiths' College, London University receiving a First-Class Honors in Textiles. Throughout her career she has received numerous awards and grants for her artwork including a British Arts Council residency at Barnett College, London, U.K. from 2000 – 2001, the Propeller Grant from Gallery 400 and Andy Warhol Foundation (2015), the Chicago/Swiss artist in residence (2016) supported by the Swiss Benevolent Society of Chicago and Chicago Sister Cities International, and most recently the Hyde Park Art Center Artist-Run Award (2023) and was a second round finalist for Creative Capital 2022.

To date, Carron has presented her performances and artwork in Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Maryland, and Oklahoma in the USA and internationally in Bosnia, Bulgaria, Canada, England, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Scotland, Spain, and Switzerland. Significant civic engagement projects to date include Dream Minds (2012-2013), City Alive with Dreams (2014-2015), Neighborhood Magic for Beverly, Chicago (2015 – 2016), Spare Rib Revisited, Lucerne, Switzerland (2016-2018), Gie Ben Ilka Gill | To Give In Each Measure (Spring 2021), an online interactive public performance project for the community of Ludington, Michigan and Eight Acts, a live stream poetry performance written in response to the USA 2020 election. Most recently, Carron has been performing poetry and created a public performance art with Duff Norris (NYC) at Barrowland Park in Glasgow, Scotland called Art to Heart.

As the organizer of Out of Site, Carron is regularly invited to present her artwork & Out of Site’s work Universities, conferences, and museums. Post-pandemic she was invited to present at Intimate Bridges by Theater Entropia in Athens, Greece funded by the European Union, at the University of Darmstadt, Germany and at a symposium organized by ieke Trinks and B Ajay Sharma at Chandigarh Museum, New Delhi, India. Carron writes policy on equity, diversity, and inclusion in the arts authoring the 50 | 50 Initiative that was successfully implemented at the College Arts Association 2020.

As a creative practitioner Carron believes in the blossoming power of art facilitate diverse conversations with diverse communities and publics.

Artist Website: https://www.carronlittle.com/

Facilitated by Carron Little
Photo credit Sonja Ovaskainen

On Saturday December 2 @11:15am ct | 18:15 ect we are delighted to be in conversation with Anette Friedrich Johannesson. We were able to witness and enjoy her work this September through Flow • embody in site and are excited to share her work with you all.

About Anette Freidrich Johannesson
Anette Friedrich Johannessen is a multidisciplinary artist, working with performance, video, drawing and text-based work.

She holds a BFA from Camberwell College of Arts, London, and has participated in several festivals, exhibitions and events (both solo and collaboratively) in Europe, USA and Asia. Working from Bergen (Norway), Anette is today artistic director of Performance Art Bergen and is one of the co-organizers of Public performances in Bergen and the district around the city, called Open Sessions. Her artistic practice is highly inspired by Open Sessions, where the main concept is that art in public space is an expression of democratic thought, where art can, and should, be a shared experience.

The core element in Anette Friedrich Johannesen’s artistic practice is an investigation on sensory experience, repetition, minimal gestures and place identity. She seeks to define different types of systems and how they relate to chaos and order. This process is about understanding human rituals, and to which extent they are a part of our nature. In her work, she discusses mankind’s relationship to nature, social structures, and technology. How should we as humans relate to our ever-changing environment, and how can we as individuals adapt while at the same time figuring out how to balance our instinctive nature and technological progress?

Artist Website: https://anettefj.squarespace.com/

Facilitated by Carron Little
Photo by Jordan Hutchings

On Saturday December 16 @11:15am ct | 18:15 ect Carron will be in conversation with Sandra Corrigan Breathnach who creates socially engaged projects embedded in communities and has an active public performance art practice.

