Abstract

Somewhere in the crossings between thought and act, image and text, hearing and touching, an event that happened and its coming recursions, an attempt is made. A subject, of sorts, speaks, but it is not certain from where the language issues. Perhaps it is memoir or testimony, criticism or fiction, account or speculation. There are tales of bodies and spirits and things. The subject tries to unpick the logic of some artistic practices and methods that it has been wrapped up in, to come to its aimless compulsion: the senses of a life at limits, being overthrown. It contests how time spent lost with others, within the ideas of others, gets registered in the scene of value convened by this or that system or institution. In the process, the attempt traces dense moments of relation and singular occurrences in the making. Before anything, it is an act of communion with the valueless, the nameless, the unborn: with those who have nothing in common. 

Contributor(s)

Adrian Heathfield

Adrian Heathfield is a writer and curator working across the scenes of live art, performance and dance. He is the author of Out of Now, a monograph on the artist Tehching Hsieh, and editor of numerous books on performance art including Perform, Repeat, Record and Live: Art and Performance. He has led large-scale creative research projects: Performance Matters (AHRC 2009–2014) and Curating the Ephemeral (EC 2014–2016). He was the curator of the Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2017, and as part of the freethought collective, of the Bergen Assembly in 2016. He co-curated the performance event Live Culture (Tate Modern 2003). He has co-directed numerous art and documentary films with photographer Hugo Glendinning, including Spirit Labour and Transfigured Night. Heathfield is Professor of Performance and Visual Culture at the University of Roehampton, London. www.adrianheathfield.net.