To be honest, it is quite hard to pinpoint exactly what ‘Live Art’ is. The term was first used in the mid-80s to describe the work of artists that just wouldn’t quite sit comfortably in the pre-existing categories; they made pieces that weren’t quite dance, weren’t quite theatre and weren’t quite stand-up comedy. However, their work all shared one universal attribute – it was live or had live elements. Whether that is the artist using their own body, such as Written In Skin, the tattoo art piece by performance artist Stefanie Elrick and tattooist Loren Fetterman performed at The Cornerhouse earlier this year. This artwork involved the tattooist using a tattoo technique called ‘bloodlining’ to inscribe the confessions of audience members on the performance artist’s body! Live art can also include pieces which simply involve the artist’s presence in the space, for example – Maurice Carlin’s Performance Publishing piece that is currently running at Islington Mill in Salford where Carlin has spent 3 months lining the floor of a huge warehouse with ink prints, all under the watchful eyes of 2 webcams with live 24 hour feeds to the his website. Whichever way you approach it, the form aims to physically engage and excite their audience through live performance – I mean, why stand and stare at a static painting when you can have it talking back to you? Well, obviously thinking about it like that isn’t going to get you very far but for someone like me, a drama student who sometimes finds it difficult to engage with framed paintings, live art is very appealing and offers up a world of new possibilities.
So anyway, the term was coined and has since slowly increased in popularity, in particular in the last 4-5 years with more work performed than ever. Tate describes it as the term used to describe “mainly Performance art and Action art” and for me Live Art is an umbrella term for a huge variety of different performance practices including elements of drag, stand-up comedy, live music, cabaret and more traditional visual art. The only unanimous feature is the live element.
If you are interested in exploring this exciting and ever changing form, you couldn’t be in a better place to do it. In Manchester, we are surrounded by a buzzing and vibrant art scene and specifically, a live art one. Venues such as Islington Mill, the Cornerhouse, the Contact Theatre and Blankspace have pieces of performance, body and live art littered throughout their programmes and it simply requires a bit of time spent on Google to track these pieces down. All of these venues also offer huge amounts of theatre, dance, music and art and are all pretty much in walking distance from University Place! In terms of Live Art, coming up there is the ‘Domestic’ festival, a collection of pieces performed in a block of flats off Oxford road from 8-17th November, the one-day ‘Emergency’ festival on October 5th at the Blankspace gallery and the cabaret duo Rashdash performing their new piece ‘The Ugly Sisters’ at the Contact Theatre to name a few.
Since I first came across performance, live and body art, I have seen pieces that made me want to cry, pieces that made me feel physically sick and pieces that just simply made me think. It is a scene still in its fledgling stages, so take advantage and see as much as possible and strike while the iron’s hot.