About Sandra Corrigan Breathnach
Sandra Corrigan Breathnach is an Interdisciplinary artist and curator working mainly in Performance Art, her practice includes elements of Sculpture, Drawing, Photography, Video and Sound. Recent performances include, 'Seven' a collaborative piece with Keike Twisselmann - Catalyst Arts - Belfast | 2023, ‘Shift’ | Alive & Kicking - Live Art Ireland | 2022, ‘Severance III’ | MAC - Belfast | 2021, ‘Primal Release’ | Transitstation Online | 2021, ‘Severance II’ | PEPA Online - N.Y. & Madrid | 2021, ‘Human’ | Seeing You - Seeing Me - Revision Festival - Belfast | 2020, ‘Interference’ | Sounding Out – Derry | 2020. Other notable performances include, 'Through the Eye' | PEPA – Madrid | 2019, 'Severance' | 60-120 Breaths - Flax Art Belfast - part of 'Humanism in Process' | 2019, ‘Voids’ | La Chambre Blanche - Inter le lieu's Rencontre internationale d'art performance (R.i.A.P.) Québec Canada | 2018, Corrigan Breathnach was interviewed following her performance and her image was chosen as the feature Image for the Art Publication Inter Art Actuel's event article written by the author Nathalie Côté. ‘Truth ?’ | Pollen Gallery Belfast | 2018, ‘Bound – UnBound’ | B.I.F.P.A 16 (Belfast International Festival of Performance Art) | 2016, ‘Being’ | Acción Mad 16 – XIII Encuentro De Arte De Acción - Matadero Madrid | 2016.

Collaborative works include 'Sentient', Sarah Walker Gallery - Cork | 2022 with artist Alastair MacLennan. Their collaborative work began in 2017 culminating in their 2018 Performance Installation exhibition 'Breath And Blood' | Burren College Gallery - Co. Clare, the exhibition included live performance, drawings, video, sound works and sculpture, another notable work was their 8 hour collaborative performance 'Flux In Flow' | The Golden Thread Gallery - Belfast | 2019, noted by Aidan Dunne as one of the 'Five best art exhibitions to see this week' in the Irish Times. Other collaborations include the exhibition ‘Pollenate' with Artist James King in 2016 in the Void Gallery Derry, a combination of live performance, video, animation, photography and sound works.

Artist Website: sandracorriganbreathnach.com

Facilitated by Carron Little
Photo credit Istvan Kovas

On Saturday March 25 @11:15am ct | 17:15 ect we are thrilled to begin the Spring Artist Focus with a live conversation with Yvette Teeuwen form The Hague, Netherlands and Carron Little, organizer of Out of Site.

About Yvette Teeuwen
My name is Yvette Teeuwen (1975) from Delft in The Netherlands. I live and work as visual artist & art performer in cultural sea-city The Hague, a short hour from Amsterdam. I studied at The Hague’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Mixed Media; 1997-2001). Besides I am a museum-teacher at Art Museum The Hague since 2007.I followed several performance-workshops for example from performer Johannes Deimling (Performance Art Studies, Germany (2019, 2020,2021,2022), from Dimple B Shah (India) and Kirsten Heshusius (The Netherlands) during Online Symposium Flow, Out of site_Chicago (2021), from duo VestAndPage (Germany) & Marilyn Arsem (US) during International event ID from Performance Site, The Hague (2019) and musician Wade Matthews (US/Spain) (2023).Exhibitions in The Netherlands: The Hague, Amsterdam, Dordrecht, Rotterdam and many more. Abroad: Valencia, Spain (2023), Kassel/Germany (2022), India & U.S. (2022), Chili & Brazil & Bolivia & Argentina & Mexico &India & Colombia & Belgium (2021), India & Mexico & U.S. & Chili & Germany (2020).

Artist Website: www.yveteeuwen.nl

Facilitated by Martine Viale
Photo credit Denys Blacker

On Saturday April 8 @11:15am ct | 18:15 ect Martine will be in conversation with Denys Blacker sharing this recorded interview from her garden in Girona, Spain. Denys Blacker has organized the FEM gatherings since 2001 and works with several ensembles in addition to creating solo work.

About Denys Blacker
Denys Blacker is a visual artist whose practice spans performance art, drawing, sculpture and video. She recently completed a funded PhD titled Interconnection, Synchronicity and Consciousness in Improvised Performance Art Practices at Northumbria University in Newcastle. In 2002, she co-founded Gresol, a non-profit making cultural association and since then, she has organised over 20 international Performance art festivals in Girona and Barcelona, including FEM, an annual festival showcasing the work of women performance artists, now in its 16th edition. She is a founding member of the all-women performance group Ocells al Cap (Birds in the Head) and a member of the International performance group Wolf in the Winter. She is co-founder of the EU funded project ELAA (European Live Art Archive) based in the University of Girona. She also initiated and coordinates Corpologia, a performance artist collective and a magazine of the same name. She regularly collaborates with other organisations and institutions to programme performance art and live art events including; Cara a Cara – an ongoing programme of interviews and residencies, that promotes works by women, at la Bonne, Women’s Cultural Centre in Barcelona, the Cicle d’Art d’Acció at Bòlit, Contemporary Art Centre in Girona and FLARE (Forum for Live Art Research and Education) at the University of Northumbria (UK).

Artist Website: http://denysblacker.com/

Facilitated by Martine Viale
Photo by Gerald Harringer

On Saturday April 15 @11:15am ct | 18:15 ect

About Boris Nieslony
He develops and shows the languages ​​of the body, the body, the gestures, the images, the actions and materials.Boris Nieslony has dedicated his life’s work to developing greater understanding of the philosophical, ethical, social, historical revolutionary and insurrectionary implications of performance art and to disseminating these findings as broadly as possible. He is a tireless and inspiring advocate of the art of performance living, lying in the encounter of meeting. he advocates the practice through organising and attending many artists’ meetings internationally, publishing his and others’ theoretical texts, archiving work and creating performance, photography and installation works that forcibly confront an existential unease and an alchemical, visual poetry.

Artist Website: https://elaa.cat/en/boris-nieslony/

Facilitated by Dimple B Shah
Photo by Rahul Giri

On Saturday April 22 @11:15am ct | 18:15 ect we are thrilled to present the expansive performance art practice of Dorothea Rust who is based in Zug, Switzerland. This live broadcast will be facilitated by Dimple B Shah who has been participating in Performance Art Festivals with Dorothea in India and European continent.

About Dorothea Rust
Dorothea Rust studies in postmodern dance in New York, visual arts and cultural / gender studies in Zurich (ZHdK). From 1983 to 1991 she collaborated and performed in New York with dance artists, choreographers and musicians. She is internationally active in translocal contexts with performances, interventions and lecture-performances, as a guest lecturer, mentor, co-initiator of platforms and networks for performative practices, focusing on the multi-layered curatorial and reflective aspects of Performance (and the) Arts, in collaboration with artists, curators, theoreticians and music groups: SYMPODIUM What’s Wrong with Performance Art? (2017) / LEGS performance relay (2016 ), ACT Sierre/Lucerne performance festival, platform for art students at swiss art academies (2011—2017) / DER LÄNGSTE TAG / THE LONGEST DAY, 16 hours nonstop outdoor performances in Zürich (since 2004 in irregular intervals) / GNOM groupe for new music baden (2009–2015) / stromereien biennial Performance Festival Zurich (2010/2011) / Delhi Workshop and Performance Day 2013 and others. She is also a co-founding-member of PANCH Performance Art Network Switzerland. She does research in ‚Somatics and Performance\Art’ in her artistic practice and in text works on dance and performance: contributions to publications such as «Floating Gaps – Performance Chronik Basel (1968-1986), Formen der Wissensgenerierung – Practices in Performance Art’. Awards, grants and contributions for residencies.

Artist Website: https://www.dorothearust.ch/

Facilitated by ieke TrinksPhoto by Chris RyanOn Saturday May 6 @11:15am ct | 18:15 ect we are delighted to present the performance art practice of Julie Vulcan who lives in the rural part of Australia outside Sydney. Due to time zone differences this broadcast will be recorded. In preparation for this conversation we have had fascinating conversations with Julie about her current research into darkness.
About Julie VulcanJulie Vulcan is an Australian artist, researcher and writer working across performance, installation, and digital media forms. She is mainly known for her durational performances engaging a choreography of repetition. Her works have been presented internationally with I Stand In: A Ritual for the Forgotten, Misplaced, Unrecovered and Removed being one of her most traveled performances (presented at Spill Festival, UK 2013; Performatorium, Canada 2014; 2nd Venice Performance Art Week: Ritual Body – Political Body, Italy 2014; Deathfest, Australia 2016; Taking Place, Canada 2017). A recipient of an Australia Council for the Arts Cultural Leadership grant in 2012 she undertook research trips in 2013 and 2014 to visit performance artists and events in UK, Cambodia, Italy, Germany, Sweden and the US. On return she founded and helped facilitate the performance art practice and research platform base-metal. Underlying many of her performance works is an interest in the veracity of mediated memory and the influences and/or motivations behind how we remember, record and re-write our actions, bodies and traces. In 2020 after a bushfire swept through her home-place, followed swiftly by the pandemic, Julie considered more deeply the performance of her body being performed by her surroundings rather than for an audience. In 2021, a year after the Black Summer fires, Julie temporarily transported ash from her home to perform Rescript, a four hour ritual in honour of the loss of non-human lives and new beginnings. Artist

Website: www.julievulcan.net
Facebook Group: base-metal

Facilitated by Carron Little
Photo by Michael Callaghan

On Saturday May 20 @11:15am ct | 18:15 ect we are delighted to present the performance art practice of Keike Twisselmann who lives in Berlin, Germany. Her research practice explores somatic practices along with a deep investment into current affairs and the politics of our times.

About Keike Twisselmann
Born in Berlin 1967. She was unconditionally admitted to study fine art at the University of Ulster Belfast in 1989, completing her studies 1992 with the Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) and 1996 with the Master of Fine Art. In-between, she studied philosophy, English literature, politics and law out of interest.She was one of the founding members of Catalyst Arts Belfast, a group of international artists who created their own space for their political, social, and experimental art in the center of Belfast. At her studio flat in a deconsecrated church right at the frontier of the Northern Irish conflict, she organized Belfast’s first art cinema and founded the “provisional German embassy” which gave shelter and protection to anyone and everyone without prejudice. Her public performances are part of the northern Irish “Troubles Archive” by the Ulster Museum in Belfast. She moved back to Berlin in 2000, where she worked in the chair committee of the BBK Berlin (2003-2014).The focus of her artistic work lies on performance and painting with exhibitions and invitations to festivals around the world…such as:Venice, Kassel/Documenta, Cologne, Dessau/Bauhaus, New York, Belfast, Berlin, London, Scarborough, Transylvania, Derry, Hanover, Sheffield, Cleveland, Glasgow, Werkleitz, Dublin, Kilkenny, Galway, Cork, Barcelona, Cardiff, Québec, Kiel, Kleve, Leipzig, Madrid, … to name but a few.

Facilitated by Carron LittlePhoto by Sarah RisebroughOn Saturday May 27 @11:15am ct | 18:15 ect Carron Little was in conversation with James King about his public performance art takeovers working through the Troubles in Belfast and Derry in N.Ireland to the present time. He works collaboratively with many artists in public space and has had a long-term collaboration with Eamonn O’Donnell creating public interventions over three decades. James King was a workshop facilitator at Flow 2021 where we learnt to fuse poetics, vocality with public performance actions. The humor evoked in his work through poetry and performance art is a important element in his practice. Please note we decided to create a Part 2 that was recorded on May 31, 2023 and can be listened to here: Artist Focus with James King Part 2
About James KingJames King has lived in Derry for forty years. Since retiring as Course Director for the Certificate in Community Drama at the University of Ulster in 2004, King has developed his career as a performance artist and sound poet, and maintained his work with vulnerable groups in the community until the time of the Covid pandemic.He has practiced performance in a variety of genres for over forty-five years and lectured in community drama for thirty. Over the last fifteen years, King has expanded his performance practice, ranging from short, open word-play entertainments to extensive events. More recently, he has also incorporated sound poetry and vocal improvisation into his performances. King’s work is organic, spontaneous and site-specific. In his work he interrogates and expresses how he is in the world. His respect for intuitive spontaneity is an invitation to others to question, challenge and freely respond to self, others, and prevailing circumstances.King associated with the Bbeyond Belfast performance art collective in May 2005, during the In Place of Passing performance bus tour. Since then he has been an enthusiastic participant in Bbeyond’s monthly collective improvisations.In 2016, in collaboration with Bbeyond, King organized the Cumulator project. This involved performance artists from several countries and took place in outdoor venues, studios and galleries in Ireland, England, Belgium and Germany. The project began with one artist performing for one hour in January, and cumulated with twelve artists performing for twelve hours in December.Through Bbeyond King was invited to Bergen in 2010, the Spanish Bel-Mad exchange in 2013 and the German-Belgian Bel-Esse exchange in 2014, as well as AcciónMad Madrid in 2016. More recently, in 2022, he participated in the Black Kit Open the Door a Window project in Cologne.Consistently King performs on the streets of Derry and other public spaces, with his shamanic partner Eamonn O’Donnell, and the Bbeyond colony BBDB.With Peter O’Doherty, King has formed a mutually-enriching working relationship that focuses on text-based and vocal explorations. From intuitive abstract sounds, King finds phonemes, syllables and words that are reconstructed into performance poems.In December 2021, King and poet Ann McKay published “Parley Palaver (Distillations and Reasonings)”. In this book McKay responds to King’s gibberish writings by making sense of the closing lines of each poem and the accompanying charcoal illustrations. In 2022 and 2023 King produced three more books of writings and drawings: “ Fun With Words”; “From Palimpsest to Sillybling”; and “Ticlish All Sorts” (cover illustration by Carron Little).Other publications include: “Action: an Introductory Drama Manual” with Terence Zeeman, 2001; “Moving Pitches”, 2008; “Furrowed Lives” with David Hegarty, 2012; “Thoughts” with Sandra Corrigan Breathnach, 2017; and “Swims Diary”, 2021; “ Words, Presence, Traces”, James King and Peter O’ Doherty, November 21.

Facilitated by Carron Little
Photo by Ryan Buchanan

For the last Artist Focus of Spring 2023 we will be in conversation with Janice Parker who lives and works in Edinburgh, Scotland. While attending Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year I really had to search for any public performance art. In this journey I was delighted to discover a durational performance happening along the Union Canal by Janice Parker. We will talk more about this exciting project and her living practice of public performance art.

About Janice Parker
Janice Parker Is an artist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. working locally and further afield. She creates across disciplines, media and art-forms rooted in her primary practice of movement and dance. Collaborating with people, place and context she is known for forging partnerships outwith the dance mainstream, and for questioning the notion of who can dance and what dance can be. Janice has developed a vast body of work in her 40 years of practice – live, performance, film, text and installation, and believes in art as an act of quiet, or noisy, activism that proposes and supports possibilities for positive personal, social and cultural change and how we might live together.Most recently her work is in collaboration with the land, in particular green-space within the city that she lives. Her outdoor daily live practice, which draws on sociologist Richard Sennett’s thinking around how the sense of the body enters the built environment, is a quiet act of resistance to the gentrification and commodification of our public and civic spaces and places, and to our whose and what movement we value. It also connects the artist to the outside of things, to the human and non-human life of the outdoors, providing a sense of sanctuary and belonging.

Artist website: www.janiceparker.co.uk